Video Of The Week: Choosing Journeys Over Jobs
Last week our portfolio company Jobbatical had a bit of a coming out party and USV announced our investment in the company.
This week’s video is a talk that Jobbatical founder Karoli Hindriks gave at the Slush conference a couple months ago. In her talk she describes why she started Jobbatical and what the company does.
Comments (Archived):
I read about this the other day. Told our CEO in Dublin about it. He said, “oh yeah, we found our latest developer on Jobbatical. Incoming from Brazil to Dublin”.It’s really hard to find developers in Dublin because it’s the EU HQ for just about every major internet company. But Ireland has a great visa program. So we can bring any qualified dev to Dublin.
that is a great story Jim!
Thx
I think Jobbatical is really cool and will appeal to people who want to see the world while they work. But I’m curious: if it’s really hard to get devs in Dublin, why not let them work remotely from anywhere?
Small company and management style, even dev style, like pairing. I’ve always felt that startups function best when everyone is in the same room. No walls. No distance. That said, I work remotely from everyone else in the company. But that’s because a Dublin based company needs a US presence and representation.
I really have always liked to have the technical team work together. That is your core. When we add somebody we make sure they are setup and understand exactly how we do things, and they check in a piece of code the first day.For the first three months they are a net drain on productivity as they get up to speed on how we do things. The next 3 months they are neutral on productivity. After a year then they are full person gain on productivity.I think technical people marginalize themselves when they say they can work remotely.I am sorry yes if you are doing grunt work for some big company where they just want to count FTEs yes you can work remotely.But to really get paid, and I mean like the top managers you have to be a critical part of the system.
Tough to be a leader without being face to face I agree.Just took on a project and the only way I can do it is to simply commute every other week cross country.The good news about commuting is that it’s pretty productive work time. It simply adds cost.
I was just about to ask you about that. Yay!
yup, on the coast on Monday. And looking for a super enterprise PR resource.Let’s do another Monday BYOB and chat about this.
Emailing you now.
It’s not just a leader. I think many jobs like sales can be done remotely. I just think development/support is actually the least able to be done remotely. You want that core team interacting on a real time basis.
Development I’m not an expert on. I’ve done support both ways but invariably there was a hub together with remotes that worked at least for me.
37 Signals thinks differently [1] and wrote a book about it:Remote: Office not required.[1] So do many other companies.IMO it has to do with different kinds of communication skills. Those who are *only* comfortable if they can pop over to the next cube, slap a colleague on the shoulder and discuss some issue, will not find remote ok. Plenty of others do. BTW this works in both big enterprises and startups, for both dev and other jobs. Been part of and seen both.
As I said I think. Certainly not with authority. My preference, and when I pay, my preference counts. 🙂
Good point 🙂
It’s just my belief, not a fact. Could you have people work from home sometimes?? Sure. Could you have one person work remotely? Sure if she had been part of the team before and knew everybody and had mad skills.Can you do it all remote? Yes.But in my opinion, when you are doing hard core development, I mean hard core stuff, not projects. A dedicated team is the way to go.
Got it.
Of course it can be done. That’s been proven.But I’m definitely not in the camp of believing “anyone and everyone” can work remotely. It takes a very unique type of self motivation, that I don’t think the average person has.
Right. I was not claiming that everyone can do it. But there are many companies doing it successfully, and some are even remote-only, by intention (except some of them have team meetups at times, to get the benefits of being face-to-face some).The main things I’ve identified from what I’ve read, heard and done (because I do it myself) on the subject of remote work, is that:a) there has to be company will and desire to make it work, not just individual motivation,b) they then have to actually implement that will – a.k.a. JLM’s “you have to do it to do it” or my equivalent “I call it doing by doing” (TM) 🙂 (from a few posts back on this blog),c) there are a handful of do’s and don’ts [1] that seem to make the difference between successfully pulling it off or not, andd) non-remote work has some non-trivial issues too, for which see [1].( Also, I’ve done both remote and in-person work for good periods of time myself, so have seen some of the pros and cons of both. And in some cases I was the only remote guy, the others were in one location together, and in other cases, the entire team was remote and spread out.)[1] There are many blog posts and company articles that talk about their experiences with remote work (for all or some employees, and whether were successful or not, and some of those posts list what do’s and don’ts made the difference between success and failure for them.All that said, I’m clearly not recommending a wholesale shift to remote work for all or even some. The decision has to be made on a case by case company basis, of course.
