#meetcleevio

Remote Work Abroad: 5 Things We Learned From Our Portugal Stay

July 19, 2022

Marta Buryan

Marketer

In the flurry of recent job market trends, one, in particular, stands out - remote work. Fueled by employees’ desire for more freedom and work-life balance, working remotely has become a go-to model in many companies around the world. At Cleevio, we took remote work to the next level and went beyond just working from home - we offered our team the opportunity to work from a comfortable villa at the ocean coast of Portugal for 3 whole months!

Here’s what we learned from the experience:

Staying on top of trends is a given at Cleevio.

We keep up-to-date with the latest technologies, industry news, and developments - and it’s no different when it comes to the most recent work trends.

Two years ago, we introduced a hybrid work model. It allowed us to meet and work together in the office while providing space for concentration and deep work at home office.

The model worked great - but we didn’t want to stop there.

That’s why this year we introduced a unique company benefit: the possibility to work from a spacious villa at the Portuguese coast for 3 whole months.

Cleevio in Portugal, a.k.a. Our Workation Setup

So why exactly did you introduce remote work abroad, you might ask.

There were a couple of reasons: we wanted to improve our teams’ work-life balance, enable them to get to know each other better and combine work with play in a new setting.

So when the opportunity arose to rent a 10-people villa in the historic town of Aljezur, Portugal, we jumped right on it.

We decided to rent the villa for 3 months in the winter/spring season (February - April) to escape the cold and dark Czech winter, and enjoy a milder oceanic climate. Plus, the turn of winter and spring is the prime surf season in Portugal, and we definitely wanted to catch some waves!

On top of that, the villa offered great working conditions. Equipped with high speed Internet, spacious common areas, and a large table that fit multiple monitors, the place had everything we needed to be able to work on our projects effectively.

Oh, and did we mention the solar-heated pool and barbecue terrace?

Over the 12 weeks that the villa was available, 33 people from 9 teams visited and stayed on average between 7 and 14 days, wrote hundreds of lines of code together, and made tons of unforgettable memories!

Here’s what our stay in Villa Berenika looked like:

Remote Working Abroad: What We Learned

We’ve learned a lot from our first experience working remotely from abroad.

Here are our top 5 takeaways:

1. We stayed ahead of the trends in an increasingly remote work oriented industry

While remote work is growing increasingly more common, very often it means that employees can simply work from home.

A lot of businesses still don’t allow for remote work from a different country, be it because of their lack of flexibility, office-based culture or legal and tax issues.

That’s why offering the benefit of working from Portugal to our mostly Czechia-based employees set us apart from others. We were able to not just act on, but stay ahead of the trends, and offer our teams a truly unique experience - which is what Cleevio is all about!

2. We improved well-being, work-life balance, and creativity

After over two years of pandemic-triggered restrictions and uncertainty, it’s only natural that a lot of us were feeling strained.

The opportunity to work and have fun together with our teammates in a relaxed, picturesque setting of Aljezur helped address this issue. It provided an environment where we could simply decompress and enjoy the moment - which, in turn, translated to an improved sense of well-being and work-life balance.

The setting had a positive impact on our creativity too. After all, who wouldn’t be bursting with ideas if given the opportunity to work by a pool, at the beach, or on top of a cliff?

3. We appealed to a large pool of talents

Because the possibility of remote work from abroad is a unique benefit, we were able to stand out to potential job candidates.

Throughout the time the villa was available, we promoted it across our social media channels and in active job postings. The content featuring the villa garnered more engagement compared to other posts, and sparked questions from our target hiring audience which proves that the benefit resonated with the right crowd.

4. We enriched company culture and strengthened team relationships

This year was the first one where we introduced the opportunity to work remotely from abroad. And we quickly noticed how much of an impact it had on our culture. It allowed our teams to get to know each other better, experience new things together, and make great memories - all of which strengthened our bonds and friendships.

The Portugal villa became a popular topic at Cleevio. The visitors have started their own Slack channel where they shared activity updates, photos and videos of their stay on a daily basis. There were also lots of stories shared in person in the office which made us all feel a part of this adventure.

5. We got the job done!

Even though we were almost 3,000 kms away from Cleevio’s headquarters in Prague, Czech Republic, we stayed focused on our projects and got the job done.

Yes, we had access to a pool, barbecue terrace, breathtaking views, and perfect surfing waves - but all of this did not distract us from our goals.

We remained organized and aligned on our top priority: helping our clients grow and succeed, no matter where we are.

The Takeaway

Being able to work together from Portugal was a great experience that taught us a lot.

Staying ahead of the remote work trends, appealing to new talents, and enriching our company culture were just some of things that the “Portuguese workation” allowed us to accomplish.

Without this initiative, we wouldn’t have learned as much about our company and each other - which is why we’re glad that we’ve taken this step.

If you’re not sure if your business should go remote in a different country, we would say a strong yes! Test the idea and see how it works for your business, and who knows, maybe it will become a new staple in your organization?

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What’s next?

Let’s continue the conversation.

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Project

1 min read

Pivot Like a Pro: Startup Strategies for Success

Cleevio

Company News

Discover the highlights from our recent exclusive panel discussion featuring Roman Stanek, CEO of GoodData, alongside industry leader Milo Poplar and our Head of North America, Filip Orth.

The event provided valuable insights into global-scale product building and entrepreneurial success. Dive into the key takeaways and memorable moments from this engaging discussion, where experienced pioneers shared their wisdom and expertise on the AI landscape.

We were thrilled to have Roman Stanek and his impressive track record in building successful startups. His journey began with the acquisition of NetBeans by Sun Microsystems in 1999, followed by the acquisition of Systinet by Hewlett Packard in 2006. Along the way, his ventures received support from renowned VC funds like a16z, Intel Capital, and General Catalyst.

Outsourcing

During the event, our discussions delved deeply into the strategies startups can employ to enhance efficiency through outsourcing across various operational domains. We explored how outsourcing can serve as a vital tool in mitigating the challenges inherent in the dynamic startup landscape. Among others, these challenges encompass navigating a tough fundraising environment and contending with fierce competition in virtually every industry.

Agility and adaptability

Central to our discussions was the imperative for startup founders to remain agile and adaptable in the face of evolving circumstances. We underscored the critical importance of being responsive to market shifts and customer demands, emphasizing the need for continual adjustment to ensure the longevity and success of their ventures.

Operational effectively

The ability to pivot effectively is essential, particularly when considering the quest for operational efficiency. In this context, leveraging outsourcing capabilities becomes paramount, whether it is in technological development, sales, marketing, or legal compliance. This strategic approach is especially pertinent in the current landscape, where fundraising endeavors are meeting with increased difficulty, and access to capital is more constrained than it was just two years ago.

Milo Poplar, Co-founder of Eldison during presentation

We intend to make this event a regular occurrence. We aim to host Founders’ Lounge regularly, each time focusing on a different theme and bringing in a special guest who will share insights from their entrepreneurial journey.

Are you a founder, investor, CTO or decision-maker in the technological startup environment seeking to accelerate your growth and gain a competitive edge in the market? Watch our LinkedIn for future invites!

Development

1 min read

Crash-Proofing Your Code: Setting Up Sentry on Android

Tomáš Dvořáček

Senior Android Developer

Welcome back! As promised, we are here with the second part of the Crash-proofing series. This time, we will show you how to set up Sentry for the Android platform and some nice-to-have stuff as a bonus.

Let's begin!

Create sentry.properties file inside your Android project’s root folder

Initial setup in Sentry Admin

These are a few things you need to do before implementing Sentry Android SDK.

Create a new project in Sentry. Give this project some appropriate name like your-project-android
Then go to Settings → Projects → Your new Project → General Settings

You should see the name of your project. This is your project_id. In sentry.properties, replace <project_id> with it
Then go to Organization settings → General Settings, copy your organisation_slug and replace <organisation_slug> inside sentry.properties

Then go to User and tokens and create new Token. You can add every permission to it for a start but its better to check every permission and decide for yourself what is needed.

Then copy your new auth token and replace <auth_token> with it inside sentry.properties.Sentry can upload ProGuard mapping files for you and needs this auth token. Ignore this if you don’t care about ProGuard
Your sentry.properties should be filled now.
Then go to Settings → Projects → Your new Project → Client Key (DSN)
Get your DSN link and save it somewhere for now.

