Well, I kinda like it -- less things to care about, more reason to leave at 5.

But it's counterproductive for the company, and some experiments a developer may want to quickly do will never be done at all. It kills a lot of creativity. The same holds, of course, for restricting internet access so a dev might never find out whether an interesting looking github tool really is good (for doing productive work!). Also, the company probably wants their products to run on a diverse zoo of machines and OS versions prior to release.

So why a company would take away such access on dev machines is a mystery to me -- probably misguided (and futile) attempts to keep in 'control'.

I agree, but having them is also a huge liability. I’m always happy to have less privileges because it limits the damage I can accidentally cause. If someone competently manages my machine so that I can do my work without requiring root privileges, that works for me.

The actual question I’d be interested in is how do developer convenience and security stance balance against each other, and how are the inevitable conflicts resolved.