He’s going to be all right.

Not that easy when it’s a fleet of servers in multiple remote data centers. Lots of IT folks will be spending their weekend sitting in data center cages.

Meanwhile, me over here with the self-doubt slamming ctrl-z

The 2017 tax bill that the Republicans rammed through had a time bomb in it for software developers. Starting in 2022, companies could no longer expense R&D costs, and instead had to amortize them over 5 years. This has led to massive tax bills in 2023 for companies. I have no doubt that this is another major factor in the recent tech layoffs.

Take an imaginary bootstrapped software business called “Acme Corp.” This company generates $1,000,000 of revenue per year running a SaaS service. It employs five engineers, and pays each $200,000. That is $1,000,000 paid in labor costs. For simplicity, we omit other costs like servers and hosting, even though those costs can also fall under the new R&D rules, and have to be amortized. So, how much taxable profit does this company make?

In 2021, the answer would be zero profit. In 2022, the answer was $900,000 in profits(!!)

https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-pulse-will-us-companies-hire

Sometimes it’s like wiping a marker

A large part of this is being driven by illegal trafficking operations that recruit desperate families looking to give their families a safer life. Republicans have chosen to demonize both the families as well as the traffickers. It must suck living a life incapable of empathy for others less fortunate.

Anyways, this is actually a pretty good read on it, despite it coming from CNN:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/20/us/migrant-surge-travel-agencies-smugglers/index.html

Visa, for example, spent $10 in the 12 weeks to October 6, compared to $77,500 during the same period last year, according to Sensor Tower’s data.

I’m no business genius like musk, but I’m gonna take a guess that wouldn’t even pay the bills for the ridiculous X sign he put on the roof and then had to take down.

What does Atwater make?

What do you mean, like, how much money does the company make?

Oh, no, I mean what do we make?

I don’t follow. We make money.

No, I know we make money. I mean, what do we create?

We create wealth.

No, no, I mean, what do we build, what do we design, you know? Because I have some ideas that could really help the company.

Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, we don’t build anything.

I think it varies by seniority. We had layoffs, and all of our lead and principal engineers were able to land a new position in 4-6 weeks. But the junior, mid, and even some senior level engineers had a far rougher time. And managers/directors are having a really difficult go of it right now.

There are some amazing journalists over on Mastodon.

By far the best for breaking news is Steve Herman of the VOA. https://journa.host/@w7voa

For analysis, The Conversation. https://newsie.social/@TheConversationUS

And if you just want a curated feed of interesting stuff going on, follow Lisa Melton. https://mastodon.social/@lisamelton

Any one who worked on an Oracle DB when they had the 30 character object name limit learned to make names like this. You’d figure out all your domain objects, and abbreviate them all (person could be PRS_, account could be ACCT_, etc). It was a horrible experience.

A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, The Annoying Orange