I've used specialized embedded system tools that cost $10,000/year per seat for tooling. Our QNX licenses were about $5,000 or $10,000/year alone. That's just to be able to run a piece of software. Autodesk tooling is $20 to 30k a year. Some of the more specialized tools cost six-figures.

So I guess if you're just doing some basic web development those numbers are suspect. But if you do hardware or embedded software projects $20,000/year per person is cheap.