why not let them work remotely from anywhere?The other advantage of letting people work remotely is that it’s much easier to get rid of them when business is not good. Of course that also means it’s easier for them (less emotional ties and more opportunity) for them to work elsewhere if they want.
The other advantage is that it can be a world wide opportunity for both employers and employed (if only they open their eyes), or rather, buyers and sellers of talent, to use a more equitable term.Has pros and cons , like any other option.
Remote work doesn’t necessarily mean emotionless work in my opinion. Remote done wrong maybe. For me remote work requires being always available, always connected by text, voice and video. That creates emotional ties.But you are right, cutting a remote job saves a cardboard box.
How cool. You also have a great talent set in South-East Europe that is readily poachable and would find Dublin & Ireland very culturally similar.Reasonable visa policies are so important here, as are reasonable home country taxes for citizen non-residents. Sadly we here in the US seem to have gotten both so horribly wrong.
Thanks, Jim, for a great story and indeed we do love Ireland in Jobbatical!
Love what you’re doing. Even though I’m based in NY, I’ve enjoyed working for companies based in Ljubljana, Calgary, and Dublin over the last 7 years.
It’s not only Millennials who want to be seconded / rotated to other locations for a year.Senior and middle-ranking executives in their 40s and 50s also seek out ways to quit “9 to 5” in home countries and to experience working life for a year elsewhere (better weather, expose their children to other cultures for learning, etc.).Jobbatical taps into the trend of “portfolio / freelance / patchwork” careers which has been happening for over a decade.
Senior and middle-ranking executives in their 40s and 50s also seek out ways to quit “9 to 5” in home countries and to experience working life for a year elsewhere (better weather, expose their children to other cultures for learning, etc.).They show that on the reality show “House Hunters International” sometimes. My wife and I shake our heads when we see that. With kids of a certain age (ask Fred) realistically there are to many moving parts to do that in order to “expose children to other cultures” and actually pull it off. [1][1] And of course one other important factor to consider. Considering the amount of kids that are in divorced households, it would typically be impossible to do this even if you wanted to as a result of the non-custodial spouse and their rights. [2][2] There was a time that my ex wife wanted to move because her new husband had a job opportunity at the company he worked for (you have all heard of it) and I essentially said it would be fine with me if they moved to 2 or 3 cities that I would consider relocating to. (Never happened and now they are older..) But essentially they weren’t going anywhere w/o my blessing.
Re. kids, some parents dispatch them to an English boarding school and then when it’s the vacations they go over to the exotic country.There are all sorts of diverse career arrangements and lifestyles so it’s great Jobbatical facilitates that.The other side of the same coin being remote working, of course. Someone’s based in Estonia and they work on dev projects in NY.https://www.powertofly.com, which is in NYC and was co-founded by wife of Huffington Post’s CTO, does that.
The private boarding school that I went to (I was a day student) had that back in the 70’s. Many children of diplomats and international business people.One example, Lael Brainerd, a Federal Reserve governor grew up in Poland and Germany so I am guessing her parents were diplomats.https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
My baby will be in one of these carriers with me at work and then, when they’re of nursery age, they’ll be integrating+socializing with other kids.Boarding school will happen only if it’s academically exceptional and great for them.
Don’t hold on to your plans too tight – babies have a way of changing them for you 😉
It was tongue in cheek. I’m expecting to be much more inventive when I do have a baby.I can imagine making all sorts of custom devices with Raspberry API / Arduino for them already!
custom devices: Nice! 🙂 – My comment should be taken in perspective – I just had a little girl and it’s an awesome life-changer
Does Jobbatical figure out the visa/legal requirements for the applicants and companies?So many jobs in Malta!
