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znq

1,653 karma · joined October 26, 2010

Probably a bit too obsessed with tech, startups and investing. Easily my most expensive hobby.

stefan (at) stefanklumpp.com | http://stefanklumpp.com/

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znq··on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (March 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 (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.

znq··on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (February 2015)
SEEKING WORK

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 :-)

znq··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (January 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 :-)

znq··on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (December 2014)
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 (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.

znq··on Ask HN: Do you know other firms like Valve or GitHub?
We've regular BBQs. We usually let you guys know. Just come up next time and say hello :-)
znq··on Ask HN: Do you know other firms like Valve or GitHub?
You never really know. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose ;-) But I think in the end people work with us because of our honesty, transparency and the flexibility to adapt to their needs: http://mobilejazz.com/philosophy

We also had cases where potential clients decided to go with a cheaper option and then came back to us to "rescue" the project.

In the end the price itself doesn't say too much. More important is the value you get for that price and that is different for every agency. There are things like quality, being pro-activity and recommending the right things to do (not those that make the agency the most money), experience beyond pure design & development (e.g. marketing apps, getting featured, high App Store ratings and reviews, etc.)

znq··on Ask HN: Do you know other firms like Valve or GitHub?
There's no general number. It depends on the clients. We have huge companies that pay very well, but we also like to work with startups on interesting projects. If we're really interested in a project we usually try to figure out a way to make it work for everyone.
znq··on Ask HN: Do you know other firms like Valve or GitHub?
We've only spoken with people in SF and NYC, because that is where our US network reaches into. However, developers there are too expensive for us (at the moment), so it doesn't make much sense.

That said, we've noticed that many people care much more about the freedom and flexibility we over, rather than having a huge salary, as long as the base salary is fair.

With the bonus we want to encourage everyone to think and act like a co-founder. Take responsibility and action where needed instead of just ignoring problems until the shit hits the fan.

znq··on Ask HN: Do you know other firms like Valve or GitHub?
Depends on the project. We've clients ranging from tiny startups up to huge multinational companies. So we usually adapt to their preferred processes with some recommendations from our side.
znq··on Ask HN: Do you know other firms like Valve or GitHub?
We make those things optional. We're at the moment on Koh Samui with 6 people, while the majority of the team is still in Barcelona and a few others at random other places.

Everyone should do what they think is right for them in their current situation. We just want to give options :-)

znq··on Ask HN: Do you know other firms like Valve or GitHub?
Thanks for that. That's the way we feel as well. We don't have the need to be a huge company. We're quite happy with 20 people and grow slowly now with the right people.
znq··on Ask HN: Do you know other firms like Valve or GitHub?
To be honest, we haven't put too much thought into the business side of things. We've been growing organically from two people (the two founders, I'm one of them) to now 20 people and things always somehow worked out. We're still learning ourselves, though. Pretty much every day.

Revenue and expenses are relatively stable. We've some really good quarters, and some not so good ones. But overall we're profitable. Sometimes we also spend a lot of money on "fun" things without thinking too much and then realize later that we need to be a bit more careful with spending ;-) In particular cash flow issues when waiting for the big corporations to pay their invoices.

In terms of staff, we're actually at the moment not growing that much any more, simply because having too many people makes it difficult to run such a business as the "family & friends" feeling gets lost and we'd probably need to introduce more hierarchy, which we also don't want.

znq··on Ask HN: Do you know other firms like Valve or GitHub?
We're currently at around 53k€ for someone who works full-time, which is slightly above average for Germany and very high for Southern Europe, where most of our people are from.

We also have a few from Latin America, Eastern Europe and Mauritius, where this is also a very good salary.

We weren't looking specifically in those countries nor are we limiting ourselves, but it simply happened that we found people through contacts in our personal networks.

znq··on Ask HN: Do you know other firms like Valve or GitHub?
Not sure if it's in the same bucket as Valve or GitHub: at Mobile Jazz http://mobilejazz.com we're only 20 people (and that makes things a lot easier), but we've quite a different way of working compared to traditional companies:

* We pay fair salaries. For most people in our team it's way more than what they've earned before.

* We pay everyone the same (base) salary. Regardless of their role or title.

* We pay quarterly bonuses based on pro-activity, responsibility and other performance indicators.

* Everyone can work from wherever they like, still many people choose to work from our main office in Barcelona. (For example I work many weeks out of my camper van with 3G/4G connection from beautiful surf locations)

* In theory, everyone can choose how much or how little they want. Not always possible, but we try to make it possible as much as we can.

* We have managers, but they don't demand things. They are responsible that certain things happen, but decisions are being made collaboratively.

* All managers are either engineers or designers. No bullshit managers.

* We don't have a dedicated sales person. All work we get is from word-of-mouth and the first person a new client speaks to is either an engineer or designer (or both).

