It's certainly more prevalent on the front end, though. You'll never see a C/C++ job add looking for "libsodium developer" or "plibsys developer," however front end job postings are littered with "Angular dev" and "React dev" and will not consider anyone who's spent the last decade writing JavaScript but hasn't used whatever front-end button library is in use.

I honestly don't know what your system API point has to do with anything when we're talking about a distinct disadvantage to NPM specifically and the JS ecosystem generally.