Malta’s where all the online casino/ gaming companies are based
that’s where i’ve lived for the past year.
Sounds nice. How’s the lifestyle?
Sweet easy-going place, great for families, best weather in Europe, English speaking, easy to commute to all over Europe (including Estonia).But we’re moving to Berlin next week to be really in the thick of things– much more tech business, and day trips to Paris, London, and Eastern Europe will be easier for me. Plus I really miss the big city, as a NY’er.I am definitely living the life of a jobbatical!
Cool. Sounds nice. Are you a developer, business side, freelancer?
co-founder of a software development enterprise.Advisor and investor in tech startups.Been doing all that for a long time, just doing it more globally now.
Nice.
It’s nice that you are being so nice (thrice).
I am an entrepreneur too : https://cv_3634362.ejobs.ro/
I saw. Pretty cool place.
Hi William! Currently each employer hiring through Jobbatical takes care of visa and work permit matters individually, but we have plans to take that on in the future!
So essentially this is targeted toward larger and/or established companies or companies familiar with the process.
Actually most of the employers using us so far have been startups! We’ve found that it’s companies that are willing to try out something new and aren’t too set in their ways when it comes to hiring.
Doesn’t surprise me that startups would do this based on the fact that they are typically a) run by young people and b) that they are using other people’s money and c) have all sorts of motivated fresh scrubbed high capacity people that they can assign the job of figuring out what it takes to pull this off. In that case a 10 person “startup” can and will do what a 200 person small wholesale company in the midwest can’t.
I think she was referring to supply not demand, How would someone at a “startup” qualify for a sabbatical ?
Thanks, Rick, for the question. Jobbatical is not actually about a sabbatical and holiday. It is about work. I created the word to re-define what “a job” is. Instead of separating two lives: holiday (which many love) and work (which many do not particularly like) why not merge them? That way one can discover the places of the world they have dreamt of visiting by working in a local team while building something they believe in. I also think that setting a timeframe of a “jobbatical” will increase the productivity as there is a clear indication of a delivery time for both sides whereas the “full-time permanently” is a big fat lie (pardon my French) that gives grounds to procrastination on commitments.
Thanks. I saw that same answer on your support page. But small employers aren’t always very well informed and it takes time to keep up with the laws.Yes, if you can help in these various areas, it would benefit everybody.
Absolutely. It’s quite a maze of bureaucracy standing in the way of companies building the best teams possible.
In the mean time you could simply offer consultants and other professionals that are pre-certified (by Jobbatical) to be able to handle the paperwork and do the handholding for a set price. So to repeat a list of vetted people as well as fixed pricing for the service they provide. That would go a long way to providing the comfort necessary for those that are not in any way familiar with how all of this works and are to busy to spend the time reading and understanding the pitfalls.
It’s going to take a lot of convincing that a young person really wants to go to Rio in order to work.
I know people who wouldn’t need much convincing for this.
Me too. Lots and lots of them.
I mean, from an employer’s point of view 🙂
I know lots and lots of people who don’t have children who will love this because seeing the world is a top priority for them.But I also know people *with* children who would do this. The advent of alternative (mostly, in-home) k-12 education is making this kind of thing possible even for parents of young kids.
A few years ago I knew a french couple which work/travelled around the world with their children. Once they arrived a city, they would get jobs and stay for a year or two and then move again. We asked them about their children, about how they managed this constant change. What they said was that the kids were amazed every time they moved, just a bit sad to say goodbye to their friends, but always looking forward to met new ones. They left Santiago in a van loaded with their things and children to tour southern Chile and Argentina before heading to their destination, Sao Paulo. Awesome and crazy people.
Wow! Fascinating story. I always imagine that families like that must do a lot to create a consistency within the family in order to compensate for the constant change of venue and people.
I agree, not any nuclear family can do do that, they have to be really knit together. On another country or city you don’t have the family and friend network available for support. I guess it is the same that happens when you relocate within the same country.
