Clearview · Remote Since Forever

The most Flexible AWS Savings Plan

2024-03-11T01:12:09+01:00

AWS provides several ways to reduce your cost but no other program is as flexible as the Compute Saving Plan. This article covers what you need to know to successfully and efficiently use the AWS savings program.

What are Savings Plans

Put plainly, all AWS cost-saving plans offer cost reductions compared to On-Demand prices, in exchange for a long-term commitment. That commitment is 1 or 3 years long and is an hourly spend commitment type.

AWS provides three types of Savings Plans:

Compute Savings Plans,
EC2 Instance Savings Plans, and
Amazon SageMaker Savings Plans.

The focus of this article is on the most flexible type of savings plan which is the Compute Savings Plan.

Research, Research, Research

The first step we need to take is to see if there are any Recommendations. This page might tell you what AWS recommends to purchase. Not everyone gets this kind of suggestion as they are based on your usage.

Follow the next example to understand how to purchase a Compute Savings Plan.

A Simple Example: Get a Discount on a Single t4g.micro EC2 Instance

This is a straightforward example. In this example, the commitment is for 1 year in Europe (Ireland), the eu-west-1 region.

A very important note is to know that discounts vary from Region to Region so do your research beforehand.

Step 1: Check Your Bill

Find your bill in the AWS console. You can see something like this.

AWS Bill screenshot made by the author.

We identified that we are paying On-Demand prices for a t4g.micro EC2 instance.

Step 2: Identify the Savings Rate in Your Region

Find out in which region your EC2 instance is hosted. After that access the table at Savings Plan Compute Pricing page. That page will show you a table like the one below.

AWS Savings Plan Compute Pricing Page screenshot made by the author.

The goal is to get a discount on the usage of a t4g.micro EC2 instance.

On-Demand rate — $0.0092 * 720 hours (hours in a 30-day month) = $6.624
Savings Plans rate — $0.0075 * 720 hours (hours in a 30-day month) = $5.62500
Savings over On-Demand — 18%

If you commit to a 3-year term the savings will be 42% instead of 18% for the Ireland Region.

Step 3: Purchase a Plan

So the purchase plan will look like this.

AWS Savings Plan Purchase screenshot made by the author.

AWS Savings Plan Cart screenshot made by the author.

Important notes:

Do not purchase large plans and over-commit.
Purchase small plans and then monitor the coverage.
If you need more coverage at a later period in time you can purchase additional savings plans.

The hourly commitment rate is the one after the discount — the Savings Plans Rate.

Reports Analysis

Utilization Report

Below you can see a sample utilization report for a single day after the savings plan has been purchased.

AWS Utilization report screenshot made by the author.

Coverage Reports

Under the “Billing and Cost Management / Savings Plan” menu, you can find the Coverage report. Here you can get information about how much of your spending has been covered by a savings plan during a certain period. You get information such as Average coverage, Potential monthly savings vs On-Demand, and On-Demand spend not covered.

Before Creating a Savings Plan

This is an example of a Coverage report showing no active Savings plan. It has yet to be activated.

AWS Coverage report screenshot made by the author.

After Creating a Savings Plan

This is an example of a Coverage report that shows an active Savings plan with a coverage of 43%

AWS Coverage report screenshot made by the author.

It is very difficult to get 100% coverage so start with 50% and iterate.

Do Your Research First

As described above Compute Savings Plan represents a flexible savings plan that supports multiple regions, and services and you commit to a dollar amount instead of an instance type or size. But there are dangers as if you calculate wrong then you are stuck paying that committed dollar amount.

If you purchase Savings Plans you commit to a certain dollar amount on a period and you can not cancel. Therefore be careful and do your research first before committing to any kind of Savings Plan.

Clearview is now a verified member of the Pangea community

2022-05-03T02:59:20+02:00

We are very proud to announce that the Clearview team has successfully verified as a Pangea vendor.

We are excited to join an elite community of the top 7% of software engineering vendors. This brings us closer to our goal of empowering visionary scalers to make a global difference — and, by doing so, be the most passionately referred agency in the software engineering space.

Our relationship with Pangea began as a step towards expanding into the wider community of remote and distributed software teams. Unquestionably, scaling companies need optimized access to global talent to reach ever-loftier goals and stay competitive in this stridently transformative era. Pangea provided us with an opportunity to be a part of the top 7% of global software engineering vendors.

Verification Process

The verification process was very thorough and required us to document and streamline our policies. It also gave our teams a chance to become aligned on what story we were choosing to tell the world, about who we are and where we are going.

With the guidelines provided by Pangea, we were able to successfully iterate our existing processes and come up with new ones to provide potential clients with unparalleled transparency.

Clearview + Pangea, a winning partnership

Clearview was founded on the idea that autonomy and agency are major keys to sustaining nourishing work in the context of a full and unique life. To enjoy this freedom, we demonstrate rock-solid accountability and follow through on our commitments to our teammates and our clients. This autonomy has been proven to positively impact our team's health metrics. Our team health score is 8.8/10.0 where our highest scores were 9.0 for peer rapport and 8.9 for management rapport, personal growth, and culture. We work with an eye toward the sustainability of our health, our relationships inside and outside of work, our self-relationship, and our personal goals.

