I'm guessing they all get this way. I don't know if it's inevitable or not.

When I first worked at Google ~20 years ago it was a company that trusted its employees. You needed something it was assumed you knew best and they gave it to you. New machine, 2nd machine, more storage, monitor, cables, whatever.

Over time it all disappeared. First they got rid of the "hardware depots". They were like small computer stores. They merged them with "tech stops" the place where you got tech support. In that change the number of things available went down. Over time they took it down further and further. There are no tech stops now (I think).

They used to have bins of cables and power supplies. If you needed one take it. Instead they built expensive kiosks you have to badge in to get one. I can only guess some ex-employee started the kiosk machine and got a friend still at Google to given them a lucrative contract to build these stupid machines.

Then they removed stuff from the machines. I needed a power supply recently. They don't exist in the machines. I ended up having to go to the nearest store to purchase one so I get could get work done and then fill out a bunch of stuff to expense it. Given what they pay engineers it probably cost them $300-$600 for a $50 part.

I'm not totally blaming the company. Plenty of bad employees abused trust and that always slowly erodes what a company allows/supports.