It's been roughly a year since the big wave of tech layoffs. Will there be a bounce back or do you think leaner teams (particularly in sales and marketing) are the new normal in the tech world?

For an individual organisation this will depend on what they learnt as a result of coping with the reduced resources. 1. Did they manage to maintain productivity or at least not drop proportionally to the loss of resource? 2. Did they find alternative ways of operating (especially leveraging automation/AI)? Although this is unlikely to be true for all it is likely that quite a number of organisations had a yes to either the first or second question which may mean that they have a new operating model requiring less staff or at least a lower ratio of staff to target. 

Here is what I see with talented Tech friends being laid off.  Most of them are going for 6 months to over a year without finding a new job.  So, it seems that it is a tough road still in the tech world.

I've always been a fan of leaner teams, so forgive my bias, but I do believe this is the way of the future as it relates to sales. 

That being said, there will always be a need for speed in VC so I suspect leaner won't mean 50% less headcount, maybe just 20% or less.

I don't think there's been a big enough cultural shift for organisations to not re-hire and build their teams back up. The capacity planning model is still very much a bum in seat = $$$, even though we know that doesn't equate in reality.

There were actually more layoffs in 2023, up to approx 240,000. I know some of the big players have already turned the needle and grown their teams back by 30%+. 

I believe newer divisions and companies will be more tentative in their hiring and focus on profitable growth. This means not over-hiring and underperforming.