December Tech Round-Up: The War for Tech Talent

The accelerated digitalisation we’ve seen since the pandemic landed has created a booming market for technology skills, with selective talent shortages driving wage inflation across the Asia Pacific region.

There’s a lot of hype about the war for tech talent. In this month’s Tech Round-Up we’ve gone direct to our community of tech founders, investors and boards to understand how real the problem is. We’ve asked how companies are affected, and how you’re responding to stifle resignations and attract new talent.

Compliments of the season, from all of us at North Ridge Partners.

Original Thinking From North Ridge Partners

Exclusive insights! Packages for some roles are up sharply. Tech Round-Up readers reveal their experiences across the region, and we explore some of the new models of working that are expected to emerge beyond work-from-home.

Did we say red hot? We meant white hot! Sceptical about the hype, we reality checked our numbers with specialist tech recruiters and employers. We found that while wages aren’t going stratospheric everywhere, in some talent hotspots, wage inflation has hit triple figures.

With contributions from Kevin Griffiths, Partner at Exec Search firm TrueSearch, as well as Riot Games’ Head of People, Susan Chen, we’ve lifted the rug to give you a look at what’s happening in the war for tech talent.

[Minicast]: Having tested the pulse with our network of thousands of tech founders, investors and boards in a targeted survey, who better to analyse the results than NRP’s own new recruit Bharath Chandrashekhar, (who recently joined as VP in our Singapore office) in this month’s mini-cast.

Is it the money or is it the culture? This month’s playlist takes an each-way bet.

Asia Tech News

Unicorn news: The future looks bright for Indonesian startups as GoTo raises a $US1.3B pre-IPO round

Arm wrestling: FTC tries to block Nvidia’s $40B acquisition

China leans into open source to build up its software industry

SPACtacularly bad — Grab drops 20 per cent on first day of trading

Indian IPOs looking shaky after Paytm disaster

Markets Action

More blue sky than grey in cloud IPO

Another dimension — turning Square into Block

Venture capital game-changer? Sequoia’s fund restructure

From DiDi to Dodo? Delisting news tanks the stock

16.2 million reasons why Buzzfeed’s SPAC rings alarm bells before the opening bell

Big Tech

Was jumping Jack pushed? Dorsey out at Twitter

But that’s our job! Tencent needs Government approval to spy on its customers

Amazon is three businesses, not one — and investors should think of it that way

Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales declined slightly — but maybe that’s good news

The Great Resignation

Is it real? Yes, say Bain & Company

How did it start?

What’s pushing it? and is it gaining momentum?

Where’s the money?

What strategies can we adopt? Here’s the roadmap according to Korn Ferry

The contrary view from Forbes: there is no Great Resignation

Stuff We Found Interesting:

The $US44bn digital industry you haven’t heard about – ad fraud

Abuse without consequence is our job: Australia’s politicians target social media with defamation threats

Brace yourselves - 83 per cent of companies experienced cyber breaches this year

Revolutionary idea: Buy now, pay … now?

Distantly Emerging Tech

The World Economic Forum ranks its top emerging tech trends

Swipe now, decrypt later - state-backed hackers count on future tech

Asteroid mining comes a little closer … as does a killer asteroid!

North Ridge Partners: technology investment banking across the Asia Pacific

North Ridge Partners works with technology companies across the Asia Pacific to achieve transformational outcomes through providing strategic financial advice, advising on M&A transactions and raising capital. We’re experienced deal-makers who have built, run, and sold numerous technology companies.

Contact us here.

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