[stuaxo]

Longer than this: certainly in the UK things were not in a good state before the pandemic started in early 2019.

I know at least one person who was a software dev who was worked very little over the last 5 years.

For myself, over that period I noticed almost all work except for government and financial dried up - lucky for me that was my most recent experience.

[strls]

This was not my experience. Many of the high paying tech companies were actively hiring senior/staff in London for most of 2022. OK, maybe not Google. This very suddenly changed late in the year.