Last time I was job hunting, everything was asking for 5+ years experience in one software stack and multiple frameworks. Sometimes 5+ years in multiple fields. What changed?
Also, getting experience back then was fairly difficult. Just getting your hands on a computer to get the experience would have been a challenge. Compare that to today where there are kids, literally kids, programming at home right now. For example, I started programming when I was 17.
5+ years seems to me to be a strange expectation. That would mean you've had either multiple failing jobs and might be an undesirable, or you've been somewhere for 5+ years. If you've been there for 5+ years, what's motivating you to leave? Where do people expect to find these vast pools of highly-skilled jobless people who have experience with <software stack X> in <field which employs a couple thousand people nationally> within <narrow time window>? That they never find any seems to underscore how irrational the 'requirement' is in the first place, but I see it everywhere.
2 years = SDE 2
5+ = SDE 3, regardless of language.
I'm actually curious if one day there won't be a reversal of the trend...I would think it would be at the point where supply no longer meets demand. But really, who knows.