I'm a few years younger than the author, based on when he started working, but I can relate to some of the attitudes of "the old days".
I worked at Microsoft and do remember when everyone had an office and the goal of managers was to keep you from having too many meetings. Nowadays, I also have probably 1-2 hours of recurring daily meetings. Absolutely everything needs to be tracked (daily standup, sprints, 1:1 with manager, skip-level meetings, team meetings, all hands, peer feedback), so you end up with meetings just to make sure everyone is on track. It's ridiculous.
I think it's all related to the fact that the pace of software development was just so much slower back then. I remember you could really bullshit a lot more 10-20 years ago. You could hang out with a coworker for an hour or play games with other coworkers and it was acceptable use of time. Nowadays, with daily standup, I feel guilty for wasting too much time because I'd have to give an update on where I am with work. Before, you might sync once a week, at most, so you had some breathing room. The industry was just more "fun" to be in.
Product releases were on yearly, or multi-year, schedules as well. Now everything is updated every week. I remember even ten years ago, we were releasing our software every 2 or so years, then they worked towards once a year, and then 6 month updates, and then monthly, and so on.
I worked at Microsoft and do remember when everyone had an office and the goal of managers was to keep you from having too many meetings. Nowadays, I also have probably 1-2 hours of recurring daily meetings. Absolutely everything needs to be tracked (daily standup, sprints, 1:1 with manager, skip-level meetings, team meetings, all hands, peer feedback), so you end up with meetings just to make sure everyone is on track. It's ridiculous.
I think it's all related to the fact that the pace of software development was just so much slower back then. I remember you could really bullshit a lot more 10-20 years ago. You could hang out with a coworker for an hour or play games with other coworkers and it was acceptable use of time. Nowadays, with daily standup, I feel guilty for wasting too much time because I'd have to give an update on where I am with work. Before, you might sync once a week, at most, so you had some breathing room. The industry was just more "fun" to be in.
Product releases were on yearly, or multi-year, schedules as well. Now everything is updated every week. I remember even ten years ago, we were releasing our software every 2 or so years, then they worked towards once a year, and then 6 month updates, and then monthly, and so on.