Discussed elsewhere in the thread, it's definitely not needed day to day.

The number of devs popping up in this thread who think routine access is needed to live data just to be able to debug is quite worrying.

In the rare instances it is, an anonymized version of the live db should be used to recreate the bug. If this doesn't work, then you might put in temporary logging accessible to only approved people, which is removed after the bug is fixed and the logs deleted.

To be a bit more explicit, I think small companies have a justifiable reason to be a bit more relaxed about live db access, but once you get to having larger teams of people, you're under a huge risk of a malicious actor. Which is easily mitigated by restricting access.