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Comment by nrp | Hacker News Reader

Edited: We've posted in the February Who's Hiring thread too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30165535

Please do that in the Who Is Hiring thread instead. The Feb thread is just out today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30164271.

Congrats!

Some feedback from a global visitor-who-tried-but-gave-up-to-preorder:

Please decouple preferences for language/location/currency. You may be surprised about the number of people in your target market who aren't native speakers of the local language in their place of residence, and using credit cards denominated in a foreign currency (sometimes with ridiculous conversion rates).

Having them default to the same might be reasonable but never make hard assumptions about your visitors like that.

Look at iherb.com and aliexpress for two sites that IMO get this right.

Absolutely! A great suggestion. Even more important for countries with multiple dominant languages. Switzerland comes to mind: four official languages, a pretty even split between French, German, and Italian, and a large number of non-native speakers who prefer English.

It drives me crazy when these are coupled because they have to make an opinionated choice that, for the Swiss use case, has to be wrong for the majority of users.

Congratulations!

Can you please blog a bit on origins of framework? I read in press releases elsewhere that you 3D printed the prototype laptop. It'd be very interesting to see how such startups get off the ground. Given that multiple tech-shops have tried and binned plans for modular hardware, framework's early success is remarkable... yet, the story of its nascent stages remain elusive.

I wrote a blog post yesterday about how I think about hardware startups, which generalizes some of how Framework has worked so far: https://eclecti.cc/bytes/what-hardware-is-hard-really-means

I would like to write more about Framework as well, but will give it more time to be more sure of what worked and what didn't.

It’s always a shame such cool positions are US only. Would love to find some of these kind of companies in the EU (or more US positions that more easily allow non-US workers)

We're currently hiring in the US and Taiwan, where we have entities set up. We will likely set up an EU entity to open up hiring there too, but we don't have a timeline for that at the moment.

From an Israeli: I wish you will set up an entity in Israel too! Or, more modestly, that you open ordering here.

I suppose the gripe is more that 'CA or remote' means (typically, and as here) 'in the US'; whereas 'our US and Taiwanese entities are hiring' doesn't have to mean that (though I appreciate it's a lot simpler) - you can be British or German or whatever, in that home country, and employed by a US entity.

Anyway, congrats; eagerly awaiting my UK pre-order!

Will you be opening up any Canada positions? I would love to be able to apply in say a year.

Maybe Linus can also present the idea to them. Since he's now a shareholder and possibly their most popular owner.

Definitely please at least consider hiring EU remote. Really exciting positions I'd even be willing to relocate for, but chances are the US visa system will make that too difficult.

You probably already know this, but "an EU entity [for] hiring" means very different things for EU citizens than for permanent residents or visa holders/seekers.

Since the EU is not an immigration union, as a permanent resident of Germany I am only allowed to work in Germany, not in any other EU country. Granted, I could probably get a work visa for another EU country, but if I wanted to remain a German resident things would get tricky very fast.

For fresh or prospective immigrants it's generally less favorable; and every EU country has different regulations as well as attitudes to immigrants from different regions.

Thus I recommend, when you get to that point, that you do some research about which EU countries are most advantageous to you and your potential workforce, and open subsidiaries in the countries that make sense. Probably more than one, out of the gate. Because missing out on the pool of immigrant talent in Europe is probably not your goal.

And congratulations on the funding!

For the EU it would probably make more sense to hire remote freelance. Otherwise it is quite a hassle.

You might check out New Horizons. https://nhglobalpartners.com/ Disclaimer: I’ve not used them (and have no affiliation), just seems relevant.

You might want to look at Employer of Record services like Deel, if you are considering setting up country/regional entities just to enable hiring?

(No affiliation with Deel, but about to start a new remote job with them as EoR)

Super cool! I wish you good luck! Firmware engineer definitely sounds great to me, hopefully the type of job I can steer my career towards in the future! :)

I hope you guys crush it, you can become the next Apple - the future of computing!

If they IPO they'll be evil like everyone else eventually. I hope they become the next developer choice, the market is definitely big enough.

I'd love to see a phone and eInk notebook (like Remarkable) in your future. If you can create an ecosystem of products, you'll capture much of the tech field.

Very excited for your raise!

Any distant plans to branch out to other consumer products beyond laptops?

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