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> 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, t
by sgarland 2mo ago
> 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.
- rfarley04 2mo agoYou'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-part-1/ https://buttondown.com/suchbadtechads/archive/gateway-2000-p...
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- sgarland 2mo agoAh, right. Good callout!
- addaon 2mo ago> 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."
- majormajor 2mo agoUsually signing bonuses are "pay back all or a pro-rated percentage if you leave before [date]"
- addaon 2mo agoSure, 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.
- rcxdude 2mo agoI would guess you would owe some agreed value of the PC at the time you received it.
- SoftTalker 2mo agoFrom what I've seen where I work the majority of "work" computers and laptops don't get returned if the employee separates for whatever reason. So I can see some companies wanting to make it a formal loan or have some means to recover the lost value if it isn't returned. My employer doesn't, because the residual value of a 2-3 year old laptop is not even worth anyone's time beyond making a few perfunctory requests to return it.
- rcxdude 2mo agoEh, the requirement to return your work-provided laptop is about as strong, legally speaking, as a requirement to pay back the value of it when you leave. Perhaps even stronger (because a work laptop is never really even a loan to you). I would suggest your workplace is a bit of an outlier: most places I'm aware of make pretty sure the laptop is returned, even if only because of the risk of company information leaking out otherwise (some places I know might let an employee keep an old laptop that's being replaced after they have wiped it, perhaps with all storage removed entirely).
- mrloopex 2mo agoLet’s be clear: they were Lego-ing together parts from China. There were no mass produced PC components in the US by the 90s.
- timcobb 2mo agoProbably not china so much as Taiwan, japan, other places
- mrloopex 2mo agoActually 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.
- Sharlin 2mo agoTechnically Hong Kong wasn't China back then.
- Dylan16807 2mo agoWhether that nearly-over lease was enough to count or not, that lease ended partway through the time period we're talking about.
- panick21_ 2mo agoYou over focus on Hong Kong. Lots of stuff was in Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia. Many things had supply chains over many places.
- monocasa 2mo agoTSMC wasn't the major player until relatively recently. SuperMicro, Foxconn, Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, etc. have existed for quite some time and are all Taiwanese.
- Theodores 2mo ago
- timcobb 2mo ago> We got a Pentium III 550 MHz screamer Super nice
- quickthrowman 2mo agoGateway was located in Sioux City, IA before they moved to South Dakota in 1990: https://medium.com/@madmedic11671/behind-the-spots-the-story-of-gateway-computers-ce3263bcd07f 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 2mo agoIt 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.
- sgarland 2mo agoI had forgotten about their start being in Iowa! I moved to Nebraska (just outside Ponca, actually) in 1996, so I missed that part of their history. Moved away in 2004. Agreed that Ponca State Park is delightful. I spent many a summer day there as a kid.