As others have mentioned, your experience seems to be drastically different from theirs. Maybe it depends on what languages you use and what features you need?
To me, IntelliJ is to Vscode as Vscode is to a plain editor without IDE features. The amount of additional value it brings is large, the level of polish compared to vscode is extreme.
It costs money and needs more resources. The licensing costs are recouped in a day or two thanks to increased productivity. The beefy workstation I use takes maybe ten days to be worth it (and Firefox likes all that extra RAM as well). And then you get an extra 20-30% more productivity for the other 350 days of the year. Feels like a no-brainer to me.
To me, IntelliJ is to Vscode as Vscode is to a plain editor without IDE features. The amount of additional value it brings is large, the level of polish compared to vscode is extreme.
It costs money and needs more resources. The licensing costs are recouped in a day or two thanks to increased productivity. The beefy workstation I use takes maybe ten days to be worth it (and Firefox likes all that extra RAM as well). And then you get an extra 20-30% more productivity for the other 350 days of the year. Feels like a no-brainer to me.