What has changed is the design environment. At home I used small 20-pin chips and the programmer cost $3500. Yikes! I still can't believe I spent that much on a programmer but all dev tools cost a lot then.
At work I used Altera 44-pin PLCC devices, I had to fly down to Sydney for a few days and design the internals on a mainframe CAD system.
Now we get a full dev system for free and run it on our laptops.
It's a brave new world alright.
BTW I used the 20-pin chips in my own dev product I sold, it was an EPROM emulator. Anyone remember EPROMs? Thanks goodness I don't depend on that income any more 
Rob