Is Applying for Jobs without referral is waste of time

I am currently working as Frontend developer (NextJS) (React). I have 1.5+ YOE . Recently i have started applying in different companies for FE role but none of them reverted back to me except 1 startup (that was in very early stage) I want to switch because - 1. Salary is less (9lpa). 2. Here they only focus on new features not code quality and optimization. 3. I want to work on scale