Tech is a high growth sector, perhaps the highest. Because of this, tech companies are highly leveraged. They need cash to fund the growth and this cash won't result in revenue for some time, so they have to borrow the money. When rates go up, this cash becomes expensive. The last thing these companies want to do is cancel their growth plans and hand over the market to their competitor, so they look for areas to reduce costs. The single most effective way to do this is to the various recurring expenses associated with headcount.

Yes, covid is a factor and yes so is the shift from general purpose compute to specialized/high performance, but the single largest factor is the fed rate and what this has done to the money supply (as it is designed to do).

Can you explain further? I assumed you were talking about COVID, but the decline in jobs lags a few years behind so I'm not sure I'm tracking your point.

I think that line is a joke.