The worst thing in industry is....

split developer into different groups: frontend(html,css,flash,javascripts,jquery)/backend(c#)/DBA(schama,constraints,sp,triggers,performance profiling...)

boundary is clearly defined and it seems nobody is stepping on each other's toes.However, realistically, people don't work as a group effectively due to number of reasons as task priority,hr availability,politics...etc.

i'm not familiar with the orm tools u mentioned for java. but i worked on .net ones for a while. good thing is it saves plenty of time for developer from creating classes for tables/views, bad thing is it can easily be abused by query data directly rather than via sp... i miss the gold old time of ADO.net sqlcommand/data reader... very fast,reliable, no hassle at all.