I'm not taking offense to your dislike of the author's argument (I agree with you - it's not a strong argument), I'm just taking offense to your tone.
> you don't think anyone from the class of '08 got hired at Nvidia or whatever
1. I'm not saying no person from 08 would have been hired at NVDA. I'm saying statistically, it would have been harder simply because new and early career unemployment in all majors was at it's highest. If you miss the train or fall out (eg. layoffs or getting fired) it's very difficult to hop back on.
2. NVDA only became hot recently. I myself passed on an NVDA offer in the mid-2010s because their stock was essentially a penny stock and base salary was low by Bay Area standards. I kick myself to this day for that decision :') - and that gets to the crux of the failure of the author's argument.
Tech employment only became "hot" for barely a decade. The rest of the time, salaries weren't much different from other white collar roles. It was BigTech that made SWE salaries enticing.
