There's this huge explosion of jobs recently, specifically in the tech world. How are their so many jobs when it feels like most of us are using a handful of services?
I think the influx of venture capital and the proliferation of incubator / accelerator programs has a lot to do with it. At any given moment there are hundreds of startups fighting to build a better product, service more customers, and win the adoption war. Further, the better capitalized those companies are (i.e the more money they've raised), the more they can afford to pay for devs before their product is widely used / billed for. That help?
Devs aren't (and shouldn't be) the primary customers of most startups