[tompark]

It's possible that mainframe Oracle DBAs working on glass house HP 9000s looked at PC databases as toys, but within the PC industry these tools were considered powerful. Any growth of PC usage was a rising tide that lifted all the boats in the PC industry. If you had some experience programming in C, it was pretty easy to get a job. There weren't 100's (or 1000's) of job applicants for each position. If it was a niche segment, you could even know all the other candidates for an opening, as in "No Other Choice". (I was in a niche like that, developing architectural and facilities mgmt PC CAD software, then later cartography, for Microstation.)

I think the production shift from agriculture to manufacturing, or manufacturing to services, is probably a better way to understand what's happening now.