The startup I work at got such a policy instituted such a policy (mainly because the CEO got hypervigilent about IT and IP theft), and I managed to get that cha

The startup I work at got such a policy instituted such a policy (mainly because the CEO got hypervigilent about IT and IP theft), and I managed to get that changed back so now effectively everyone has admin access (though through a seperate password prompt, which is reasonable increase over window's default). I think it really helped though that the IT which had admin access was outsourced and each (pretty frequent) ticket came with a bill for $XXX.