[speakfreely]

> I'm not saying that small startups aren't getting tax bills or that those bills don't suck; I'm saying that they don't explain industry wide hiring trends.

It's not having a wide effect on the industry as a whole right now, but it's creating a huge problem in the startup pipeline that will be apparent in 3-5 years. It's effectively strangling anyone who wants to bootstrap a startup.

Obviously industry trends are multivariate, but the way you're talking about this seems to indicate you are seriously disconnected from the finance side of tech startups. This is squeezing a very specific part of the startup pipeline, the transition stage of going from founder-led development to first engineer hires. It makes it much more capital intensive to make that jump because of Section 174. It's scaring away potential founders and making existing early stage startups go slower.