Paradoxically, I think that while pay is generally better these days, opportunities were in some ways better back then. If you learnt some good skills (e:g C++,

Paradoxically, I think that while pay is generally better these days, opportunities were in some ways better back then. If you learnt some good skills (e:g C++, X/Motif, Unix such as Solaris or HP-UX, TCP/IP and other networking) back then, that'd give you a serious technical edge and good (international) job opportunities for quite some time, whereas nowadays its harder for anyone, including younger ones, to stay on top of skills and stand out from the pack. No stand-ups back then. Personally I prefer that now we have agile ceremonies and we actually, you know, talk to each other and collaborate. Back then you could be totally unsociable (desire no interaction at all) or anti-social (sexist etc) at work and get away with it. Good thing that wouldn't fly now, or at least not to same extent. I even worked with someone that had a porn stash on their work computer. Management didn't seem to know or wouldn't have cared if they did. Its kind of mind -boggling when you think that'd just be instant dismissal now (hopefully, in any sane organisation). Work-life balance I think is better now, as flexible working is easier to get, and with WFH. That said, when I was young, in UK, I had no trouble getting a month off to go travelling . (albeit, did request that vacation almost a year in advance). We used to do Rapid Application Development /. iterative design, which resembles agile. Nothing new under the sun, as the saying goes. Appraisal / performance was probably better for a lot of people those days. It pretty much meant once a year pull out your objectives, find out what you worked on had entirely changed, so "reverse engineer" your objectives to be a list of the things you'd achieved for the year, pat on the back, meagre pay rise, but far less of the rivalry and performance nonsense that seems to pervade particularly US companies these days.