Now you can return to your Android Project

Adding sentry to project

A full tutorial is on this page. Sentry can set itself with a command, but if you prefer a manual approach or have problems, follow the instructions below or this page. Sentry will also give you a direct link for setup in Android Studio (https://sentry.io/organizations/XXX/projects/YYY/getting-started/)

Add this to your main module build.gradle

Open your application class and initiate Sentry

Let’s explore what each line does:

This line applies the environment to the issue. If you use several build flavors like development and production, you can then easily filter specific flavors.

These lines set the percentage value of how many traces to log. 100% means everything is logged. It’s not recommended to collect everything in a production environment; however, e.g., on development, it’s a good thing since testers could find bugs. In our example, we set the percentage on the release version to 10%.

Open your AndroidManifest.xml file inside your main module and insert this

If you don’t want to use CI/CD and just hardcode your DSN, replace ${sentryDsnUrl} with your collected DSN link.

Open app’s build.gradle and setup DSN there as well

Add Sentry gradle plugin to project

This code enables sentry gradle plugin. This prepares scripts for your convenience like uploading aab to sentry with proguard mapping files.

Nice things to know

Assign someone to new issue

Every issue in Sentry can be assigned to someone and you can do that manually or automatically with rules.

Create Jira issue directly from Sentry

If you setup the Jira integration mentioned in the previous article, Sentry enables you to quickly and easily create Jira issues from the issue itself.

Discover page

Discover page let’s you quickly query in all yours collected data so you can answer analytics questions or analyse potential health issues in your project. You can use predefined queries or create, edit and delete your own queries. It’s really powerful tool but it’s limited only to Trial and Business Plan.

Pluggins for Sentry

Sentry for Android offers plugins which let’s you automatically collect more specific data. For example:

Some stuff like Android Fragments, okHttp events and logcat are already logged automatically from Sentry version 3.1.0.

In order to disable them, change the sentry config in the project’s build.gradle.

OkHttp plugin

Like said above, from Sentry 3.1.0, Sentry will automatically log OkHttp event via manipulating your final bytecode and inserting SentryOkHttpInterceptor. This will create breadcrumbs which would look like this:

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If you use Sentry 3.11.0+, Sentry will also insert SentryOkHttpEventListener which will log even more data from http requests. Everything will be logged with logcat:

Thank you for diving into the second part of our series. If you have any questions, feel free to catch up or reach out.

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#meetcleevio

1 min read

From Code to Culture: The Backbone of Our Backend Team

Přemysl Rucký

Backend Lead

Hey there! Curious about what makes our backend team tick? Let me spill the beans on what keeps us running at Cleevio.

Team Contract: Our Secret Sauce

Ever heard of a team contract? It's like our BE team's rulebook but cooler. We all chipped in to create this gem, covering everything from our core values to nifty Slack etiquettes (like no-reply expectations after 4 PM). It's not just a newbie guide; even our weathered developers learn a thing or two from it.

Bringing the Team Together

With team members scattered across Prague, Brno, and beyond borders, building bonds ain't easy, but we're not ones to back down from a challenge. That's why we came up with Backend Onsite Day. Originally a monthly affair, we scaled it back to every two months to make it work for everyone. It's a chance to catch up, brainstorm, and maybe even grab a beer together.

Sharing Know-How Like a Boss

We take knowledge sharing seriously. Our weekly BE meetings aren't just about updates and project briefs - they are also our chance to pick each other's brains. Plus, we've got knowledge base packed with tech insights and project learnings. It's like having a cheat sheet for all things backend.

Reflect, Refine, Repeat

We're all about improvement. That's why we love our team retrospectives. Just recently, at the start of 2024, we huddled up for about an hour to chat about how things were going. Turns out, everyone is pretty happy being part of the team, which is great to hear - but we also came up with some ideas to make things even better next time. It's all about celebrating wins and figuring out how we can crush it even more in the future.

Growing Together

Personal growth is big on our agenda. Regular performance reviews and one-on-one chats keep us on track. And with internal training programs, education budgets, and buddy systems in place, we're all set to level up together.

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At the end of the day, it all comes down to communication. Whether it's a quick Slack chat or a face-to-face meeting, keeping the lines of communication open is what keeps our team humming.

So there you have it—our backend team's recipe for success. With a healthy dose of teamwork, communication, and a sprinkle of resilience, there's no limit to what we can achieve together at Cleevio.

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