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Comment by znq | Hacker News Reader

Here's the direct link to the PDF for the HN crowd: https://mobilejazz.com/docs/company-handbook/mobile-jazz-com...

Alternative download (Google Drive) in case the server goes down: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16D90e7L7whbeRSCLxhZ_X3-K_3R...

EDIT: Added alternative download.

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On your homepage, right under the title, you claim to be "The #1 Boutique App & Web Development Company". What do you mean by this? Is this an award that some other organization granted you, is it just marketing fluff, or is it something in between? What sort of metrics were used? Can you tell me who the #2 boutique app and web development company is? My first reaction on seeing that line was "oh, they're willing to say anything to make a sale, I can't believe anything here."

Good morning! Just marketing fluff. Boutique App & Web Development Company is just a term we made up, to reflect our focus of being small, tailored and of high quality.

Morning! I didn't mind the "Boutique App & Web Development" part (I've used almost this exact same line in the past, TBH), it was "#1" that set off alarm bells. It feels like you're claiming to be the best at something that is so multi-faceted and hard to pin down that nobody can say whether or not it's true. Any of your competitors could make the same claim -- therefore the thing that sets you apart is your willingness to make the claim, not that it applies to you. If I were you, I'd stay away from attaching absolute comparatives to mushy marketing terminology. It feels very snake-oily to me. On the other hand your contracting business seems to be a lot more successful than mine was, so maybe you'd be silly to behave the way I would.

Some minor thoughts on the PDF: The bottom of page 2 looks like it has a clickable button on it (I'm not sure if that was intentional). Of the four colored titles on page 3 the PRODUCTS one stands out as not-a-gradient, compared to the rest. The font that looks hand-drawn feels cheap and Comic-Sansy to me, I'd prefer actual hand-writing or a font that doesn't look like it should have natural variation. On page 19, the Harvest window has a shadow that the other example images on this page and the next don't have, which looks inconsistent.

In general I do like the document, these are just nit-picks I thought you might find useful.

Does planning your day in Asana work for all roles? Management tends to be very interrupt driven outside of meetings

> Plan your day in Asana, then post your status update in Slack

I'd say so. I think especially "management" (we're mostly a flat company, so management including founders is more of a counsel) are big proponents of using Asana.

Love to see examples. Am a big proponent of remote work and want to do it better

Good morning Paul! Maybe I didn't get your question, but could you elaborate of what you want examples? Happy to give them, just didn't understand what you want exactly.

Very good presentation, thank you, it looks like you are doing an amazing job on doing good both for the Team as well as the customers!

If only you would be looking for Audit/Security/Compliance, you would have my CV in a heartbeat!!

And that makes me wonder how do you manage GRC in the Team and the processes...

Hi, Mobile Jazz co-founder here. I take care of GRC myself, since I used to work as a consultant in an "earlier life" (OMG, what a difference!). Usually our needs in this area are quite modest so I can take care of everything personally, but if you'd like to send us your CV, we can always keep an eye on future demand :) Please feel free to check https://mobilejazz.com/jobs and use our API to submit an application

I love that you are using an API to receive applications for developers. So awesome!

Thanks, we've updated the link from https://mobilejazz.com/company-handbook. The convention on Hacker News is for submissions to be directly readable.

Great! Thank you. We've also fixed the landing page to make it a direct download.

I haven't read your PDF yet, but I did just read 37 Signals new book, have you read it, and do you agree with any of their sentiments on remote working and managing a good life/work balance.

In one of our comments in the other thread, you state that some colleagues will log in on the weekend to get work done, how do you manage colleagues working more than they should?

Hi there! We do a couple of things around here: first, we plan ahead of time for the workload of each team member, according to the amount of availability they have, they might want to work on a side project, practice sports (lots of us do kitesurf, skiing, swimming,...) or whatever. We do not require a specific amount of hours.

During the week we track time using Harvest (https://www.getharvest.com/) and the next week we review the planned time vs. actual time spent on each project (and overall) and adjust the planning as necessary. It's not 100% precise, but it works most of the time.

Besides the planning vs. reviewing part, we're very open and encourage discussion on the remote work and with flexible schedule topic. Some team members have a lot of experience and some are doing this for the first time, so sharing is important. Having a routine is an important element into a good work-life balance.

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