Congratulations. You just identified one of the reasons so many dread working at such organisations and why software engineering is becoming assembly line work. Indeed what does an it person know about tooling and why do engineers need to ask for “permission” from managers by opening a “ticket”? Neither an it person nor a manger have a clue about what an engineer needs.

That's the part that cracks me up.

Developers require low-wage workers to prevent developers from doing the wrong thing. It's stupid.

I'm ok with you revoking Bob's admin privileges if Bob keeps installing malware, but don't revoke my ability to install Python because of it.

Sounds like an even worse nightmare!

Every developer has their own way of being productive which involves different tools & software. Forcing everyone to use one standardized environment sounds horrible.

Sounds like there could be a middle path. Instead one fixed dev image, there can be base image + inventory of other software, where free ones anyone can install. Paid ones need approval and/or decision who will pay for it. But IT department is surely not one I imagine that can create decent inventory. So there needs be a catalog for such things which companies can purchase or subscribe.

And when your company starts doing that to developers it is time to dust off your resume and start looking for something better. I get it that these companies have real issues and their managers are multiple times smarter than me but I refuse to be put into a position where I cannot use the tools that I need to be productive.

I get it - have been there. Work with project/team X, and... with tools I know, I'm X productive.

"We need to switch to tool Y".

There's usually a host of reasons I may not want to move to tool Y, but in most cases, it's because I don't want to have to learn yet another tool just to do what I was doing. Why? Cognitive overload... but also for some period of time I'm going to be much less productive. I don't want to be judged on that. you are saying I have to use Y... I'm going to be slower. Every estimate will be 20% more than what it was for the next Z months. I've got 10 years of muscle memory to undo. Is it worth it?

In most cases, really not. BUT... if someone mandated that, AND also acknowledged up front that the delivery expectations will be reduced for some longer period of time... perhaps it's OK.

On the JB topic, IntelliJ was one 'heavy' tool I resisted for a long time. "I'm faster in these other tools - notepad++, vim, netbeans, whatever". I was faster, for many tasks. Adopting something new was slow. I'm generally glad I did it, but I did it mostly on my own projects, and freelancing. Had I been under pressure to deliver at a high pace while having to undo years of habits/tools/processes that got me where I was at that time, it would have been far more difficult to deal with.

They take liability seriously? How many outright frauds and data leaks are swept under the table?

If you like to work in extremely low trust companies, you do you. If somebody trusts me to write production code but not to pick text editors, they are morons with red tape wrapped around their eyes.