The thing that truly influences "hard to hire" is supply and demand. With the influx of bootcamps Software engineering supply has increased and with COVID-19 decreasing demand Engineers may no longer have the luxury of picking and choosing like they used to.
I'm an engineer btw. Just viewing the situation from a realistic lens.
While the supply has increased, the number of senior engineers hasn't grown at the same pace. I know of companies who've fired even their senior engineers, but they've been hit particularly hard by this crisis (think 'business model is literally rendered invalid' level of affected). Most people who think they'll be able to weather at least the next six months will be reluctant to fire more experienced engineers, because they know how hard it was to hire them to begin with.
While some of the options might be gone, chances are people who get laid off or are still in the market will look for companies with better chances of surviving this (think Google, Apple, Facebook, etc.), so the pool of experienced talent might actually be reduced for startups.
In other words: people with 5 years of industry experience are playing in a completely different arena than more junior engineers, who are unfortunately in a more precarious situation.
