If people want to exercise choice - by all means, and I’m happy at the margin to punish Boeing, but I agree from a personal risk standpoint it’s probably inconsequential.
I’m always amazed at where people spend energy mitigating risk, I had a coworker who was worried about taking the Covid vaccine but was hardly the picture of health and rode a motorcycle to work many days - it’s like putting down the beer, eating a salad, and taking the bus will give you massive gains in life expectancy vs some minor unknown delta with the Covid vaccine, but to each their own. I just wish we could get people to use micromorts (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort)
But to be fair, none of those hedge fund’s employees are employed by the caymans entity, and the only reason they are not in the US (at least for US hedge funds) is to accept non-taxable us investors and foreign investors, U.S. taxable investors typically invest through a Delaware LP.
The short version is that the employee’s country of residence will dictate on all of these variables rather than the country of the employer. I don’t think a foreign employee of a U.S. company has any US status
Amazon is great for random stuff that is <$25 and you don’t put close to/in/around your body/food. I.e. if you need some calculator batteries or a book, great - you’re insane to risk you or your family’s health buying food/personal care/kitchen products/toys that are counterfeit/potentially toxic on Amazon
Walmart actually diligences it’s vendors and manages its upstream supply chain - Amazon does zero diligence on its vendors and doesn’t manage its upstream supply chain
If you didn’t have a US founder I think you’d have more options, but since you do, just embrace the US - it’s will also be the easiest from a fundraising standpoint, and one of the cheaper options.
I actually think the US gives you the most choices from a vendor standpoint, and is the cheapest (or one of the cheapest from an administrative standpoint).
Regardless, definitely do it in a jurisdiction where one of the key founders actually resides (ideally the CEO and/or CFO) as that just makes the administration much easier to have someone on the ground.
Short version - do it where or near where the bulk of your 1) customers 2) investors 3) leadership team are likely to be located, that also is not an administrative hassle. Stay out of continental Europe and tax havens that you’re never going to step foot in.
From a practical standpoint all small companies are out of compliance with tons of laws, they just fly below the radar, and do their best (not from a desire to be non-compliant, but that the laws are impossible to comply with without armies of accountants and attorneys) So do the best you can and move on with your life. You’re going to have the same employment problems with your German employee regardless of whether his employer is in the Isle of Man or Australia, so just suck it up and hire a an accounting firm to do the personal tax returns for the team and focus on your business.
It takes the complexity of international hiring (vs contracting) and raises it up a notch. Your home country like the US doesn't care (afaict) but the country they are in will have extra levels of compliance to go through, including labor protections & equity laws. Likewise, if you were planning to use an EOR to simplify foreign registrations, that just got weirder too.
And.... IANAL, we pay people to figure this stuff out or stay away from it.
Software is like sheet music, and computers are the players and the instruments. Programmers write the sheet music; they're called developers, or devs. Operations staff are conductors.
Now, you know how conductors twitch their batons and give directions to various musicians and sections of musicians? That's a kind of dance. "devops" means talking to the devs and the operators and writing choreography for that dance, to be performed by another computer system. Then you watch the conductor's dance and make sure that the conductor is doing the right moves at the right time and the musicians are properly playing the symphony.
"You know how there are web sites, apps, and internet stuff? Those all work by computers and apps/programs talking with other computers and apps/programs. I make sure that some of those computers and programs keep working right and to make sure someone knows when they don't work right."
Interesting to see so many confused /parents/spouses/etc in this thread. Even though what we work on is highly abstract, my parents have a reasonable non technical interpretation. I would think its the norm that the people you closely care about, or care about you, know roughly what you do, if you have explained it well enough to them in a compelling way. I guess delivering meaningless value for some soulless corporate entity doesn't really spark joy, or is memorable at all.
I’m always amazed at where people spend energy mitigating risk, I had a coworker who was worried about taking the Covid vaccine but was hardly the picture of health and rode a motorcycle to work many days - it’s like putting down the beer, eating a salad, and taking the bus will give you massive gains in life expectancy vs some minor unknown delta with the Covid vaccine, but to each their own. I just wish we could get people to use micromorts (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort)