In 2017, a tax bill cut a key incentive starting in 2022 to look revenue neutral. The bill was still a massive tax cut overall.
The cut removed the writeoff for R&D…
That change made it more expensive to hire people in R&D. This included developers not essential to daily business and most scientists. Big cos were hit hardest since they run more R&D at any given time.
For customer service cuts, not affecting us much tho, the reason for shrinkin workforce is different. Companies just do not care. Phone trees, powerless outsourced reps, and broken websites have annoyed people for decades. But firms do not compete on good service, just price…
Investors like hearing about AI replacing this work. Companies cut more staff and service quality drops. There is little pushback from markets or regulators. That means cos face no real pressure to stop making service worse.
It will get worse before it gets better - at 66 it will be late for me.