> Worth noting that finance industry heavyweights such as JP Morgan and Standard Chartered (largest Haskell shop in the world) are laying off more than they're hiring these days[0][1], though unlikely this trend would directly affect tech hires (current batch of layoffs seem to be a trimming of management tier).

Indeed. Hiring of Haskellers continues apace at SC: https://twitter.com/donsbot/status/654630194519646208

> were Standard Chartered to open source their fork of GHC many Haskellers not sold on lazy-by-default would rejoice

It's not a fork of GHC. It's an entirely new compiler, called Mu.