You’re not crazy; the math really is lopsided. I know the feeling all too well. My own autism diagnosis put a label on that jarring moment when logic collides with a corporate system that runs on something else entirely—risk management, optics, and a reflexive fear of precedent. Years of nose‑first landings and therapy taught me an uncomfortable truth: asking “Why isn’t this rational?” is read not as curiosity but as confrontation, because someone up the chain would have to admit the rules are incoherent. You don’t need to change the way you think, only the angle of attack.
So let’s talk about angles. Since January the Dutch tax office has been fining companies for blurring payroll and freelance status under Wet DBA, which makes your manager twice as jumpy about letting an employee invoice on the side. Fine—don’t fight the hedgehog head‑on. Two work‑arounds turn that absurdity into leverage.
First, the low‑friction hack. Find a trusted friend or cousin—ideally in a friendlier tax jurisdiction or a lower bracket—who fronts the freelance contract while you quietly deliver the work. Your firm still gets the only AI engineer who already knows the codebase, HR gets a clean vendor file, and you earn something far closer to the market rate without triggering an audit. It feels like sleight of hand, but it’s legal and, frankly, no shadier than paying a staffing agency to skim thirty percent for forwarding e‑mails.
Second, the bigger‑canvas fix. Recruit a handful of HN types stuck in the same trap and build a tiny marketplace—call it the YC play if you want venture upside or the Vim play if you’d rather tithe a slice to open‑source. Members post internal gigs they’re barred from taking; peers at other firms take the work at the full €150. Next month the favour reverses. Ten or fifteen percent goes to keep the lights on—or to kids in Uganda, your call—and suddenly the premium everyone was happy to pay a middleman flows to the people doing the work. Bureaucracy can’t object: every invoice still bears the magic words “external vendor,” and the talent free‑market gets a blood supply.
Both routes shift incentives instead of pleading with logic, and that’s the only language the system understands. Arguments rarely move a corporate wall. Action reroutes the plumbing so the money follows you anyway.
End of argument.