> I get a sense of rage and depression

Maybe it's not the actual light, but it's a signal that the circus has arrived and your peaceful hour is over.

Pavlovian conditioning is very real. I for one wouldn't want the light => rage connection to get fixed...

I don't want to condescend but have you tried talking to the person switching on the lights? Maybe you could come to a compromise.

It'll just be the third or fourth person then. Talk to the office manager if you want to enforce a natural light time from the top.

Then I’m just the whiny asshole or primadonna or something. It’s not possible to have these preferences treated in an adult way in modern corporations, and anyone the issue got escalated to will just see it as whining.

You have to keep your head down and act like it’s Candide: whatever your company currently does is the best possible thing they could ever do.

"Then I’m just the whiny asshole or primadonna or something."

The way you approach doing this goes a long, long way toward how you're perceived.

"It’s not possible to have these preferences treated in an adult way in modern corporations, and anyone the issue got escalated to will just see it as whining."

I imagine you think this is the case because you see others asking for similar types of things as also being "whining". All you have to do is ask politely and calmly, and things should be fine. You might not get your way, but asking for something isn't automatically seen as "whining" by most people.

Why do you think I perceive other askers as whiny? I don’t. I think corporate culture is sorely anti-humane, and we need better sociological solutions in dev teams and orgs, closer to what is described in Peopleware.

I take other peoples’ preferences very seriously and treat them with respect. People should at least be heard and compromises attempted.

Management and capricious brogrammer types in every company I’ve ever worked for across 12 years however do not act this way at all, and reasonable requests will only be used against you. This has been outwardly and definitively proven time after time.

That has not been the case in any of the jobs I've worked at over my career. You work in shitty companies.

It has been the case in all the companies I’ve heard about from peers as well, which includes several of the “big four” tech companies, prominent startups, finance companies, etc.

It sounds like your working experience has been wildly unrepresentative of the reality of modern corporations.