At age 62, I'm wondering which mythical decade did not alienate software developers?

There was a brief ray of hope in the late 90s, with the startup gold-rush idea that we would all be millionaires soon. Then the I realized the founders had 4000x my equity those companies...

Developers used to be freer to choose their tools, organize their routines, decide the result of their work, acquire transferable knowledge, and had access to their tools without any link to any organization (though that one has been steadily improving instead of post-peak).

There is more to alienation than equity.