> These are two sides of the same medal.

I don't think it is at all. OP put up a strawman on how the tech world is packed with incompetent new arrivals, but corporations are firing people indiscrimately by blindly cutting branches out of their org tree. Corporate's criteria to fire people is deciding which product they can either slow development, freeze, or even completely eliminate. This has absolutely nothing to do with the skills of whatever employees are covered by the firing rounds. These are pure business decisions which bear no connection with the tech aspect of their services. This is not bloat. In fact, I know for a fact that one FANG was still hiring midway through a round of layoffs and their HR was adamant in not even considering internal transfers for those positions. Are we expected to believe that employees who not only passed last year's hiring bar and received positive performance reviews are bloat, but today's new recruits are competent?

This assumes "professional quality" was somehow higher in the past when it's really just looking at the past with rose-tinted glasses. There was plenty of crap and even bloated software written in the past.