OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D • Hacker News Board

Re: OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D

#281

Post by kzrdude » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 3:52 PM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #187

Is there a more bizarre legislative process anywhere in the world? The US Congress is practically able to pass only a single giant bill every year. To work around its own deficit rules, these bills are packed with taxation time bombs where rules have expiration dates or delayed starts several years in the future. Then, if Congress doesn’t get around to defusing its own time bombs, you get situations like this R&D exp…

It's a year of very rapid change. I just realized the other week (naively) that we (non-US) should really be bracing even more than we are. For shocks to come, economical, cultural as a reaction to the slide towards an authoritarian presidential system.

It's not a time to be watching though, but to act.

Re: OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D

#282

Post by tomrod » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 3:57 PM UTC

tossandthrow wrote: post #204

tomrod wrote: post #14

If correct, this is a good thing on a generally bad, overstuffed bill. Immediate expensing never should have been changed in the first place, and it was always weird seeing people twist themselves in knots defending it.

> Immediate expensing never should have been changed in the first place This is indicative of ignorance. There is a reason why we have these rules.

Please expound

Re: OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D

#283

Post by charlie0 » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 4:08 PM UTC

sidewndr46 wrote: post #264

xlii wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have approx. 15 years of experience working remotely for various companies all across the globe and was always an advocate of thesis that remote work is difficult and most people aren’t cut for it and (to horror of many proponents) and on average are less efficient than on-site hires. There are many reasons: It’s difficult to understand _intention_ when deprived of non-verbal communication and working in a choppy n…

If management is so poor that they can't communicate intention in writing, then I don't really see how being in office or anywhere for that matter will help. They're just flat out incompetent. I've seen the opposite of this as well, where whatever management clearly communicated is most definitely not what is going to get executed. If internal politics are blocking knowledge, access, & contribution of any employee th…

I wonder if that's because at the 2 year mark, people get a lot more responsibility, but no pay increases to compensate.

Re: OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D

#284

Post by jayd16 » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 4:17 PM UTC

PeterStuer wrote: post #186

xlii wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have approx. 15 years of experience working remotely for various companies all across the globe and was always an advocate of thesis that remote work is difficult and most people aren’t cut for it and (to horror of many proponents) and on average are less efficient than on-site hires. There are many reasons: It’s difficult to understand _intention_ when deprived of non-verbal communication and working in a choppy n…

From experience I think your 10% feels overly pessimistic. 30-40% feels more accurate, just like only about the same % that can survive an open plan or cubicle floor. I see lots of people thriving in remote. Main reasons being a huge increase in quality of life. Regaining 2-3 hours of senseless commuting time per day, getting small household chores done over lunch, not having to schedule repair and maintainance appoi…

So the problem with this reply is you talk about thriving and then list personal benefits. Those are not thriving in the workplace that companies are looking for.

Re: OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D

#285

Post by kondu » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 4:17 PM UTC

ndiddy wrote: post #263

unmole wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 3.5% remittance fees on sending money out of the US: The version of the bill that passed a 1% excise is applicable " only to any remittance transfer for which the sender provides cash, a money order, a cashier’s check, or any other similar physical instrument ".

For comparison, India taxes remittances at 20%.

This is not true. There's a TCS of 20%, which is an advance tax payment that you can claim back in your income tax returns at the end of the year, and it not an additional tax. This is just a (bad) mechanism to stop black money from leaving the country.

Re: OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D

#286

Post by SoftTalker » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 4:30 PM UTC

saubeidl wrote: post #160

sp527 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any green energy project that isn't nuclear is a waste of money and resources. Nuclear is now being pursued in earnest by the tech industry itself. There's no problem here.

Nuclear is by far more expensive than other green options.

It has been historically, but must it be?

Re: OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D

#287

Post by whatshisface » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 4:41 PM UTC

sidewndr46 wrote: post #264

xlii wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have approx. 15 years of experience working remotely for various companies all across the globe and was always an advocate of thesis that remote work is difficult and most people aren’t cut for it and (to horror of many proponents) and on average are less efficient than on-site hires. There are many reasons: It’s difficult to understand _intention_ when deprived of non-verbal communication and working in a choppy n…

If management is so poor that they can't communicate intention in writing, then I don't really see how being in office or anywhere for that matter will help. They're just flat out incompetent. I've seen the opposite of this as well, where whatever management clearly communicated is most definitely not what is going to get executed. If internal politics are blocking knowledge, access, & contribution of any employee th…

The big issue is that companies are indeed poor in so many ways, and all they have to fix it with is money, and sometimes not even that.

Re: OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D

#288

Post by seattle_spring » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 4:51 PM UTC

akmarinov wrote: post #130

seattle_spring wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who knows anything about software and has used AI for more than 24 hours knows that AI won't be "replacing" software engineering anytime soon.

Hard disagree, I’ve been agentic coding the past couple of months and have written maybe 100 lines doing this for a living. The rest is coming up with SDDs and reviewing AI’s code. I can easily see most devs, doctors and lawyers automated away in the next couple of years.

I'd love to get access to codebases made entirely with agentic coding that people deem a success. Everything they've suggested for me beyond trivial work has been wildly overcomplicated.

Re: OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D

#289

Post by seattle_spring » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 4:53 PM UTC

akmarinov wrote: post #202

coffeebeqn wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either we have wildly different difficulty levels at our jobs or this is bs. I tried the agents (I get access to basically all state of the art from my company) and they still have all the same issues of agents from a year back. Each step gets more chaotic and the end result is always that I end up reverting the over complicated mess it made and writing it myself. One-offs with lots of context still sometimes work. E…

Yeah - that’s the hard part now - dialing things down to eliminate the divergent paths the AI can take to implement what you want. You can tell it “implement feature X” and it’ll go and do whatever’s easiest for it, often something dumb, that’s when people usually think “it’s dumb, won’t replace devs” and give up. Or you can nail down your requirements by talking to it and describing what you’re looking for, often it…

> in the end your output is significantly increased.

The claim you're arguing against is that AI will replace software engineering as a discipline. Seems like you're instead saying that it will increase developer productivity, which no one disagrees with.

Re: OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D

#290

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 5:16 PM UTC

xlii wrote: post #257

CalRobert wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of companies just suck at it too. "Here's Slack, figure it out" seems to be a common approach. In person you can pester the person next to you when you're new, overhear conversations, etc. but remote it is MUCH harder to ascertain the culture, Slack etiquette, etc (my favourite was "people write in Slack all the time, in public, even to themselves, it's your job to mute Slack when you need focus, and don't use…

I agree. Rarely companies want to hire communication expert to help shape good practices even though they’re spending hundreds of thousands if not millions on stuff like Datadog etc. I have this theory that mailing lists with rich search (slash Google Groups slash Newsgroups) are the best communication tools. Hadn’t had opportunity to try it out though, as it was shunned „old tech”.

Ehh, IME companies are hesitant because it's not a free parameter. All of your internal processes are built on top of how people communicate, so you can't change it without changing the entirety of how work gets done. People routinely hire experts for external comms, manager training, etc. because those are easier to adjust in isolation.