This is true, I live somewhere with basically no startup scene to speak of. So getting hired for any programming position offering reasonable pay basically means working for BigCo.

Nope, because mega-corps only do internships or '3-5 years' experience.

Factually incorrect, if you are talking about software engineering positions.

Source: College career fairs. BigCos come and recruit people in hordes. Around 60-70% of people graduating from UT, Austin went to a BigCo (Google, MS, Amazon etc)

Yes, but not everyone gets into the college recruiting gravy train. You either didn't go at a target school, or you didn't make the cut. Then you graduate and you're basically hung out to dry unless you know someone. This applies to many areas besides software engineering.

I mostly remember college careers fairs as a place where big companies tried to get you to apply for their internships.

Microsoft and Google and such usually had their own separate events, and I'll grant they were more serious about hiring people, though they mostly seemed to hire people who'd already been their interns.

I've experienced the opposite but that might be because I'm looking at software development jobs. Most of the mega-corps and the medium-large companies that do software development actively recruit new grads while the small companies are only looking for experienced people.

Because the newbies will work for less. They will work longer hours (to learn the ropes.) They don't have families and health issues, so they are cheaper to employ as well. They are less aware of their rights and have less long term outlook, which would steer them away from these sorts of HR miasmas.

Thus they are just the filler needed by BigCo to compensate from the continuous braindrain. Once they have the skills and know the ropes, they'll either get promoted or leave for an employer of choice.

That may be the case, but it doesn't mean the above statement isn't just factually wrong.

Pretty much every big company has a graduate scheme.

Willingness to hire newbies is orthogonal to the size of the company except maybe for the very small and very fast companies (short: startups) who just cannot bear the costs of bringing new employees up to speed. Btw, my first semi-steady job was two bosses, two admins and me being the third employee, the DB guy, still a student.