I do blame the player. "Dont blame the player" is a bullshit copout. Players are all there is. If no one builds evil shit, it simply doesn't get built. People who either learn to sometimes put their self-interest below something bigger or robots who are easily bought. Concretely, candidates can choose not to enter a field they are uninterested in or make an effort to develop an interest, and managers can design hiring pipelines that test for these things.

This attitude achieves nothing but quickly becoming that guy as far as peers and management are concerned (assuming you can even get through the door to begin with)

I feel like my attitude has a chance of creating change, whereas the attitude of going along with whatever as long as you get paid is guaranteed to change nothing. And yeah I have worked at and gotten offers from FAANG and adjacent startups with hard interviews - competence has nothing to do with it.