Compared to factory workers of 50+ years ago? Certainly.
Compared to programmers 25 years ago? Absolutely not. The pay is worse (inflation-adjusted), and the working conditions are far, far worse (see: open-plan offices).
(My apologies for crappy formatting. All I wanted was a bulleted list. Wasn't that doc'ed in the FAQ or something?)
Let's see what I was doing 25 years ago:
* Private office with a door that closed.
* Status updates mail to $SOMEONE once a week that were mostly auto-generated from the tools we used. Took 30 seconds.
* Sat down to a chunk of work uninterrupted for long periods of time because no one was micro-managing me or bugging me on Fashionable-Chat-App-of-the-Week.
* Used development tools that had a half-life measured in years, not months.
* Got to really, *really* know my tools because they weren't swapped out for the new hotness every six months. Man, the ways I used to abuse FoxPro bordered on criminal. I can't do that these days since the tools get swapped from under me so often.
* Was paid well, and treated with professional respect. Sometimes a collared shirt was required, but I didn't mind when everyone else had to wear ties.
* Was provided with good equipment, often without asking. "I have a quad-core server box with an assload of RAM for a...mikestew?" "That's me, but I didn't order it." Boss: "oh, thought you might need that for multithreaded testing." Thanks, boss!
* Went in at 9:00, went home at 5:00. Every day.
Today:
* Today I'm sitting in a retasked storage room because I refuse to sit at the "hotel desks" (note that I'm currently a consultant, so it's not *as* egregious. But 20 years ago, clients that wanted me on-site provided a desk or sometimes an office.) My last full-time position was in an open office plan sitting next to people that literally (and I use that word literally) spent more time talking about the fucking Seahawks than they did working.
* Daily stand-ups to justify my existence.
* Treated like an interchangeable line worker.
* Working on the cheapest Macbook Pro that Apple would sell the client. With a 120Gb drive, I spend at least a billable hour a week trying to free up space what with Android/iOS dev environments and the multi-gig simulator images. But, hey, at least they saved $100 on the cost of the machine!
Compared to programmers 25 years ago? Absolutely not. The pay is worse (inflation-adjusted), and the working conditions are far, far worse (see: open-plan offices).