At least one person at every company impacted knows why they're firing people, right? Likely several people who are in a decision making capacity. At every company.
Those companies have R&D for a reason. A company _wants_ to make things, right? If this is impacting their ability to make things, wouldn't it be in a company's best interest to advocate openly against the tax code, rather than be silent about the reason, fire their staff, and just not make things?
It doesn't make sense to me how so many people are aware of this to the point that many many companies are all doing the same thing for the same reason, but seemingly nobody was talking about it before this post. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
It's like this:
Company wants to do R&D, they have a budget, they do math that says they can afford to pay X number of R&D workers with Y budget.
Government changes tax laws in unexpected way, that changes the math so that Y budget only can support X-A R&D workers because the "A" goes to taxes now.
Also important to note, the tech R&D space is a very small part of the overall economy. We exist in a little thought bubble here on HN.
Those companies have R&D for a reason. A company _wants_ to make things, right? If this is impacting their ability to make things, wouldn't it be in a company's best interest to advocate openly against the tax code, rather than be silent about the reason, fire their staff, and just not make things?
It doesn't make sense to me how so many people are aware of this to the point that many many companies are all doing the same thing for the same reason, but seemingly nobody was talking about it before this post. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me.