Most companies hiring remotely don't have if your 1-person company is US-based or not.
The ones that care to hiring within vetted countries for $reasons usually will not accept exceptions. Notable example is GitHub which has a list of countries they hire from (even though they're owned by MSFT and could hire on the Moon if they wanted).
Having a company is mostly for tax purposes. It makes everything easier. I think the hiring company doesn't care if the contract is done with a business or an individual. Both are usually limited liability and offer no advantage in case of contract breaches.
> For big companies you need to drill LeetCode and system design. Perhaps for startups it is not the worst use of your time.
Exactly. Any hiring manager with a brain and not bound my clueless corporate processes would use OSS contributions are a decent signal for proficiency and social skills.
That means nothing in a big corp though. The hiring panel will never accept a candidate that fails the Leetc0d3 test because that means other panels could do the same and then it all falls apart for them. Status quo and all.
Your public contributions are a showcase of your alleged skills, in most cases.
There is no deterministic way to transition from unpaid to paid. It's just one signal among many that a recruiter or company looking for services would look into.
> In the current situation, whenever the Chrome browser needs an update, say for a security patch, Google has to push that to Chromebooks in a ChromeOS update. That takes more time and effort than it does for the Chrome browser on Linux, macOS, and Windows.
Oh no, nobody could see this would be the natural outcome of deeply integrating your browser into your OS. mild shock