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znqon Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups

> Both sides are happy with it?

Just wanted to reply exactly that. Obviously fair is very subjective and different to both parties involved. But we try to find a good combination of salary + bonus and also investment in the company itself (be it retreats or taking risks with new products like Bugfender), which then results in temporarily lower bonuses, but an expected bigger payoff and possibilities for everyone in the long turn.

znqon Big Tech Company Salaries Are Hurting Startups

Very true. For both of our companies [1][2] we pay a fair salary plus a quarterly bonus on top of that based on what we can give (based on the company's quarterly profit results). We also offer remote retreats (so far Cape Town, Thailand, Martinique, Spain and Skiing in the Alps) and the biggest contributor to everyone's satisfaction is that we let everyone work from where ever they want and as much as they want as long as it is planned properly.

The result: we've had a couple of employees who received job offers from companies like Apple, Google and Facebook. But after going to the interview process and talking to other employees there they've all (with the exception of one) decided to stay with us, with a significantly lower salary, but a lot more freedom and work-life balance.

Not saying that we've a better offer than Google & co, but saying that our offer is different than theirs and there are enough people out there who care more about other things than just money.

[1] https://mobilejazz.com

[2] https://bugfender.com

EDIT: formatting

znqon A new home for Google Open Source

We recently thought about on how to do this as well and created our own Open Source page [1]. Not sure if we have done it right, but I quite like it. Happy to receive some feedback on it. It's nothing huge, nevertheless we're quite proud of what we've achieved.

[1]: https://mobilejazz.com/products/opensource

znqon Ask HN: Services vs. Products – How to Combine the Two Under One Brand?

Thanks for that answer. Makes totally sense, that a product brand might eventually outgrow it's parent brand in terms of marketing reach.

znqon Ask HN: Services vs. Products – How to Combine the Two Under One Brand?

That certainly helps reassuring what we were already thinking.

We're still doubting though whether we should go for option #2 or option #3. Because we still have a lot of great stuff that our developers produce (blog posts, experiments, open source) that could benefit a single brand targeted towards developers in general. It will be more difficult to share those "achievements" amongst multiple product brands.

znqon Ask HN: Services vs. Products – How to Combine the Two Under One Brand?

Thanks! These are really interesting points. And I've to agree, the mix of the two is already a kind of a problem, although not necessarily a big one. But yes, we do give priority to our service clients at the cost of delaying product release cycles, which is not ideal.

znqon Ask HN: Services vs. Products – How to Combine the Two Under One Brand?

...Continuation of the above question...

So my question is, does it even make sense to put everything under one brand? We’re hesitating to create too many brands, because it means having a lot of duplicated effort for brand-building and marketing. We're also an engineering company at the core and marketing and brand-building is not necessarily what we're good at or enjoy doing.

I currently see the following options:

1) Put both services and products under the name of Mobile Jazz. Products like Bugfender will appear on the website, blog and social streams of Mobile Jazz. The disadvantage is that we’re targeting completely different audiences and the mixed messages might be very confusing.

2) Leave the services branch continue under the name of Mobile Jazz, but create a new separate brand for each product with its own blog and social streams, e.g. bugfender.com. This way the marketing can be very targeted to each specific niche, however the disadvantage is that every product needs a lot of marketing effort despite the shared audience (“developers”).

3) Leave services continue under the name of Mobile Jazz, but create a new umbrella brand for products with its own blog and social streams. This way we can address the shared audience (“developers”) with just one targeted marketing effort. Disadvantage: we’re marketing developers in general, but maybe not enough the niches that our products are for.

Maybe I’m overthinking all this. But I believe someone else must have been in such a situation before. Would be great to get some feedback or maybe just a different perspective.

[1] http://mobilejazz.com/

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9346726

[3] https://mobilejazz.com/blog/working-remotely-from-a-tropical...

