[shoo]

Another facet of this might be the changes in interest rates.

It's easier to bet lots of money on speculative startups when interest rates are so low that money is approximately free to borrow, opportunities for good investments are increasingly rare, and investors are increasing willing to invest in ventures with less and less plausible business models. (c.f. the "golden age of fraud")

It's a different environment when interest rates have risen by 4% (AU) & 5% (US). If sources of cheap funding for ventures are drying up, and investors are looking for their startup investments to begin returning a profit (vs 5% nominal returns they could get by simply putting money into short term US treasuries), then we might expect waves of failures from some of these startups that have not built scalable business models that can be turned profitable, or rounds of layoffs and cost-cutting from startups that can become profitable businesses provided they stop pouring engineering resources into projects that aren't core to their business. Both of these reduce demand for engineering talent & increase supply of people on the market looking for a new job.