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Comment by bart42_0 | Hacker News Reader

It sounds and looks very nice. I have two questions:

1) Why did't they move to one of the Canary Islands? Part of Spain, Barcelona is a part of it. Less hassle because you stay in Europe, same language, same culture as in Barcelona. I rent a flat (70m2, furnished, 500m from the palmtree-beach, €500 /month), in the center of the capital on one of the islands, the internet connection is reasonable. Sounds comparable to Thailand.

2) How long did they stay in Thailand, was it a 2 month project-move or a multiple-year company move?

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Hey, I'm one of the co-founders who runs Mobile Jazz.

To answer your questions:

1) We actually wanted to experience a new culture and also have some kind of adventure. We're already doing things in Spain, so we just wanted to try out something new and see how it works :-)

2) This was only a 2 month experiment, but our whole company is set up for remote work. So some of us continuously travel and work from different places. Myself I've been living in a camper van for a year now (blog post pending ;-)), but this was the first experiment where we actually rented two houses offshore and moved a bunch of people there.

Since then we also had another experiment. We spent some time in the Austrian Alps for skiing. We'll write about it soon.

And the next thing we want to do is actually in Spain (in the mountains) and then we're planning to go to Mauritius for a month or so.

Ok, clear.

It can be a great way to run project in a lovely pressure cooker. Everybody 7days per week involved/committed without the distraction of homely nuisances.

I'm very interested in your camper-van-blogpost

And Mauritius is great!

Do you realize how evil that could sound? "I can force everyone to work 7 days per week by moving them to an island, miles away from their friends and family."

If you need people to work 7 days per week, that's a problem. Hire more people, or set longer deadlines. Emergencies happen, but working late for a whole week or more is a systemic, productivity and morale sapping flaw.

But you're right. Mauritius is great!

In our specific case in Thailand we never worked more than the usual 8 hours a day and on the weekends we organized trips together. So our goal was not to have people put together so that they work more, but rather have a good time and adventure together.

No, you can't force. But you can put a team close together, they don't have to work more than 8hrs/day. But if they meet on weekends, on trips, bbq's, there wil be shoptalk. That is good for the project. In most cases. I used to work for an 'offshore pipeline desig company' hard work, drinks on friday evening, family BBQ on Saturday. Lots of fun, and everybody was ALWAYS talking about kids, dogs and work.

I don't see anything wrong with team events, as long as they are optional. People should be encouraged to have interests outside of work. It promotes a healthy work/life balance, and discourages groupthink. The occasional team building event can be great for morale, but be respectful of people's obligations.

Your original post talked about relocating so team members could spend 7 days a week committed to the project. That goes far beyond a weekend BBQ.

When you say mountains I hope you mean sierra de gredos! :)

I thought the same (I'm working for 3scale, company with offices in the same building than MobileJazz in Barcelona). We just recently moved to Tenerife with one of my coworkers for those reasons.

Good times.

Not many developer meetups here in Santa Cruz though :/

Oh man! How is life there? I've only spent half a day in Santa Cruz but the beauty of the city and its surroundings amazed me and I've been aching to go back ever since. Is it possible to rent in one of those hillside villages? They look quite scenic. :)

Noooo, then you should hop over to Barcelona/Madrid.

LOL.

Or start a functional-reactive-concatenative-meetup group here

All of us should meet up some time ;-)

The DSL service we have had over the last year in Los Gigantes in Tenerife has been atrocious, down from 3Mbps to under 1Mbps, we are better off with a 3G connection and if you go with UKs 3 network you can roam there and use up to 250GB a month on the all you can eat plan.

Sadly 3 stopped all-you-can-eat tethering in December. People were using insane amounts - significantly more than 250GB.

Thanks, I hadn't noticed that, now it looks like only 25GB and no hotspot, I'll have to try Canaries Wireless next time I'm out there.

Are you sure you're not talking about the Balearic Islands? The Canaries are not even close to Barcelona, they're off the coast of Africa.

Geographically you are right, but thinking timezonewise it is close.

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