> And you won’t get to brag that you own a computer from Iowa.

South Dakota. Gateway was HQ’d in North Sioux City, SD.

There is also a South Sioux City, NE, though to my knowledge no computer manufacturers have had a presence there.

My dad worked at Gateway in the mid-late ‘90s and early ‘00s. Employee perks were pretty decent for the time; for example, he could borrow a laptop to play with and learn on at home — we used this almost entirely to play games, since we had a hand-me-down 486 at the time. They would also give you a PC in agreement for continued employment for N years. We got a Pentium III 550 MHz screamer of a system, which was absolutely bonkers for my young self.

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rfarley04 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You're right! That was a not entirely clear enough reference to Gateway 2000's first ad, in 1987, which famously used the headline "Computers from Iowa?"

https://buttondown.com/suchbadtechads/archive/gateway-2000-p...

	▲	peri-cl an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Oh, so that's the reason their brand theming is cows!

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addaon 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> They would also give you a PC in agreement for continued employment for N years.

Do you mean that in exchange for accepting a PC, he had to agree to a multiple-year enforced contract? Is the right to leave a company even a right that one can sign away in the US? Would people really do that for a few thousand dollars? That seems shockingly close to indentured servitude... "we'll pay two months of your rent up front, but you can't quit for five years no matter what we do to you."

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Aurornis 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

No, you can’t force people to continue working at your company by contract.

These agreements work like signing bonuses. The compensation is given up front, but if you leave before N months then you need to return the compensation or some times a pro-rated version of it.

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to11mtm 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There's actually a mortgage company that does worse; They call it the 'People Promise', and it sounds like a bonus, but;

1. It's actually a loan.

2. If you leave or are terminated at any point for the period, you have to pay back the ENTIRE loan amount.

3. Because it's a loan, if you -do- survive employment through the term, guess what, you now have to pay tax on the 'forgiven loan'.

4. If you don't take it, you don't get hired.

	▲	beering 44 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Number 3 sounds like nothing out of the ordinary? Any bonus you get from an employer, granted or otherwise, has to be taxed at some point. This just sounds like a weird signing bonus.
	▲	JoBrad 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Each of your points escalated over the last one, somehow.
	▲	Aurornis 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Why not name the company?

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majormajor 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Usually signing bonuses are "pay back all or a pro-rated percentage if you leave before [date]"

	▲	addaon 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Sure, but that's just lending you a computer at that point, unless they expect you to cover the depreciation cost or something when returning it.

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quickthrowman an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Gateway was located in Sioux City, IA before they moved to South Dakota in 1990: https://medium.com/@madmedic11671/behind-the-spots-the-story...

Sioux City is near a tripoint where Iowa, South Dakota, and Nebraska located in the Missouri River floodplain so it is natural they would have operations in two states at some point in its history. I just drove through here and spent a weekend in the area, Ponca State Park (NE) is lovely!

	▲	colechristensen 29 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It is effectively the same city in three states, but most of it is in Iowa. Of course there are separate entities because it's in different states but if it weren't they would have all combined.

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mrloopex 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Let’s be clear: they were Lego-ing together parts from China. There were no mass produced PC components in the US by the 90s.

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timcobb 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Probably not china so much as Taiwan, japan, other places

	▲	mrloopex 10 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Actually yes China. Hong Kong specifically before the manufacturing boom moved to mainland. By the 90s Japan had lost its DRAM edge and was not making any PC peripherals en masse. TSMC was barely three years old in 1990.

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Theodores an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

In the UK a typical Gateway 2000 desktop PC came with a Trinitron screen, made by Sony in South Wales.

Their business model for the UK was the same tax scam as Apple, Dell and others. Everything was mail order, operating out of Dublin.

Their products had quality multimedia toys (CD, speakers, decent screen, keyboard with extra programmable keys) combined with decent CPU/RAM/ROM/graphics for the price.

I did support for a small company that bought Gateway (in the UK) and there certainly were no 'Made in USA' labels anywhere.

I really liked their machines and I bought one myself because it had that Trinitron screen at a bargain price. I was very happy with that machine. In the UK they went a bit sour after dropping the '2000' branding with the cow spots.

Their laptops were not as successful as their desktop machines, where they never quite managed to compete in either the 'value for money' or 'nice to have' sectors. Dell, Toshiba and even Compaq had preferable laptops.

Their success in the UK was the Dell model (Ireland tax fiddle), except they didn't make you wait weeks for your machine (like Dell did, with it having to be 'built to order').

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timcobb 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> We got a Pentium III 550 MHz screamer

Super nice