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The work wasn't critical… yet. It was mostly exploratory, a way to soak up an R&D budget, or get R&D tax credits.

It was harder to find the opportunities and therefore leverage multiple job offers.

Jobs were a lot more local, too. People didn't move around as much. In general, not just in software. You also couldn't just spend a couple minutes and get a ballpark for what employers were paying in another city, let alone get a decent sense of what a bunch of markets looked like—it'd take some real effort. Reduced mobility and information being much harder to come by kept salaries lower, I expect.

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