That used be my perception as well. I have now had back to back jobs where there is some maverick in the SRE team. A single guy who modifies some configuration at 2AM for services your team supposedly owns can ruin your week. Some people think lack of bureaucracy is a get out of jail card, and they are often right.

As someone who has managed a team of SREs that kind of behavior would land someone on a PIP if done repeatedly. Sounds like you had a run of bad luck in teams.

A PIP would be nice tbh. At my previous place they PIP'd one of those guys, but they ended up moving him to my team, where we taught him a bit about processes.