[4] https://bugfender.com/

(EDIT: formatting)

znqon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (December 2016)

Location: International with clients in US, Europe, ME and Asia. HQ in Barcelona.

Remote: YES

Willing to relocate: short-term

Technologies: Mobile (iOS, Android, Windows), Web, Backend (Go, Scala, Java, PHP, Node.js), Design

Résumé/CV: http://mobilejazz.com

Email: stefan@mobilejazz.com

We’ve worked with various folks from HN over the past 5 years with very satisfying outcomes for everyone :-)

znqon Ask HN: What simple tools or products are you most proud of making?

http://bugfender.com/ - A remote debugger for iOS and Android apps.

This is one of the internal tools that we built at Mobile Jazz as we always had the problem of being a remote team and therefore physically detached from our clients. Many times they had problems that we couldn't reproduce on our devices. With Bugfender we now can get access to their device's app logs and figure out what's wrong.

From being initially just a clunky internal tool, Bugfender is now a whole platform with a nice admin interface and many filtering and search options. The result is great and we're having quite some success with as not only we, but also the whole mobile developer community really loves it. And that is what makes us proud! :-)

znqon Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (November 2016)

SEEKING WORK: Remote (we're a distributed team of high quality mobile & backend engineers)

http://mobilejazz.com

We are Mobile Jazz, a collective of excellent engineers and designers with a strong focus on everything mobile and beyond. We've been doing Android and iOS development from their beginnings in 2008.

Additionally we've a ton of experience in backend development (PHP, Go, Java & Scala) and web frontend development (HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript).

Check us out here: http://mobilejazz.com

If you've any questions please get in touch with me via stefan@mobilejazz.com - happy to answer any questions :-)

PS: We've worked successfully with other HN members before.

znqon Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (October 2016)

SEEKING WORK: Remote (we're a distributed team of high quality mobile & backend engineers)

http://mobilejazz.com

We are Mobile Jazz, a collective of excellent engineers and designers with a strong focus on everything mobile and beyond. We've been doing Android and iOS development from their beginnings in 2008.

Additionally we've a ton of experience in backend development (PHP, Go, Java & Scala) and web frontend development (HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript).

Check us out here: http://mobilejazz.com

If you've any questions please get in touch with me via stefan@mobilejazz.com - happy to answer any questions :-)

PS: We've worked successfully with other HN members before.

znqon Spain Runs Out of Workers with Almost 5M Unemployed

It's not about paying the most, it's about paying a fair amount. And as I mentioned above people get a significant profit share every quarter.

And in the end it's not all about money. Especially not for us.

znqon Spain Runs Out of Workers with Almost 5M Unemployed

There are few, although not many counter-examples. We run Mobile Jazz [1], which is an international boutique agency with headquarters in Barcelona. We're trying to treat our employees extremely fairly and have managed to gain some of the best talent not only in Spain, but also internationally.

Here some of the things we do:

- Pay fair salaries: 54k€ / year (before tax) for those that work full-time

- We distribute the companies profits every quarter with our employees as bonuses. Although we're planning to retain more of that in the future to reinvest in internal projects.

- Everyone can choose to work from wherever they like (one guy is currently traveling around the world with his wife) and you can work as much as you like (as long as it is planned properly in advance). Some people prefer to work less and spend more time with their kids or go kitesurfing. Others decided to reduce to 1/2 time and study again (just for fun) the other 50%.

- 3-4 times per year we organize 1-2 month long company retreats [2], where we rent a villa in a nice location with good Internet and work remotely. This year we went to Cape Town and Bali. Last year we went to Thailand and skiing in the Alps. In October we're going to Martinique (Caribbean)

- We support our employees with internal project ideas, even the most crazy ones, like the automated Nespresso Ordering Machine [3] or those that have turned into actual products, like Bugfender [4].

Summarized we treat our employees very well and give them a lot of responsibility and autonomy. And it all pays off. Our clients and customer are extremely happy and since inception (2009) we didn't have to make on single outbound sale. All clients came to us through word of mouth and recommendations from existing clients.

