> It was the norm for a single programmer to be doing the work that would normally be a team (sometimes multiple teams).

I felt this so very often. There are economical paradoxes and sociological issues at play. People want to be impressed and a big corp makes it look like hard while 3 lispers does not have the glow and even at lower prices you may fail to sell good work.

A lot of this world work this way, if everybody worked smart and efficiently there would be a lot less jobs.