25-ish years ago is when I started doing OS development work. Mostly device drivers and OS kernel work as research staff at a university.
My environment was almost identical to what I have now. A *nix box with a big monitor (Then: DEC Alpha 600 running OSF/1 with a CRT, using ctwm, rather AMD Threadripper running FreeBSD and an LCD with lxde). All my dev work then and now was done in emacs, driven by Makefiles and built/executed/debugged from a terminal window and managed by a revision control system (SCCS/CVS then, git now). Honestly, most of my dot files haven't changed that much in 30 years.
My compensation is far better now, mostly because I'm senior and work for a FAANG rather than a University.
My environment was almost identical to what I have now. A *nix box with a big monitor (Then: DEC Alpha 600 running OSF/1 with a CRT, using ctwm, rather AMD Threadripper running FreeBSD and an LCD with lxde). All my dev work then and now was done in emacs, driven by Makefiles and built/executed/debugged from a terminal window and managed by a revision control system (SCCS/CVS then, git now). Honestly, most of my dot files haven't changed that much in 30 years.
My compensation is far better now, mostly because I'm senior and work for a FAANG rather than a University.