Ask HN: Who is hiring entry level?

[shadowmore]

So the current Who is Hiring thread sitting at the top of HN seems to corroborate an observation I've made over months of job hunting, including before the pandemic.

No one in SoCal is hiring entry level.

So figured I'd ask: if you live in a tech hub like Los Angeles (or Denver, etc.) and have tech product/marketing/coding skills and experience, but only to the extent of qualifying for junior positions, is the job hunting process hopeless?

Or are all the non-senior roles hidden away somewhere?

To put it another way, assuming no network, personal connections, nepotism, or any other typical hiring workarounds, is it realistic to get an entry level job through online applications?