While tech’s new winter is no dot-com crash, the industry does appear to be entering an era of uncharacteristic austerity. Where teams aren’t already gutted, hiring is frozen, and budgets are slashed. Climbing interest rates have increased the cost of risk, which means 1) easy venture funding is no longer something any company, at any stage, can rely on, and 2) the future profits of high-growth tech companies are now discounted in a way most young professionals — who came of age after the 2008 housing crash — have never seen.
