Comment by jmclnx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmclnx | Hacker News Reader

>For years, tech firms were fighting a war for talent. Now they are waging war on talent.

I this this could be better translated into "For years, tech firms were fighting a war on wages. Now they are waging war on talent because good talent costs more.".

>When labor is difficult to replace, management is hostage to labor

Fully true, salaries went up a lot during COVID and management had to do something. So they get rid of people.

This is kind of similar to what IBM did in the early 80s. Programmers at the time could demand and get any wage if they became individual contractors. IBM lobbied Congress and got a law pass making that illegal just for programmers. That law is still on the books. I was just starting to look into that based upon what people at work where telling me, but the law was passed.

People with better memories from that era could expand or correct me :)

IBM lobbied Congress and got a law pass making that illegal just for programmers. That law is still on the books.

It's the first time I hear that, do you have a link?

>Introduced by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Section 1706 added a subsection (d) to Section 530 of the Revenue Act of 1978, which removed "safe harbor" exception for independent contractor classification (which at the time avoided payroll taxes) for workers such as engineers, designers, drafters, computer professionals, and "similarly skilled" workers.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Reform_Act_of_1986

This was backed by IBM and lots of programmers had to change their classification. Many people lost income due to it.

>In one report in 2010, Moynihan's initiative was labeled "a favor to IBM."[19] A suicide note by software professional Joseph Stack, who flew his airplane into a building housing IRS offices in February 2010, blamed his problems on many factors, including the Section 1706 change in the tax law while even mentioning Senator Moynihan by name, though no intermediary firm is mentioned, and failure to file a return was admitted.

> independent contractor

So then it should be fine as long as you go through a contracting/services company.

Correct, but the people I know caught by this lost a decent amount of income. Most of them ended up working for a contracting firm or converted to employees.

Some people I know lost 50% of their pay, it all had to do with taxes.

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