I’ve been unemployed for going on 18 months. It’s awful and the market is the worst it’s been since I’ve been working (15 years or so).
Depending on when in the 90s you were a teen you may be remembering when they used to use beef tallow (fat) instead of vegetable oil for frying. In addition to all the other enshitification you mentioned.
Exactly, that and the “we are a [insert product name here] shop” mentality. The things I have had to fight for over the years are mind boggling.
All of my degree was in C, C++, C#, Java, etc. and the one class I had that did web applications did Java backends and middleware with PHP frontends. It wasn’t until I got into the industry that I had to learn Angular, Electron, React, Django, etc.
I don’t think it’s the devs making these decisions.
That’s sucks. Best of luck to you!