It is, after all, a great tradition of UNIX™ systems to install the OS... and then immediately install GNU tools on top to make it less painful to work on. This is just macOS carrying the banner proudly:P

That's so true. The OS ships with certain things preinstalled, but you can install other or newer versions of them.

And if I found myself in a shop where I needed to use standard command line tools to do my job but wasn't allowed to install or update them, I'd be looking elsewhere because life's too short for that bureaucratic overreach.

I hear horror stories like bosses not allowing their employees to choose their own tooling. Pretty much any office like that which doesn't have armed soldiers guarding the building deserves ridicule.