Not normal in my experience and spending hours cloning a dev environment sounds just broken. This is obviously a large co - they should have a standard build they hand out and all the credentials should be ready to go.

Sounds like some one in HR has built a little empire out of this.

My first job onboardings consisted of a tour being issued my lab coat and being shown the portacabin that was my office.

Then it was go and se Keith he will give you a quick run down on how a PDP11 works and there is a book on Fortran in the company library learn it