This is less on that specific topic and more general: While I enjoy the hacker news forums a great deal, I've no relationship with YC as an org. I am not sure that YC has any particular interest in things that might impact me as an individual contributor in an org as much as it impacts them.
Understandably there's an everyone for themselves aspect here, but that makes these kinds of call to actions a bit hollow to me.
All companies would prefer to have 0 employees if possible. This isn't special about YC companies. Heck it's not even special about companies. If I could buy a roof that was slightly more expensive but I never had to hire a roofer I would.
Devils advocate might say
1. Lots of groups want to pay less tax to suit them. Just because it benefits us doesn't make the lobbying logical.
2. We call ourselves builders. But you presumably can't claim the cost of building your house against income tax. So why is out building different.
3. Come on; be honest: software development was always the loophole. You have coders building next year's features and you are saying that is a legitimate expense against this year's profit. You couldn't have made profit this year without a half implemented unreleased AI sparkle?
I really think the law is silly from a practical point of view but it's good insofar that other countries' silicon valleys need a chance ;)
Sure, YC is a business. But HN has so many people building software that there's also a community interest here—otherwise I wouldn't have suggested this thread.
pg used to do this kind of thing on HN from time to time, especially on internet freedom issues, so this is a bit of return-to-roots for the site. SOPA is the one I remember but there were others.
Just my two cents of course, but I think this is an excellent post for HN. One of the most directly relevant to people in this community (even those who don't seem to understand why) in a very long time.
This is something that both impacts them and impacts you if you're a developer.
This tax treatment can increase the cost of a dev by 5-15% which leads to less hiring and a looser job market. Which will impact us even if we're not looking for work because most companies look at market rates when deciding raises.