On top of that it gives me personally a lot of freedom and peace of mind, because I know I can fully trust and rely on our employees. For example just two months ago I completely disconnected and decided to work on a small sailing boat for a month (just for fun, as a life and learning experience) crossing the Pacific from Micronesia to New Caledonia [blog post coming soon].

We're also about to launch a niche entrepreneurial community for similar-minded people called: O4H - Optimizing for Happiness (instead of profit) [5].

Feel free to email me (email address in my HN profile). I'm always happy to connect with like minded people.

For those that are looking for a job, check out our Jobs API on our website [1]. Although, to be fair I'd like to mention that we currently don't want to grow a lot more in team size (currently 20 engineers and designers), but rather focus on getting traction with our products. But that will probably change in the future again.

Links:

- [1]: https://mobilejazz.com/philosophy

- [2]: https://optimizingforhappiness.com/remote-office-cape-town-2...

- [3]: https://mobilejazz.com/blog/with-nom-youll-never-be-out-of-c...

- [4]: https://bugfender.com/

- [5]: https://optimizingforhappiness.com/

znqon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (July 2016)

Location: International with clients in US, Europe, ME and Asia. HQ in Barcelona.

Remote: YES

Willing to relocate: short-term

Technologies: Mobile (iOS, Android, Windows), Web, Backend (Go, Scala, Java, PHP, Node.js), Design

Résumé/CV: http://mobilejazz.com

Email: stefan@mobilejazz.com

We’ve worked with various folks from HN over the past 3 years with very satisfying outcomes for everyone :-)

znqon Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (June 2016)

SEEKING WORK: Remote (we're a distributed team of high quality mobile & backend engineers)

http://mobilejazz.com

We are Mobile Jazz, a collective of excellent engineers and designers with a strong focus on everything mobile and beyond. We've been doing Android and iOS development from their beginnings in 2008.

Additionally we've a ton of experience in backend development (PHP, Go, Java & Scala) and web frontend development (HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript).

Check us out here: http://mobilejazz.com

If you've any questions please get in touch with me via stefan@mobilejazz.com - happy to answer any questions :-)

PS: We've worked successfully with other HN members before.

znqon Tech layoffs more than double in Bay Area

Thanks. I appreciate it. You know, sometimes I develop envy when I read news about the financial success of other startups, but then when I take a break from work to go kitesurfing or for a yoga class in the middle of the day I feel pretty happy and proud of what we have achieved :-)

> How many hours per day do you expect your employees to work?

We don't expect any fixed number of hours. As long as stuff gets done and no-one suffers we're pretty cool about it. It does require discipline in planning by everyone though. Taking a day or two of spontaneously usually also isn't a problem.

> Second, can you talk about the tools you use to manage the company?

- Slack (we just recently moved over from HipChat as we couldn't deal with constant connectivity issues any more)

- Asana (best investment ever)

- Google Apps (Gmail, GDocs, tons of spreadsheets, calendar, etc.)

- Trello

- Harvest (for tracking of hours, invoicing, etc.)

> Have you ever fired anyone?

Yes we have. We have a very special culture with a lot of freedom and flexibility, but that also requires high responsibility. We hire mostly on gut feeling and are pretty good at that. But honestly, you only know after you've worked with people for a couple of months. And while some might be technically excellent, there are those that are no team players, can't communicate well when it's needed or don't have a sense of accountability. Basically these people need supervision, and the way we work we don't have supervision and also don't want it.

znqon Tech layoffs more than double in Bay Area

Depends what you define as "success". Probably my wording was not the best. Our business is extremely successful, but in different ways that most people define success.

