You usually don't need either for software development though, and if you do the free or online alternatives are often good enough for the rare occasions you need them. If you are a software developer and you have to spend significant time using Office it means you either are developing extensions for Office or your company management is somewhat lacking and you are forced to handle things you should not (like bureaucracy for instance).
Where I’m at my email is in Outlook. Having to use the web version sounds annoying. I also end up getting a lot of information in spreadsheets. Having to move all that to the online version to open also sounds annoying. The online version is also more limited, which could lead to issues.
I could see a front end dev needing Photoshop for some things, if they don’t have a design team to give them assets.
There are also security software the company says laptops must have which isn’t available for Linux. They only buy and deploy this stuff with Windows and macOS in mind.
A couple weeks ago on HN I saw someone looking for a program to make a demo of their app (I think). The comments were filled with people recommending an app on macOS that was apparently far and away the best option, and many were disappointed by the lack of availability elsewhere. I find there are a lot of situations like this, where I might be able to get the job done on another OS, but the software I actually want to use is on macOS. Obviously this one is a matter of taste to some degree.
It’s not as big an issue as it was 20 years ago, but it’s still an issue for in many environments.
