Section 174 was the big one that affected how SE salaries could be deducted, that many blamed for the start of layoffs.
However, that's back for tax year 2025, so why aren't we seeing the jobs come back? Maybe it really was 174 then, but AI now?
However, that's back for tax year 2025, so why aren't we seeing the jobs come back? Maybe it really was 174 then, but AI now?
I think if your willing to go to the sf bay and work in an office there are lots of opportunities. Remote and high pay doesn't have alot of options.
I did the sf thing and don't want to go back. Don't want to live in NYC or Seattle or commute over an hour from NYC suburbs.
My own career progress was much slower and topped out lower than (in my enlightened opinion) much less qualified folks in office.
That said, it's a tradeoff. I -still- wouldn't move to work in office knowing this. I value my family, time, and lifestyle I'm able to afford in a place I want to be more than making tons of money.
In another 10 or 20 years I'm half sure I'll run the numbers and regret that, but so far so good.
I don’t have 2 different 1 hour commute blocks on my calendar. While you’re fighting traffic, I’m working. While you’re rushing through your morning routine, I’m sitting at my computer catching up on slack. While you’re finding the meeting room, I’m reading the meeting prep material. While you’re getting distracted by Sales in your open office, I’m locked in, midway through a 2 hour coding session.
Or did they give you a title and say, great job — now we have higher expectations of you!
What you’re talking about seems like an attempt to placate rather than reward.
It was only just reinstated, so it's probably too early to see the effects.
I also expect that despite the restoration of Section 174, companies realized that they not only overhired during ZIRP, but also that they don't actually need that headcount, given the outcome of Musk's Twitter layoffs. There were so many prognostications that Twitter would imminently implode after downsizing from ~8k to ~1.5k employees, and when these claims never came to pass, it was a wake-up call to the rest of the industry [0].
[0] https://www.livemint.com/companies/news/elon-musk-fired-80-p...
But that "everything app"? It hasn't happened. The money transfer app ("Twitter Payment Platform")? Still MIA.
Oh, they sure did: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34617964
Even in that thread, a lot of people were saying "it's only been three months, give it a bit more time."
But more importantly, X has not released any substantially new features within the last 3 years. And I bet that it won't release anything new for a while, and anything they _do_ try to release will be laughably broken.
Besides that most basic functionality, many times notifications are not sent when the notification settings would suggest they should be. And of course, moderation has fallen by the wayside, although that's more of a policy shift than a technical failure.
(Occam says deficit of institutional capability is the most likely cause. But that could also turn into a feature.)
Just on top of my head, there's the ability to write longer texts, the AI integration (that seems fairly popular in there). There was also some revenue sharing scheme where accounts can get paid for engagement. And from the point of view of management, making it impossible to view threads without login would also be a feature (as in "something we have to deliberately implement").
It's not a lot, but I don't think the pre-Musk Twitter changed even that much in the 3 year period before the acquisition.
Also plenty of racists and homophobes, more than I see just about anywhere else on the internet. And more wild, rabid hate surrounding trans people than I see anywhere outside of narrow, festering cesspools in wastelands like 4chan.
[1] - https://archive.is/evLAL (WSJ archive)
[*] This one I believe - https://commoncog.com/cash-flow-games/
So there was just this general pressure from the middle up to grow instead of paying more to existing staff or finding some other way to spend the money. After all, investors generally want you to spend the money you have access to, otherwise they’ll put it to use elsewhere.
It seems that there is external pressure right now from investors, and on to executives, to push headcounts down as there is a general feeling that good companies should be able to leverage AI to become much more efficient, and higher headcounts just burn money and bog things down. Whether or not that’s true is another question, but the perception exists.
I’m not sure if this is a fundamental change in the dynamic, or just a temporary push against it that will eventually lose steam.
I feel like this should be a “both and” situation. AI is not a panacea. If your company has 10 good engineers and a ChatGPT subscription, and my company has 100 good engineers and a ChatGPT subscription, we are going to move considerably faster.
Until someone gets an exclusive contract with AGI, it doesn’t change things.
although I think entry level is still in shambles, for now