It doesn't matter whether they did all the code punching or manual calculation for a simple regression back then and whether how bothersome it would be. It is about the relative competition among cohort, and the supply-demand ratio.
You’re explaining the level of competition, but others are explaining why, even when competition was a lot lighter, a shorter CV doesn’t mean folks were lazy or unqualified.
I’d rather be a pedantic je/rk who understands causality well enough to find my work meaningful than be an id//iot pretender stewing in my own juices
People get the counterfactual wrong in all kinds of ways. In addition to the job market structure stuff already mentioned, you�d need to ask how today�s hot candidates would fare if they had to work with c.2000s data availability, coding tools, and postal service turnaround times, or conversely if c.2000s stars would somehow fail to take advantage of what�s available if they were magically transported to the present. Productivity expectations have gone up as the labor market has tightened, sure. But that�s not all that�s changed.
U sound like a lil khunt