Given companies are still using old versions of IE in 2019 or are forced to use compatibility mode with hinting falling back to IE 7,8,etc engine I feel like jQuery is more of a commodity than writing custom code for certain scenarios.

I also thought we would've been better off without jQuery until I started receiving calls that multiple users with different browsers had problems with the app... and telling the users to update would either need approval from the IT department or the user refuses because it'd break compatibility with existing legacy apps that they also use. Having jQuery is just a cheap price to pay.

Ideally I would love everyone to be on the latest browser and that companies moved out of said legacy apps or at least invested in improving them...

Why? It doesn't so much "require" it, Django includes jQuery for the admin pages.