We don't have a huge monetary success and no one is going to buy our company for multiple millions, but we have a lot of freedom, cool people and pretty fun adventures together without having to worry about financials either as long as don't start driving Lamborghinis ;-)

That said, the financials need to be good to support the lifestyle part. But if you live smart (not wasting money on a lot of things you probably don't need anyway) you get pretty far.

znqon Tech layoffs more than double in Bay Area

> It's surprising to me that no one starts a company solely for creating an amazing place to work.

I know at least one company who did that: Mobile Jazz. I started that company in 2009, initially as a freelancer, because I wanted to focus on lifestyle, rather than business success and I wanted to surround myself with other smart people, but also such that have a similar philosophy in life.

We're now a 20 people company with our HQ in Barcelona. However, everyone is allowed to work from wherever they want and (if it is planned properly in advance) also as much as they want. Some of us travel a lot. I've been "homeless" for 2 years now and spend most of my time living out of a camper van: https://i.imgur.com/qZy6Vkd.jpg

One of our employees is currently taking 1 year around-the-world trip with his wife, not rushing, but settling down at least 1 month at each place in order to work comfortably. I've just met up with them in Bali.

On top of our personal freedom and travels we also organize about 3 company events per year, which are voluntary to attend. Some examples: * Remote office in Thailand: https://mobilejazz.com/blog/working-remotely-from-a-tropical... * Skiing in the Alps: https://mobilejazz.com/blog/why-we-decided-to-stop-the-compa... * Summer Camp in the Spanish Pyrenees: https://mobilejazz.com/blog/work-life-balance-in-the-spanish... * Remote office in Cape Town (blog post pending) * Remote office in Martinique (coming up this fall)

We pay everyone the same salary (a fair basic salary), but the interesting thing is that every quarter we share a huge chunk of our profit with everyone in the team through bonuses.

We've managed to build an amazing team, hiring mostly through our personal network. Same goes for our clients. We are doing zero sales, but all the work we get comes through word of mouth. And we're constantly overbooked.

We're fully transparent with what we do and even share it with our clients in a monthly newsletter. Now, the funny thing is, they love it. They sometimes even tell us, that they want to stop hire us and they want to start working for us ;-)

By giving my team a lot of freedom and trust, they've learned how to be responsible and act as if would be there business. I can even trust them so much that I just took of a whole month from my role as the CEO and voluntarily worked on a sailing boat crossing the South Pacific from Micronesia to New Caledonia: https://goo.gl/KPXI21

Happy to answer any questions :-)

EDIT: for completion, we're mostly a consulting/services company: http://mobilejazz.com/ - but we also run a couple of our own products, e.g. https://bugfender.com/ and https://mobilejazz.com/products/enterprise-push-technology

znqon Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (April 2016)

SEEKING WORK: Remote (we're a distributed team of high quality mobile & backend engineers)

http://mobilejazz.com

We are Mobile Jazz, a collective of excellent engineers and designers with a strong focus on everything mobile and beyond. We've been doing Android and iOS development from their beginnings in 2008.

Additionally we've a ton of experience in backend development (PHP, Go, Java & Scala) and web frontend development (HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript).

Check us out here: http://mobilejazz.com

If you've any questions please get in touch with me via stefan@mobilejazz.com - happy to answer any questions :-)

PS: We've worked successfully with other HN members before.

znqon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (December 2015)

Location: International with clients in US, Europe, ME and Asia. HQ in Barcelona.

Remote: YES

Willing to relocate: short-term

Technologies: Mobile (iOS, Android, Windows), Web, Backend (Go, Scala, Java, PHP, Node.js), Design

Résumé/CV: http://mobilejazz.com

Email: stefan@mobilejazz.com

We’ve worked with various folks from HN over the past 3 years with very satisfying outcomes for everyone :-)

znqon Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax in the UK in 2014

Not trying to deny what you say is true, but just out of curiosity, is there any proof that Apple is doing this and how do implementations of this lobbyism look like? Just trying to understand how all this works.

znqon Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (October 2015)

SEEKING WORK: Remote (we're a distributed team of high quality mobile & backend engineers)

http://mobilejazz.com

We are Mobile Jazz, a collective of excellent engineers and designers with a strong focus on everything mobile and beyond. We've been doing Android and iOS development from their beginnings in 2008.

