or could be a lot of silly rules in the employee conduct handbook or something else.

No whining intended, but my former employer, the law firm, used to lose people left and right in the IT department because of a few factors.

Those being:

#1 Hardly anyone gets kept past 4 and a half years.

#2 HR took control of the IT Department two years ago.

#3 IT Management, is at best half-*ssed and biased.

#4 They pay a whole lot less in salaries than other employers.

#5 We got our hands tied (No OOP, No Data Structures, No Flowcharts, etc.) yet constantly get asked why things are taking so long, after the limitations they put on us. No reusable code, etc.

#6 Management and other staff changed the design "On the fly", nothing like a non-programmer telling you that the impossible can be done in under 15 minutes because that is how long it took them to create the email that describes it. Plus a week later, they will change their minds, and want something different or move and rename the fields around.

#7 General Apathy towards IT, sometimes hatred of IT, from the other staff makes it hard to communitate with anyone without them making a big case out of it.