If we could go back to role where we worked on our own. Where we created our own programs from our ideas. We work on waterfall projects by day and hacked our own ganes at night. Never to be included in business meetings never to talk to the customer and never to have a standup meeting.

Where everyone loved something about technology programming/hardware/etc and continued day or night.

In many ways things would be better. This represents a time before everyone liked computers and most feared them. Salaries were not as high as today. The work was harder but more meaningful.

We can't go back. The future looks more like turning programmers into interchangable pieces that can be commodized. Defining all work into smaller pieces.

I think many of us would trade big salaries for jobs at places like bell labs.