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This title is pretty bait-and-switch, enough so that @dang might consider swapping it out for something more accurate. Only the first paragraph is about job tre

This title is pretty bait-and-switch, enough so that @dang might consider swapping it out for something more accurate. Only the first paragraph is about job trends per se. The rest is making a case for repealing the changes to Section 174, and it basically reads like a lobbyist's copy. I am weakly in agreement with the author on this topic, but the title should probably reflect the actual meat of the article.

lylejantzi3rd 1y ago
It's curious he doesn't mention that the appropriations bill currently under consideration by the Senate repeals section 174.
- yieldcrv 1y ago
  This is the second post I've seen on HN lobbying hard for full Section 174 restoration (repealing the bad version, putting back in full engineering salary deductions) while completely ignoring that this is in the giant budget bill that already passed the House and is in the Senate hands I feel like its partially ignorance, and partially trying to distance themselves from benefitting from this law Kind of annoying. This country has a class system. Wish people would just stop pretending and acknowledge where they're at, everyone for Section 174 updates will benefit from the budget and tax bill.
  - kcb 1y ago
    Maybe its because giant catch everything bills is a purposely obscure way to legislate.
    - waynesonfire 1y ago
      Its because foreign software engineer labor has 15 year amortization.
  - dingnuts 1y ago
    I can't help but notice you haven't actually said the name of the One Big Beautiful Bill. Why could that be? Why can't we have bills that do one thing?
    - yieldcrv 1y ago
      I use it synonymously you can find it in my comment history 4 days ago or so
  - ineptech 1y ago
    The article presumably omits mention of Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" because it also does a raft of other controversial[0] and broadly unpopular[1] things that are much more impactful than, and completely unrelated to, the subject of the essay. 0: kick 7M people off Medicaid, hire 10K new ICE officers, tax university endowments, subsidize fossil fuels, etc https://apnews.com/article/big-beautiful-bill-trump-tax-cuts-medicaid-00ce1ff8a7b7fea7a894d38398748c6b https://apnews.com/article/big-beautiful-bill-trump-tax-cuts... 1: "Voters 53 - 27 percent oppose the legislation, with 20 percent not offering an opinion" https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3924 https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3924
    - danaris 1y ago
      ...not to mention effectively stripping the courts of all ability to enforce decisions against him, by gutting contempt.
  - ecshafer 1y ago
    So am I supposed to be against this change that I believe will benefit my profession because it will.. what? Help some people more than others? I should be more masochistic and want things to be worse for myself? What should be in the Big Beautiful Bill that I can start to name it and think its a good idea?
    - Eisenstein 1y ago
      The parent wasn't attacking you, they were saying 'be honest about what you want'. It seems you are incredibly defensive, because on some level you realize that whatever extra advantages you are getting from the bill are going to be paid for by someone else (our future economy, probably, when the value of the dollar gets destroyed because we keep borrowing money to give it to people who already have a ton of it instead of investing it in our infrastructure and workforce). It isn't 'masochism' to give back to society, since without it you wouldn't have the ability to make money at all.
      - ecshafer 1y ago
        I am not being defensive, I am pointing out that this useless, holier than thou attitude that “well actually there are two classes in the us and you shouldnt be happy that laws benefit you is pointless and self defeating by any logic. thats literally how republics work by design.
        yieldcrv 1y ago
        Airball. I’m saying the opposite. Be happy that laws are benefiting you. Lean into your actual privilege because we aren’t in this together and we should stop pretending we are. Lets be excited that tech employment sector is about to get supercharged after year’s of convulsion and questioning its viability with new trends like generative AI. Specifically because Congress can always correct other aspects of a big law they passed. They can do it quickly! The fact that they don't is a completely separate issue that you could put energy towards if you were using activism energy efficiently.
  - atkailash 1y ago
    It does but guess what? You’re not middle class or bourgeois,, so not sure what point you’re trying to make. You sell your labor, you don’t make money by exploiting others. And the middle class is a vague concept that is situational and effectively meaningless, particularly in the contemporary US
  - johnnyanmac 1y ago
    It's definitely an intentional ignorance. That bill has so many things in it from Ai regulations to medicaid to budgets for the courts and I feel everyday I learn something else got shoved in there. It's not uncommon to sneak an unpopular bill in a popular one, but this thing really is too huge for its own good.
jordanb 1y ago
I'm kinda weekly in agreement too but I can't really square the idea that it's all Section 174 with what I've been seeing as a tech worker. 1) At my company they already were capitalizing most of our time. We have to fill out time cards characterizing most of our time as R&D. As best as I can make out this is partially tax efficiency (and maybe we're getting credits) but it's also substantially about reporting and having a similar capital/operating structure to other companies in our industry. 2) From what I've seen at my company and others, most of the layoffs have been moving job functions overseas. Axlerod points out that the amortization schedule is even worse for overseas engineers, but brushes it aside by arguing that companies can get tax benefits from foreign governments. But then he points to Germany as a country that gives the old tax treatment, which is confusing because Germany's tech employment trends are similar to the USA. In fact, in my company, we used to have large German operations all of which have been moved to cheaper European countries and India. 3) He also mentions ZIRP but only to dismiss it. That seems kinda goofy as you talk to any financier and they will say the rising risk free rate of return will eviscerate speculative investment. 4) He also fails to really even address two other trends that I have seen in our industry: maturation of the industry as a whole (and a lack of new "platform" to take off since cellphones) and a post-covid post-WFH backlash by industry leadership against more assertive workers, and a desire for labor discipline. No doubt Section 174 is also a cause for the tech slump. How much compared to all the others? I don't know. And I support its repeal since it was just an accounting trick in the trump tax cuts. My intuition is that its effect is pretty marginal and a repeal won't change much.
- johnnyanmac 1y ago
  It's not all s174, but a lotta stuff in 2022 all happened at once and s174 accelerated that: - Pandemic swells from tech was cooling off. It was simply not going to be a situation that facilitated constant growthong term. Likewise, this tail end also meant another round of trying to outsource tech overseas, now that companies spent a few years forcibly adjusting to remote work. - some new privacy policies in Apple and Android changed that made it harder for ad tech to do their jobs. Great for consumers, but this does mean that a part of tech would be hit hard over the impacted revenue. - the overall atmosphere in the world meant people were already taking recessionary measures. Companies were already staring to plateau in growth around this time - interest rates would increase the next year which impacts everything. But tech would be hit pretty hard itself. - the Ai hype bubble was starting to take off around this time. It wouldn't affect tech for a while, but it would slowly start this pivtot to try and push this as a marketing gimmick and shift priorities. And in a few cases, companies start to get this genius idea that this very premature tech can replace programmers. A lot of stuff just happened all at once. S174 alone wouldn't have caused such a downturn by itself if companies thought they could still profit at the end of thr day.
twelve40 1y ago
Maybe, but personally i found it much more insightful on the topic of why all companies suddenly went crazy than the Linkedin layoff porn pieces or "it's all AI's fault" hot takes.
guelo 1y ago
Huh? Headline aint say nuttin about no job trends.

