For the last year or so companies have been using the term “economic headwinds” as a reason to get rid of the tech staff they had been desperately seeking. Now suddenly rivals who might have snapped up the staff are benefiting while they are desperately short of staff.

TrueUp, a jobs board focused on the tech industry, said that tech industry layoffs peaked in January and declined swiftly afterwards. Since then job cuts have declined. Data from popular tech industry layoff tracker Layoffs.fyi shows that job cuts have slowed for seven consecutive months this year, plateauing at around 10,000 per month from June through August and declining to just over 3,000 so far in September.

The number of people laid off had declined by more than 90 per cent by September.

Given that most of those made redundant will not return to a company which slipped the knife in their backs for short-term gains, there will be a lot of companies which will find it harder to replace tech staff. Other employers are finding it hard to realise that they can no longer demand that tech workers give their souls to work for them -- with working from home rather than coming into the office being a major area of concern for workers.