yes you must be right about this with your 20 years of experience, and nearly literally every tech company that hires full stack devs is probably wrong
Can you write front end JavaScript applications without a giant framework?
It is a simple yes or no answer. If you struggle, give up and talk about yourself, or invent some nonsense about how impossible life is the answer is "no". It does not matter whether I am correct or not. What matters is that people cannot do the work and most of those people look for something else to blame.
I got tired of working with immature people. Its fine if you cannot write front end applications without the giant front end framework, but don't waste my time looking for something to blame or talking about yourself. It is crazy how common that is.