I only had this issue the one time while I was an employee: I wanted a Thinkpad, but management insisted I got a shitty Dell. In the end, they got me a Thinkpad.

Other than that, whenever I've asked for a book or some tool, I simply got it, even expensive split keyboards.

Now that I'm self employed, I just buy what I need. Which isn't much, really. Very few "developer tools" are useful enough to spend money on, let alone try to integrate them in my workflow. That last part has become much more important to me over the years.