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A comment on Tell HN: Help restore the tax deduction for software dev in the US (Section 174). Parent comment

Re:Tell HN: Help restore the tax deduction for software dev ... by daxfohl on Tuesday June 10, 2025 @12:41PM (#44238843)
What about oncall? What about fixing bugs, or KLO, or security patches, or devops, or tweaking feature flags, or dealing with customers?

If you're 100% allocated to a greenfield project that's behind closed doors until 2027, sure. But it doesn't seem like most software engineers are in that bucket. If anything, the industry has been consistently moving further away from that, with more agile methods, tighter feedback loops, etc.

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Re:Tell HN: Help restore the tax deduction for software dev ... by saltcured on Tuesday June 10, 2025 @01:17PM (#44239156)
Right, many software jobs are more like being a janitor or repairman. Or even more of a personal assistant or retail worker who is providing ephemeral service to another participant in the whole organization.
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Re:Tell HN: Help restore the tax deduction for software dev ... by daxfohl on Tuesday June 10, 2025 @02:14PM (#44239666)
Though put that way, it seems hard to rationalize high salaries for software roles where this tax deduction would apply. Granted, supply-and-demand, but still.
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Re:Tell HN: Help restore the tax deduction for software dev ... by LorenPechtel on Wednesday June 11, 2025 @10:29AM (#44248008)
Why? Just because it's mostly maintenance doesn't mean it isn't a high skill job.
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Re:Tell HN: Help restore the tax deduction for software dev ... by daxfohl on Wednesday June 11, 2025 @03:29PM (#44250925)
Good point. One could say a doctor is the same job as a mechanic, but that doesn't capture the whole story.
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