NetBeans just has the nbactions.xml file, which defines a small number of things like the main class and some context menu actions (this is very useful for OSGi projects, where you often have to switch between different build/run profiles). It's pretty lightweight, and it leaves everything else to the POM.

Oh, and on that note, that wasn't the only reason I left IntelliJ. I also disliked how it handled having multiple projects open. If you don't want everything in separate windows, IntelliJ makes you create a dummy project and import everything as modules. NetBeans just does what I want automatically.