If there's a small team, individual freedom can be perfectly fine, as everybody knows everyone and it's easy to talk with each other in case there are discrepancies.
For larger projects however, not having tooling set up that enforces certain consistency is an absolute showstopper for me. I'll either introduce it or I'll quit; I simply do not want to waste my time with developers squabbling over arbitrary formatting-choices or irrelevant coding-style-details that can easily be enforced by some tooling.
Of course, developer-experience is paramount. Meaning, the tooling must be easy-to-use and generally not stand in the way. Otherwise it can indeed create a lot of friction which will annoy everybody. But once this has been set up (properly!), it will make a lot of silly discussions and choices obsolete.
For larger projects however, not having tooling set up that enforces certain consistency is an absolute showstopper for me. I'll either introduce it or I'll quit; I simply do not want to waste my time with developers squabbling over arbitrary formatting-choices or irrelevant coding-style-details that can easily be enforced by some tooling.
Of course, developer-experience is paramount. Meaning, the tooling must be easy-to-use and generally not stand in the way. Otherwise it can indeed create a lot of friction which will annoy everybody. But once this has been set up (properly!), it will make a lot of silly discussions and choices obsolete.