Namely: How good is this platform after Corporate IT cheaps out on hardware, and loads as much 'security' crapware as possible?

On Windows, there are incredibly cheap laptops available, and corporate IT has loads of crapware like antivirus and crowdstrike and profiles and enterprise endpoint management to slow it down.

On Mac, there aren't any cheap hardware options, and there's a medium amount of "security" crapware.

On Linux, corporate IT let you manage it yourself, because they don't know how to. They can't develop the skills either, because anyone who can manage Linux gets promoted out the set-up-new-users-laptops department.