My whole goal with my own startup is to get more people to travel (& getting kids to experience it at younger ages is a big part of that happening), so very awesome to hear that.My sister and her husband are planning to take their kids for a year of travel in 4-5 years (when the kids are 8-10).
It’s become an informal movement of sorts. They call it digital nomads. Lots of hits and good stories if you search for that term on Twitter.I’ve done it for periods of time myself.
But I also know people *with* children who would do this. The advent of alternative (mostly, in-home) k-12 education is making this kind of thing possible even for parents of young kids.There would appear to be a tiny amount of “long tail of” people who could conceivably do that. But that is what is great about the markets that the Internet opens up. There are so many people out there that you have access to, it’s possible to have an idea like jobbatical and have the market find you and to build a business out of it (not to mention getting funding for it). Back in the day when I started my first business right out of college, the market for what I did was a few miles square in the city that we were located in. There was little reason for businesses in the suburbs to use us, let alone in another city or another country. (At least for what we were doing at the time..)
For the slightly older there’s also the International Baccalaureate program that standardizes curricula across locations and many variants of int’l schools that offer the same/comparable tuition in different locations. It’s fun to adapt to new circumstances – and w/ the state of connective technology today you keep the friends you make (vs. 20 years ago it took a real effort and many a hastily scribbled letter and postcard).
Interesting! Do you know people with kids who attend?
Many international schools in various countries, offer the IB diploma. It’s a good program. I took one exam when in school. Was considered slightly higher level over standard American high school syllabus at the time.
IB is excellent education system / certificate. Arguably better than A levels from England.
Yes! Two of my friends who attended IB themselves have kids who are on that track. Seems like a great alternative to boarding school.
Estonia! Wow!Gee, not far away is Latvia! E.g.,http://elinagaranca.com/wp-…also born behind the Iron Curtain. So, now, the most beautiful women in the world are from the three little Baltic states? Beautiful? Some of them can sing, well, very well, spectacularly well, fantastically well, e.g.,http://www.youtube.com/watc…For Karoli, hmm, maybe closer in, better hair style, maybe some potential there?Ah, Jobbatical, another reason to stay out of software development as a career and another reason to open a pizza shop — get a geographical barrier to entry: As a software developer on Jobbatical, are in competition with someone living in a grass hut next to a beach in Burma. Selling pizzas, are not in competition with anyone more than 20 miles away. So, do well in a radius of 20 miles and can do well until someone figures out how to use a Star Trek transporter beam to send a hot pizza to a computer half way around the world — right, Amazon, the ultimate Prime and way to beat Fedex!So, how to compete in information technology? Not with routine software development skills! Then how? Okay: Secret sauce.Irony Department: A guess is that, net, Jobbatical is mostly just a Web site where the software development looks routine. So, why does Jobbatical need equity funding?
Even though the marginal cost of learning software development is zero the marginal time cost is not zero and most companies do not seem to want to pay for their developers to learn on the job. Therefore there is a pretty sizable moat between potential software developers/CS grads and the developers that companies actually want to hire. If companies ever decide to move funds from salaries for poaching experienced developers to training their own then yeah the workers are screwed, but many companies, especially startups, are running sprints instead of marathons. As long as that dynamic continues software developer jobs are quite safe.
I don’t get the “train your own” part of learning software development. Do you mean take someone with CS skills in one area and have them learn something else? Or do you mean take someone who has never programmed professionally or even nominally as a hobby and teach them to be a productive worker?
