I was there "back in the day". There were lots of people who stayed with a company for decades as well as lots who jumped ship after a couple of years when their employers couldnt keep up with the salary escalation. One or the big differences was that there were many more layers of management. Engineers were reasonably well paid, but the salary range was fairly compressed. In general the highest paid engineer could not make more than his manager. When a man got a family and needed more money, he was promoted to a manager. There was the HP Way where nobody was fired and engineers were taken care of.

While there were startups, there was not the froth of new ventures that there is today. Finding a job was very much word of mouth, newspaper classifieds, and head hunters, not the easy searching of Craigslist of today.