I've found that "what are you going to do about it?" goes a long way with this stuff. My previous job banned vertical monitors and I'd often come back to my desk with mine turned back to landscape and a post-it note from the IT guy, and I'd just throw it away and put it back. Nothing past that ever happened. My current job has one approved text editor, EditPlus [1], and one approved config with a non-fixed-width font, which sucks. I use Atom and Sublime anyway and just have to deal with the IT guy trying to lecture me about "we don't know that a / in Atom is the same as a / in EditPlus. You can't prove that it is." anytime he walks past my desk.
I'd give anything to work somewhere without an IT staff, but in my experience as long as you get quality work done you can do it how you want.
Wow. I get a "don't plug random stuff into your machine's USB ports" policy, but "don't rotate your monitor"? "one approved config with a non-fixed-width font"?
I can't imagine a sane rationale for this. Do they force lefties to write with their right hand, too?
I'd give anything to work somewhere without an IT staff, but in my experience as long as you get quality work done you can do it how you want.