Even worse, Apple etc do engineering work in EU, and then lie to regulators to say that "no innovation happens in Europe" to avoid local taxes.

thought experiment: What if Apple spun out Apple Design as a US company and paid it contract rates to invent, much like it outsources factories to Chinese companies? then how are the holding-companies profits taxes?

That's great, for each of you there are 10 people who look like you but who rip off their clients. So what's a client to do?

A tough question. So I would ask indirect questions that all revolved around "what do you like about your job?". And listen carefully to the answers.

If the answer sounds like some standard BS such as "well I really like helping people get into the home of their dreams at the lowest price!!!!" or something canned or manufactured "we win when you win!!! I like win win deals" and so on then perhaps that is just someone who is going through the motions and isn't really in to what they are doing.

Just like with computers. There is the guy who is in it strictly to make a buck, but would never tinker or experiment after hours, and the guy who really enjoys programming for the fun of it and was doing it as soon as they could or as soon as they were exposed to it.

Google's original name was "BackRub". Facebook was "TheFaceBook". They changed the name when it mattered.

That's product quality, not market fit. Market fit is reaching the people who would buy your product, and meeting their needs, before you are famous enough for them to find you.

they are researchers, not employees. Employees are the people you need to do drudge work in a professional manner.

that's because the Garmin screen was resistive, not capacitive, and it was years before autocomplete tech.

the term "product-market (mis)fit" means that the product failed to find its market, not that the product has no market. The term for that is "shitty product".

> It's very hard to drop someone else into an unfamiliar codebase and have them pick up where the original person left off,

Eh, this is what every new employee at an established company does.

And when a startup has a "technical cofounder", that usually means the "tech" is a CRUD website, as opposed to a novel invention being productized (in which case it would be a technical founder or technical founder pair.

That doesn't really hold up. Once we are well clear of the minimum wage, there is room to have an inversion where there are 1000 positions to fill and 500 qualified candidates who could auction-price themselves above the profit they generate.

If the cost of employing someone is above the profit they generate, then you don't hire them. US corporations don't have a legal right to purchase labor at a price that makes their businesses viable. If they can't make money employing people in the business they're in, then they need to rethink the structure of that business or their investors need to put their capital elsewhere.