Not quite sure I understand what you're saying here, I'm not talking about the software being produced, but the systems used to produce it.

What I was trying to say was that there's not really any way for you (server admin guy) to know if I (software dev guy) have inserted something malicious into a script that all the other software folks run constantly (software build system, NOT server build/init script, NOT deployment script).

This is not about the end-user's privileges, or server set up, just how in a team-base software dev environment you're probably going to have to have a measure of trust for your employees.