I guess it must also depend on location and level of experience. I haven't had to go out of my way to land a job in 20 years, but I get not everybody's circumstances are the same. FWIW I'm not at all specialized, pretty much a jack-of-all-trades type dev, and while I do have a good network of contacts, I didn't rely on them for finding the new role I'm moving into.
Location definitely matters. Certain types of work are more popular in some regions than others. The level of trust required for landing remote work jobs also strongly leans on having good references from one's network of mutual acquaintances.