* We play Mario Kart / StarCraft after lunch ;-)

* We do a lot of sports activities together

* We have a lot of BBQs on our terrace

* We use some of the profits for fun internal experiments (small projects without an expected outcome other than having fun & learning). However, some of them are now actually turning into actual products: http://bugfender.com/

* MJ University: we take online classes together as a group

* MJ Talk: weekly presentation about an interesting topic (not necessarily tech related). For example we had talks about personal finance (investing), achieving happiness, etc.

* We encourage pair programming where it makes sense

* MJ Weekend: once or twice every year we fly everyone to Spain, rent a nice villa with pool and have a good time together. Some pics: http://blog.mobilejazz.cat/work-life-balance-at-mobile-jazz/

* MJ Retreats: we're going to remote places and work there together. At the moment six of us are on an island in Thailand. In February we go skiing in Austria.

* We put a lot of effort in hearing everyone's opinion and feedback and try to put it into action

With all that we've managed to attract and retain incredible talent, but most importantly we have a very pleasant time together.

That said, we're a company optimizing on lifestyle and happiness, rather than profit. So this way of running a business is probably not applicable everywhere.

(Edit: formatting, typos and a few additions)

znq··on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (November 2014)
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 (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.

znq··on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (August 2014)
SEEKING WORK: Remote (we're a distributed team of high quality mobile & backend engineers)

http://mobilejazz.cat

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 (Go, Java & Scala) and web frontend development (HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript).

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

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

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

znq··on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (July 2014)
SEEKING WORK: Remote (we're a distributed team of high quality mobile & backend engineers)

http://mobilejazz.cat

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 (Go, Java & Scala) and web frontend development (HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript).

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

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

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

znq··on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (May 2014)
SEEKING WORK: Remote (we're a distributed team of high quality mobile & backend engineers)

http://mobilejazz.cat

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 (Go, Java & Scala) and web frontend development (HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript).

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

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

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

znq··on Breaking Half of the Telegram Contest
I wish people would not just downvote when they disagree, but state why they disagree.
znq··on Breaking Half of the Telegram Contest
NaCl is open source. The client software itself is considered to be open sourced.

Regardless, if you think that way you can also not trust the TextSecure binary you've downloaded frome the Play Store nor the Android phone you're using.

I guess you've trust someone or start building your own hardware, mobile phone OS and instant messenger and make everyone else use it as well, otherwise there's no one to communicate with. However, those people will be in the same dilemma:can they trust you?

znq··on Breaking Half of the Telegram Contest
What's the problem with Threema? This looks fine to me: https://threema.ch/validation/

Threema seems to be using http://nacl.cr.yp.to/ for anything crypto related.

znq··on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (April 2014)
SEEKING WORK: Remote (we're a distributed team of high quality mobile & backend engineers)

http://mobilejazz.cat

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 (Go, Java & Scala) and web frontend development (HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript).

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

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

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

znq··on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (January 2014)
SEEKING WORK: Remote (we're a distributed team of high quality mobile & backend engineers)

http://mobilejazz.cat

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 (Go, Java & Scala) and web frontend development (HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript).

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

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

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

znq··on 30C3 Keynote with Glenn Greenwald
The app itself is not, but the crypto part is. Also see https://threema.ch/validation/
znq··on 30C3 Recordings
30C3 is the name of this years Chaos Communication Congress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Communication_Congress

Those are the video recordings of day 1-3. (Day 4 is happening today)

znq··on 30C3 Keynote with Glenn Greenwald
A piece of encryption software for mobile instant messaging that is relatively easy to install and use is Threema https://threema.ch/en/. It appears to be quite popular among 30C3 attendees this year. I was also able to convince about 20 of my non-geek friends to use it instead of WhatsApp.

It doesn't support group chat on Android yet (on iOS it does), but it's under development.

The security section on the FAQ page might be interesting to HN readers: https://threema.ch/en/faq.html

(I'm not affiliated with Threema)

znq··on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (November 2013)
SEEKING WORK: Remote (we're a distributed team of high quality mobile & backend engineers)

http://mobilejazz.cat

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 (Go, Java & Scala) and web frontend development (HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript).

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

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

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

znq··on Goodbye Sticky. Hello Ara
There are two more on the backside.
znq··on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (October 2013)
SEEKING WORK: Remote (we're a distributed team of high quality mobile & backend engineers)

http://mobilejazz.cat

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 (Go, Java & Scala) and web frontend development (HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript).

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

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

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

znq··on Surespot app - free and open source encryption for everyone
Also check out https://threema.ch/en/ - it has the same functionality as WhatsApp (except of group chat), but secure/encrypted and is available for Android and iOS.

They're using the NaCl library for cryptography and proper encryption of messages before leaving the phone can be validated here: http://threema.ch/validation/

(I'm not affiliated with Threema, just a regular user who likes the product)

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