To explain this more clearly: what I'm trying to say is that the different parts of the software industry seem more like a bimodal distribution than a smooth one. If you think broadly of the extremes in software jobs (say, "fresh college grads making $250k+ to use cutting-edge frameworks to build a 'doordash for pet food' app" on the one hand, and "SE3s making $120k to add features to a jankety legacy application that gets manually deployed once every three months" on the other), thinking of those as separate industries is a more useful mental model than thinking of them as two ends of the same industry.

I thought this was relevant because one is more recession-proof than the other, but that's hardly the only way that they're different. So my point probably came across muddled because I was referring to a larger distinction in the industry without describing it very well.