Additionally we've a ton of experience in backend development (PHP, Go, Java & Scala) and web frontend development (HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript).

Check us out here: http://mobilejazz.com

If you've any questions please get in touch with me via stefan@mobilejazz.com - happy to answer any questions :-)

PS: We've worked successfully with other HN members before.

znqon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (September 2015)

Location: International with clients in US, Europe, ME and Asia. HQ in Barcelona.

Remote: YES

Willing to relocate: short-term

Technologies: Mobile (iOS, Android, Windows), Web, Backend (Go, Scala, Java, PHP, Node.js), Design

Résumé/CV: http://mobilejazz.com

Email: stefan@mobilejazz.com

We’ve worked with various folks from HN over the past 3 years with very satisfying outcomes for everyone :-)

znqon Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (August 2015)

SEEKING WORK: Remote (we're a distributed team of high quality mobile & backend engineers)

http://mobilejazz.com

We are Mobile Jazz, a collective of excellent engineers and designers with a strong focus on everything mobile and beyond. We've been doing Android and iOS development from their beginnings in 2008.

Additionally we've a ton of experience in backend development (PHP, Go, Java & Scala) and web frontend development (HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript).

Check us out here: http://mobilejazz.com

If you've any questions please get in touch with me via stefan@mobilejazz.com - happy to answer any questions :-)

PS: We've worked successfully with other HN members before.

znqon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (August 2015)

Location: International with clients in US, Europe, ME and Asia. HQ in Barcelona.

Remote: YES

Willing to relocate: short-term

Technologies: Mobile (iOS, Android, Windows), Web, Backend (Go, Scala, Java, PHP, Node.js), Design

Résumé/CV: http://mobilejazz.com

Email: stefan@mobilejazz.com

We’ve worked with various folks from HN over the past 3 years with very satisfying outcomes for everyone :-)

znqon Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (July 2015)

SEEKING WORK: Remote (we're a distributed team of high quality mobile & backend engineers)

http://mobilejazz.com

We are Mobile Jazz, a collective of excellent engineers and designers with a strong focus on everything mobile and beyond. We've been doing Android and iOS development from their beginnings in 2008.

Additionally we've a ton of experience in backend development (PHP, Go, Java & Scala) and web frontend development (HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript).

Check us out here: http://mobilejazz.com

If you've any questions please get in touch with me via stefan@mobilejazz.com - happy to answer any questions :-)

PS: We've worked successfully with other HN members before.

znqon EU Telecoms deal: Mobile roaming charges ban in 2017

June 2017 to be precise.

znqon New WikiLeaks Documents Reveal NSA Spied on French Companies

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is a book related to this topic, that I highly recommend reading: http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-Perkins-...

znqon Running a 20 People Business from the Beach

At Mobile Jazz we do have an office in Barcelona, Dubai and Munich. And most people actually enjoy working from the office and go there quite often.

But additionally we do things together, like going a month to Thailand, going for a skiing trip to Austria, then hiking in the Pyrenees and soon we'll go for a kitesurfing trip to Mauritius. So the meatspace bonding is actually very, very strong in our team.

znqon Running a 20 People Business from the Beach

It's difficult to give a general answer to this question, for two reasons:

1) Everyone at MJ can choose how much they work. The the salary is depended on how much you actually want to work. And that can change monthly and in extreme cases even weekly.

2) We share the company profits with all employees. We basically pay out quarterly bonuses, which are depending on the time worked, but multiplied with a "subjective" of how much you've contributed to the overall success and growth of Mobile Jazz.

Even though I can not give you a specific number, I can say that we pay very high for Spanish standards and slightly above average for Germany. But still below what a top engineering in SF would earn. But we might get there at some point. That said, it all depends on where you live.