Ken Nelson asks, "Why would I hire somebody?"

When you make hiring expensive, I do less of it. See how that works?

A lot of people share my sentiment:

Normally I love to find good engineers and put them to work. But not now… too risky.

Business risk is normal and competition just helps me do better. Political risk isn’t normal and I’ve no way to respond externally to it. I can’t “out compete” the tax man.

As an engineer who's been looking for a while, I know that he's certainly not alone. And it's been one of the great frustrations of being out, wondering why anyone would hire anyone right now...