The problem right now is that the FAANG companies and the tier below that have suddenly laid off an absolute ton of people (and not hired a ton of people that t

The problem right now is that the FAANG companies and the tier below that have suddenly laid off an absolute ton of people (and not hired a ton of people that they'd normally have hired) so you're competing with those people for the pool of open jobs. If you're the kind of developer who would usually end up at the second tier companies, those companies are going to be hiring the people Facebook and Twitter just laid off before they hire you. That's perfectly rational because the laid off FAANG developers are, on average, better developers than everybody else on the job market. This isn't good for anybody but is what happens when the market is suddenly flooded with tons of highly desirable developers.