Everytime you read about some sysadmin person that still uses plain old vi because "it's everywhere" or who actually prefers more unreadable syntax in shell scripts because the nice(r) alternative wouldn't be POSIX compliant, it's basically the same effect. Except that on Windows, you're usually screwed, because there's absolutely no useful tool that does the job you want and ships with the OS (as opposed to some no-pixie-dust tool that's been around for decades and has a bit of a steeper learning curve).

I realize this isn't ideal...ever...but sometimes the needs of our department--our immediate needs--didn't align with the time require to navigate the massive corporate and IT bureaucracy.

I battle this every day. Our systems are so locked down for "security" that we in R&D can't do our job without hacking around IT. Thank God they are not very good so there are plenty of loopholes for circumventing the "security" measures.