They just want people just like the people they have — same everything, path into the industry, languages, APIs, age, GitHub usage, etc.I’ve been programming for decades, but I don’t qualify: One reason, for my startup, I had to select a 4-tuple of an operating system, a relational database management system, a programming language, and a library of software. I selected Windows, SQL Server, Visual Basic .NET, and the .NET Framework. I still believe that for me, that 4-tuple was the least bad option.But that 4-tuple is not popular in the world of Silicon Valley startups: So, much of the Linux community regards Microsoft as evil. Instead, I see Microsoft as awash in tens of billions in cash, awash in tens of thousands of from okay up to really very good workers, lorded over by a very bright, aggressive COB, and ready, willing, able, and eager to do what needs and should be done. They are really good at running really big server farms using their own products — terrific. There are lots of users and lots of on-line Q&A — often with a good question, can get a good conversation and a good answer directly from a well informed Microsoft person, for free — they like good questions. So far I’ve paid Microsoft no more than peanuts. With their BizSpark program, it will still be peanuts until I’m able to pay real money.In the Silicon Valley startup world, Visual Basic .NET is laughed at. The laugh is on Silicon Valley — they are ignorant. Instead, they would insist that C# should be the language of choice if not Lisp, Scheme, F#, Python, Iron Python, Haskell, …. Anything but anything related to old “basic”. The laugh: (1) Visual Basic .NET (VB) and C# differ essentially only in the flavor of syntactic sugar. Moreover, both are essentially equivalent ways to get to the common language runtime (CLR) and .NET Framework (huge collection of classes). For solid reasons, I prefer the VB flavor of sugar as easier to write, read, document, learn, teach, etc. E.g., C# borrows syntax from C where the syntax was deliberately idiosyncratic and especially sparse trying to fit in an old DEC PDP-8 minicomputer with 8KB of main memory. For the syntax, C permitsi = ++j+++++k++It says take j, add 1 to it,take k, add 1 to it, add the results, assign the result to i, add 1 to j, add 1 to k. Gads. I don’t want to base my business on people using such software and getting it right and, then, having more people understand such gibberish and get it right. No thanks. Yes, I might make some mistakes, but I’m not completely stupid.There are some bigger points:Even though I had long since understood all, and more of, the principles, still, it was a lot of overhead to get good with the Microsoft stuff for that 4-tuple. Doing that in the Linux world would have been even more work. Really the Windows and Linux worlds are so different that, if basically understand the principles of computing, which I long since have, very well, thank you, then the work to get, call it, practical facility, with each of those two worlds is essentially independent. So, to work with both world’s, I’d have to essentially double the overhead.And double the overhead all for WTF? For nothing, that’s what. For me, for anything I want to do with my startup, I can do just fine in the Windows world and, sure, likely also in the Linux world. But learning both worlds has little or no value for me now or soon.So, as a startup founder, I get to pick the overhead stuff I need and neglect the rest. As an employee, I have to learn in advance what some employer I don’t yet know wants. Bummer. E.g., so far I’ve seen no reason to use Python. Yes, Python has a lot of packages, and if I want to use one of those maybe I will. I’ll take out a weekend or a week, get good enough with Python, use the package, and go on. Fine.Second, once I’ve paid for the overhead, what do I want to do with it? (A) Hack code for the business and/or technical ideas of someone else or (B) hack code for my own ideas? No joke: (B) all the way.Besides, for (B), I’ve got some huge advantages: My startup and code make crucial, central, powerful, valuable exploitation of partly original applied math I derived that lets me get better results for the data I have. That math is an advantage and a barrier to entry. Silicon Valley has more hen’s teeth than entrepreneurs who could understand that math even if I tried to explain it to them.
Mostly the first part, but I think code bootcamps like General Assembly and Launch Academy have well proven that the second thing is quite viable as well. Among the coders helping me with a project at my weekly code meetup is a guy who was a theater major that worked on Hamilton before doing a bootcamp and moving to Boston. Walked in and was able to fix a bug and submit a pull request in under 1.5 hours.
Ah, Jobbatical, another reason to stay out of software development as a career and another reason to open a pizza shop — get a geographical barrier to entry:Yes. Plus Pizza shop is cash business so the effective tax rate is lower.Selling pizzas, are not in competition with anyone more than 20 miles awayI was thinking of that when I drove past coop city one time. The pizza guy probably has a market lock as there are only so many good retail spaces you can rent there and the density is great. I’ve never been there of course so I don’t know if I am right or not.NYTimes recent article about coop city:http://www.nytimes.com/2016…So, why does Jobbatical need equity funding?Funding allows you to do things that you can’t do when you are using your own money and you have to be right close to 100% of the time with every decision you make. You can iterate and take chances and make mistakes. Key to success in business….
