>Developers are no longer allowed any say in what to build or how to build it, they are micromanaged by product managers and program managers and team managers and required to give daily status reports ("agile").
I don't see how this is a bad thing, for a large and complicated product. For a small company where a team of 5 people can do the whole thing, sure, you don't need all this management, though I think some parts of the Agile methodology can be useful just for keeping people in sync. I worked in a small-ish team a while ago using an Agile methodology and it was fine: the program manager basically told us the feedback from the customer, and then it was up to us to decide what features to make to keep the customer happy and how to do it and how to schedule it. The Agile methodology just forced us to have regular meetings, and made it easy for the outside stakeholders to keep tabs on us and attend our meetings when necessary. Having daily habits in your life isn't a bad thing for many people, and that's basically what Agile was, in my experience: a way of having habits.
>Pay was much lower but respect was much higher.
No, it really wasn't. Maybe within the profession, but not to society at-large. Developers back then had little respect, until they started making lots of money in the dot-com boom, then people starting respecting the profession a bit more. Software development has never gotten the respect that doctors and lawyers get.
>Nobody wants the rookie heart surgeon, everyone wants the 60 year old who has done it thousands of times.
This might have some truth, but it's a bad view: generally, older surgeons prefer to use older surgical techniques that they learned decades ago, since they weren't trained on the newest techniques. The newer techniques generally are much less invasive and have faster recovery times. It's better to go with younger surgeons who have more modern training, but still some experience (i.e., not fresh out).