lylejantzi3rd 1y ago

It's curious he doesn't mention that the appropriations bill currently under consideration by the Senate repeals section 174.

yieldcrv 1y ago
This is the second post I've seen on HN lobbying hard for full Section 174 restoration (repealing the bad version, putting back in full engineering salary deductions) while completely ignoring that this is in the giant budget bill that already passed the House and is in the Senate hands I feel like its partially ignorance, and partially trying to distance themselves from benefitting from this law Kind of annoying. This country has a class system. Wish people would just stop pretending and acknowledge where they're at, everyone for Section 174 updates will benefit from the budget and tax bill.
- kcb 1y ago
  Maybe its because giant catch everything bills is a purposely obscure way to legislate.
  - waynesonfire 1y ago
    Its because foreign software engineer labor has 15 year amortization.
- dingnuts 1y ago
  I can't help but notice you haven't actually said the name of the One Big Beautiful Bill. Why could that be? Why can't we have bills that do one thing?
  - yieldcrv 1y ago
    I use it synonymously you can find it in my comment history 4 days ago or so
- ineptech 1y ago
  The article presumably omits mention of Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" because it also does a raft of other controversial[0] and broadly unpopular[1] things that are much more impactful than, and completely unrelated to, the subject of the essay. 0: kick 7M people off Medicaid, hire 10K new ICE officers, tax university endowments, subsidize fossil fuels, etc https://apnews.com/article/big-beautiful-bill-trump-tax-cuts-medicaid-00ce1ff8a7b7fea7a894d38398748c6b https://apnews.com/article/big-beautiful-bill-trump-tax-cuts... 1: "Voters 53 - 27 percent oppose the legislation, with 20 percent not offering an opinion" https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3924 https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3924
  - danaris 1y ago
    ...not to mention effectively stripping the courts of all ability to enforce decisions against him, by gutting contempt.
- ecshafer 1y ago
  So am I supposed to be against this change that I believe will benefit my profession because it will.. what? Help some people more than others? I should be more masochistic and want things to be worse for myself? What should be in the Big Beautiful Bill that I can start to name it and think its a good idea?
  - Eisenstein 1y ago
    The parent wasn't attacking you, they were saying 'be honest about what you want'. It seems you are incredibly defensive, because on some level you realize that whatever extra advantages you are getting from the bill are going to be paid for by someone else (our future economy, probably, when the value of the dollar gets destroyed because we keep borrowing money to give it to people who already have a ton of it instead of investing it in our infrastructure and workforce). It isn't 'masochism' to give back to society, since without it you wouldn't have the ability to make money at all.
    - ecshafer 1y ago
      I am not being defensive, I am pointing out that this useless, holier than thou attitude that “well actually there are two classes in the us and you shouldnt be happy that laws benefit you is pointless and self defeating by any logic. thats literally how republics work by design.
      - yieldcrv 1y ago
        Airball. I’m saying the opposite. Be happy that laws are benefiting you. Lean into your actual privilege because we aren’t in this together and we should stop pretending we are. Lets be excited that tech employment sector is about to get supercharged after year’s of convulsion and questioning its viability with new trends like generative AI. Specifically because Congress can always correct other aspects of a big law they passed. They can do it quickly! The fact that they don't is a completely separate issue that you could put energy towards if you were using activism energy efficiently.
- atkailash 1y ago
  It does but guess what? You’re not middle class or bourgeois,, so not sure what point you’re trying to make. You sell your labor, you don’t make money by exploiting others. And the middle class is a vague concept that is situational and effectively meaningless, particularly in the contemporary US
- johnnyanmac 1y ago
  It's definitely an intentional ignorance. That bill has so many things in it from Ai regulations to medicaid to budgets for the courts and I feel everyday I learn something else got shoved in there. It's not uncommon to sneak an unpopular bill in a popular one, but this thing really is too huge for its own good.