Equity funding: AFAIK, the LP-VC system demands traction significant and growing rapidly. So, for that, have to have the Web site up and running with users and revenue. Then, with just one person, in Estonia, with one midtower case as the server, and revenue, should already be profitable. If it’s growing, then on the way to a lifestyle business.With that business, there’s a lot of opportunity for virality so that, if there is a good business there, then, maybe, now that its working, it should just take off.Can’t see why Jobbatical should be much different than Plenty of Fish — long one guy, 100% owner, two old Dell servers, $10 million year in revenue just from ads just from Google, and recently sold out for ballpark $500 million. Both are an on-line way to connect pairs, male-female or company-employee.Also with Jobbattical, I’m not seeing a barrier to entry. In particular, I see no good reason Facebook or Google couldn’t do such a thing, just as a wave of their hand, heck, even if only for their own software developer recruiting.
Well for one thing the expectations of someone looking to hook up vs. someone looking for a job (and a company – the other side of that transaction is much different). Say even in terms of customer service and answering emails. POF was an entirely different business catering to an entirely different market.You know I found this out when I started out on the Internet. My mind set was based on my previous businesses where you had to keep on top and satisfy customers (that you busted your ass to get through sales and marketing) and if you lost that customer it was a long process to get replacement business. That mentality (which was good for the customer of course) greatly hampered me in doing things on the net on a larger scale where not only are people’s expectations much lower but it is way easier to get a replacement customer. Was a big mistake that I made in short “don’t care more than you have to”.
I never made that mistake, but I’ve made too many others, all similar to yours in that they were based on some implicit devotion to some earlier experience with its particular, strong norms. Ah, old lesson — “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” or, maybe, a little better!Ah, got some good initial data into my software and did some testing. The tests went well! So, the software is working! But I want to make some tweaks, but I don’t want to risk ruining what I have. So, copy what I have to a new directory and make changes there. If I make a mess with the copy, then just return to what I have now and try again! Off to do the copy and make the tweaks! Going live is getting closer and closer!
The first such mistake that I made was actually right out of college when I went to a trade show. It was actually a word processing show (Syntopican or something like that) and it was held in Atlanta. So I bought an airline ticket and flew down to attend the show. Next morning I stood at the hotel waiting for the shuttle bus in the pouring rain. I waited and got soaked. After some time I decided to take a cab. The reason I waited for the shuttle bus was that when I went to gift industries shows with my Dad he always took the bus to save money and not a cab. So that was my imprint. Same way he wouldn’t eat at the hotel in NYC “Orange juice is $2!” he’d eat at the greek diner.To our point my Dad could never understand me buying equipment for my business since in his business merchandise and inventory was how he made money. So it didn’t make sense to him seat of pants especially the idea of buying an expensive machine when you didn’t even have any work for it yet.
Word processing was a biggie with size beyond belief. E.g., early in my career, I was programming on IBM’s biggest scientific computer, with some fantastic floating point speed, at a high end US DoD lab. Soon enough it got to be clear that that computer was being used more for character processing than scientific computing and also heavily for just word processing.Character processing? Sure, the darned software development. After x number of seconds of CPU time, finally get the software running and then run it once, use the fantastic floating point hardware, get the answers, for x/100 seconds of CPU time!Word processing? Sure, office memos, technical papers, documentation.It was a fact, a rock solid, Mount Everest sized economic fact — the US economy was spending gobs, beyond belief, major fraction of GDP, on women, who were much, much better at it than men, sitting at typewriters. They had erasers that would sort of erase typing, carbon paper, white out, IBM’s electric typewriters, with proportional spacing, Selectric typewriters with a little ribbon for white out, etc. Bummer. Cost beyond belief. Major fraction of GDP. Bottleneck for nearly everything else in academics, government, business. Total bummer. Right: Biggie role on 12/7/1941 in the US Embassy of Japan — they couldn’t get the word whacking done.Totally blow the doors off: First IBM PC with a little word processing and a printer, maybe dot matrix, maybe daisy wheel. Even with just diskettes and no hard disk, still totally devastate the whole darned typewriter business. Productivity increases totally off the tops of the charts. We’re talking must have written in the sky.What we have now for writing is astounding, so far ahead of then that tough to believe what we had to do then.For you to go to a convention and get started on word whacking was good foresight.Net, the first $300 million or so of the Bill Gates fortune was basically from replacing typewriters.
