> Is that really what you mean? Do you mean that when you ask your local IT for space, you get jack squat?
That would be hyperbole, but, essentially, yes. In a time when 4 terabyte drives can be had for less than $200, (wholesale, but any PC builder knows where to get them) trying to get larger than a 40 Gbyte share or virtual drive is like pulling teeth, and you pay a monthly price for the storage for which you could more than buy the storage outright every month. Now, mind you, a lot of this pays for "enterprise" drives, enclosures, storage admins, and your storage supplier's profit margin. I understand that. But it does leave a developer in a situation where getting enough for a reasonable virtual instance, even just for sandbox work not intended for production, is like pulling teeth, whereas, hey look! I have a terabyte right on my PC! And Sam next to me, he has a terabyte on his! Maybe we can do something with that.
I support apps on a mix of servers, and the most often issue I have to deal with is full partitions. (Not the hardest, but the most numerous.) This is because we're trying to squeeze an app server into too small a space. It's a double whammy -- buy really expensive enterprise grade storage, and *then* try to cut corners by doling it out in Bumble quantities. Exactly the opposite of your suggestion.
So, like you said, that's their own bad decisions.