In layman terms, expect banks, defense, government and healthcare to have a dedicated operation team with root access. Developers do not have it.

I've seen that in a couple of IT outsourcing companies, too. Its hilarious because it complicates working with these companies so much that sometimes u just might reconsider hiring the company and do the work yourself. I dont think they realize how much they are shooting themselves in the foot with dumb restrictions like that.

Can you run VirtualBox and use it as your working machine instead?

If the VM is on the corporate network then it’s the same as connecting an unmanaged device - defeats the purpose of locking down machines. Developer VMs should be on their own VLAN.

Yes, but I think you are missing the point. Developers can access dev and production machines with non root users, root is never needed to run software.

If you are part of the sysadmins that really need root, to manage iptables or system updates for instance, you would have root.