Perfect idea for this generation.This quote is so true – “There’s a research that Americans feel very uncomfortable on holiday.” Americans unknowingly fall into this stereotype of our culture by being shamed by society into working every day of their lives.Choose journeys over jobs. Switch it up and work in Bali!
I LOVE this!!!!
Just signed up as an employer and so excited to get our gigs up & welcoming hot tech & content talent to our Melbourne team down under. Forget Bali! Care for an afternoon surf at Bells Beach , amongst the best surfers and breaks in the world (aka the original Point Break movie ) after knocking out that tech sprint in the morning? If we’re talking the same language then ping me now or hang in there for our Jobbatical posting .
What’s the company?I consult for a company based on Melbourne, http://www.homely.com.au
Karoli mentioned an example of bringing in an american marketer to build marketing strategies for tech founders in Finland. That is a great start, market need more than ever to change and be dynamic. Jobbatical could go even further and offer ExchangeYear, american companies send a merketer to Northern Europa, and get back a senior software engineer specialist on product development. Different mindset and great learning to both teams in US and Europa. Why? Because Scandinavia/Baltic countries have a lot of great tech people, but this region often lack people with marketing skills. US have great marketers, and can learn a lot from product innovation from Scandinavia/Baltic countries. So one idea is to create ExchangeYear within Jobbatical 🙂
You take a look at RemoteYear?
Thanks for sharing. Did not know about it. I think there might also be a market for people moving abroad with the family and one destination for one year. Like student exchange programs to learn new language/culture, but instead exchange of entrepreneur/employee to learn new culture and new business skills for one year.
There indeed might… the challenge with that sort of situation is it’s like a once in a lifetime need. So insanely infrequent use case that makes it hard to ever get word of mouth going (without which no one will ever know it exists).
Good point. Obviously not a volume business, but it can create great value. Every exchange candidate will learn a lot during that year. I think that will create new businesses with a deeper understanding of problems to be solved, and you learn different cultures and skillset. One Scandinavian friend of me live in Austin and pays lots of taxes to US, and hire american employees. He never came back after studying. He is a software genious, and was linked with a US marketer. Great business. Two in NY, same story. One in SF, same story. Success rate seem to increase when mixing culture and tech/marketing skills between countries. I might be wrong.
I don’t question the value, at all. I know how much those sorts of experience change lives… creating more of those opportunities is the fundamental mission behind my company, horizonapp.co.
Cool 🙂 If I were younger I would use your app for sure. Good luck!
That’s a pretty good idea.
Hmmm exchanges…with that specific example, it would be tricky because the US has such a ridiculously difficult process for bringing in international talent. But exchanges in general – interesting idea!
Because it is tricky, that is the best reason why I think you should consider to do it! You can get government money too. More nations allow double citizenship. Timing is perfect. The world need talent more than ever to create well paid jobs. US marketing talents would be king on earth in Scandinavia, as we suck big time on marketing strategies. While Scandinavians have great success in US transferring technology and product development strategies.
Impressive talk by Karoli (except, minor point, I wouldn’t say Karoli is a harder word to pronounce than Estonia :).Also checked out their Explore link:https://jobbatical.com/exploreInteresting stuff. A variety of jobs available in a variety of locations.
Love the global connectivity – great for building a global community. Nice Spot USV
One thought: WORK PERMIT/VISA
Hello,Very nice and inspiring video. I like it very much. I like your concept “Choosing Journeys Over Jobs”. Thanks for sharing.Thanks,verajolley639http://www.linkedengineer.com/