jordanb 1y ago

I'm kinda weekly in agreement too but I can't really square the idea that it's all Section 174 with what I've been seeing as a tech worker. 1) At my company they already were capitalizing most of our time. We have to fill out time cards characterizing most of our time as R&D. As best as I can make out this is partially tax efficiency (and maybe we're getting credits) but it's also substantially about reporting and having a similar capital/operating structure to other companies in our industry. 2) From what I've seen at my company and others, most of the layoffs have been moving job functions overseas. Axlerod points out that the amortization schedule is even worse for overseas engineers, but brushes it aside by arguing that companies can get tax benefits from foreign governments. But then he points to Germany as a country that gives the old tax treatment, which is confusing because Germany's tech employment trends are similar to the USA. In fact, in my company, we used to have large German operations all of which have been moved to cheaper European countries and India. 3) He also mentions ZIRP but only to dismiss it. That seems kinda goofy as you talk to any financier and they will say the rising risk free rate of return will eviscerate speculative investment. 4) He also fails to really even address two other trends that I have seen in our industry: maturation of the industry as a whole (and a lack of new "platform" to take off since cellphones) and a post-covid post-WFH backlash by industry leadership against more assertive workers, and a desire for labor discipline. No doubt Section 174 is also a cause for the tech slump. How much compared to all the others? I don't know. And I support its repeal since it was just an accounting trick in the trump tax cuts. My intuition is that its effect is pretty marginal and a repeal won't change much.

johnnyanmac 1y ago
It's not all s174, but a lotta stuff in 2022 all happened at once and s174 accelerated that: - Pandemic swells from tech was cooling off. It was simply not going to be a situation that facilitated constant growthong term. Likewise, this tail end also meant another round of trying to outsource tech overseas, now that companies spent a few years forcibly adjusting to remote work. - some new privacy policies in Apple and Android changed that made it harder for ad tech to do their jobs. Great for consumers, but this does mean that a part of tech would be hit hard over the impacted revenue. - the overall atmosphere in the world meant people were already taking recessionary measures. Companies were already staring to plateau in growth around this time - interest rates would increase the next year which impacts everything. But tech would be hit pretty hard itself. - the Ai hype bubble was starting to take off around this time. It wouldn't affect tech for a while, but it would slowly start this pivtot to try and push this as a marketing gimmick and shift priorities. And in a few cases, companies start to get this genius idea that this very premature tech can replace programmers. A lot of stuff just happened all at once. S174 alone wouldn't have caused such a downturn by itself if companies thought they could still profit at the end of thr day.

twelve40 1y ago

Maybe, but personally i found it much more insightful on the topic of why all companies suddenly went crazy than the Linkedin layoff porn pieces or "it's all AI's fault" hot takes.

guelo 1y ago

Huh? Headline aint say nuttin about no job trends.