Places I worked in the early years barely had an IT department at all. As a developer you were expected to be able to maintain your machine. We'd install whatever we want, experiment with different operating systems, etc. Total free rein, box was our tool to get work done with, they didn't care how you did it.

That went away a long time ago. Basic corporate spyware and rules came pretty early but still free rein over our tools.

I've worked with the same company for close to a decade now, and they have been tightening and tightening the noose slowly but surely. We're purportedly a software company, but we lost admin rights, installable software went from a blocklist to an allowlist. Everything we install needs to get approved by IT, and that approval takes weeks.

Today they took our Chrome extensions away. They've got an allowlist of about 15 extensions we can install. Everything I submitted for approval got rejected.

I'm frustrated with this arrangement and am wondering how standard this is these days in this industry?

So I'm genuinely curious, Hacker News: How big of a company do you work for, what industry, and how locked down is your machine?