But that got rolled back in the last budget bill if i was following correctly

Is the hypothesis that the next 24 months will be measurably better for software engineering jobs than the last 24 months?

Hard to say. There's kind of a lot going on.

Either the tax treatment has an effect or it doesn't. If the market doesn't get better we can at the very least say that the whole tax thing was overstated.

not if 996 is still a thing