I worked at a VC firm during the early 00's dot.com boom and subsequent bust. Post bust, as various colleagues in the London office of Internet Capital Group returned to their previous jobs at Morgan Stanley and Bain et al, the joke doing the rounds was that the popular internet acronym's B2B and B2C now stood for 'back to banking' and 'back to consulting'.

Before the March 2000 crash, the banks and consulting firms were quick to relax dress codes, in a vain attempt to stop the flow of talent to the nascent tech start-up scene. Whilst this is all now a distant memory, there was a sense of deja vu about this article in which we are told that Goldman Sachs is once again genuinely concerned about talent drain to Silicon Valley.

As a headhunter you quickly learn that there needs to be both 'push and pull' factors for a career move to make absolute sense. The reality of Goldman's situation is that the entire banking sector has never regained the level of kudos enjoyed before the financial crash. This, combined with the flexible working environments & pre-IPO valuations of the likes of Uber, provides the ingredients to enable headhunters to target leading talent in the top tier investment banks.