There's at least one huge respect in which tech is different, at least in the USA: worker compensation.
In the book, Tracy Kidder writes repeatedly about how Data General (the company at the heart of the book) is proud of its austerity. It doesn't pay well. It's proud of having an ugly, austere, warehouse-like building. It puts its critical engineers in the windowless basement of this building. Kidder is describing a world that's very far from the FAANG of today, at least were compensation is concerned.
I worked for a guy that converted half the office into a store with windows so shoppers could "watch us work" ... things haven't changed much, for non-FAANG.
Offices were pretty much for managers. The standard was (high-walled) cubicles. Although a lot of the people involved here were in hardware so a lot of their work was in open labs.
In the book, Tracy Kidder writes repeatedly about how Data General (the company at the heart of the book) is proud of its austerity. It doesn't pay well. It's proud of having an ugly, austere, warehouse-like building. It puts its critical engineers in the windowless basement of this building. Kidder is describing a world that's very far from the FAANG of today, at least were compensation is concerned.