“The Clearview team is a very supportive group of knowledgeable individuals, led by visionary management. We are able to give our best in a creative, healthy environment. There’s plenty of room and support for personal growth in a variety of directions — and all the while we’re able to maintain a healthy and positive work-life balance.” — Aid Arslanagic, Senior Software Engineer @ Clearview

In a field that’s getting more saturated by the day, authentic connection is our superpower. We prioritize a constant flow of communication. We maintain impartiality, empathy, and openness to multiple experiences and perspectives. We ask questions first. We actively participate in creating a space of emotional safety and wide openness to growth.

Project Impact

The impact we have on the projects we tackle represents much of the impact we have on the world. We don’t constrain possibility. We stay wide-eyed and curious about clients, about projects, about coworkers, and ideas. This curiosity for our clients and their projects shines through in the client insights derived by Pangea, our score for Project Management is 9.3/10 and 8.7/10 for quality assurance, technical expertise, and the customer path.

“ASIFA has worked with Clearview from the beginning of our transition from a paper only company into the digital world. We have trusted them to build not only our membership base but also the platform for our complex annual event, the Annie Awards.” — Frank Gladstone, Chairman of the Board @ ASIFA-Hollywood

The Clearview team during our 2020 Summit in Bali

Autonomy, connection & impact.

These are the lodestars that guide all the ways we show up in our work and for each other. Success can only come with constant improvement and with the insights that Pangea has provided about our business we are better equipped to easily identify the areas that need our attention.

We hope that our verified Pangea profile will support our growth as a company, help us continue to attract top talent, and in turn help our clients scale smarter.

40 Miles Later

2021-05-10T08:52:04+02:00

Finding a healthy work-life balance is important, and no one knows that better than Annette O’Neil, Head of Operations here at Clearview. It ensures both your physical and mental well-being and even helps to increase productivity. Sounds like a winner!

Image by Andreas Klassen on Unsplash

When Annette isn’t juggling various projects at Clearview Team, she is delving into an action-packed life. And speaking of which …

The Bike Ride

A fresh Saturday morning in February is a good day as any to take your two wheels and go on a bike ride. This wasn’t just any bike ride though — we’re talking about a cross-country adventure with the wind in your hair and a whole lot of determination.

40 miles from Manchester to Liverpool in 11 hours is quite an achievement and a fantastic workout. A well-deserved beverage, a bite to eat, and memories to share more than makeup for a few stiff muscles.

Image by — Max Bohme on Unsplash

“Never get so busy making a living, that you forget to make a life”

-Dolly Parton

How to Be ✅ Cheap, ✅ Fast and ✅ Good

2021-04-19T19:50:38+02:00

There is an Art to Being ✅ Cheap, ✅ Fast, and ✅ Good

This is why we ditched the unreliable freelance model and managed to offer access to a talent pool that checks all three boxes

We know what you’re thinking: Nooooot possible. Right? Ha. We thought so.

Pro tip: It is, with a slight twist.

We’ve been riding that twist to build our clients’ tech-side strategy for many, many moons.

Make no mistake: There’s an art to it. The not-so-secret secret is that it’s a collaborative art.

The Starts

Lots of art starts with the equivalent of a stick figure, and ours is certainly one of them. Specifically, our art started with the drawing of a single line, right down the middle of talent. After all, bringing on and managing great software engineers was previously done in two ways: (a) bringing in mercenary freelancers or (b) hiring folks into an employee relationship for the long haul.

Both models have shown significant points of failure at this point in the continual evolution of software eating the world. An evolution was urgently required, and that evolution can be envisaged just like so:

Tricky, eh? That middle bit is harsh.

Well, to understand where Clearview flips the table on developer talent, change the identifying information of the three rings in play to read like this instead…

Flexible
Reliable
Cost-efficient

… and take a look at where the previous two iterations of scaling — the freelance model and the employee model — fall on the diagram.

The Freelance Model

First, is the freelance model. Freelancers are flexible and — at least more so than employees — cost-effective. They are not, however, reliable. They are legendarily unreliable. We don’t need to tell you that freelancer disappearing acts have left an army of projects dead on the field. We’re guessing you want yours to fight another day. Right?

Employee Model

Then, the employee model. Employees, for their part, are reliable, but they certainly aren’t cost-effective. And they’re only scalable if you have the cash and infrastructure to invest in not only their initial onboarding but also their ongoing career development. If you have those kinds of resources, more power to you — but, since you’re here, we’re guessing you don’t. And that’s okay.

The Clearview Model

What Clearview offers is access to a talent pool that actually checks all three boxes. For a growing operation, there’s no better way to find and onboard flexible talent efficiently without sacrificing quality or dropping any balls. The monthly cost of working with Clearview developers is often on par with that of bringing in individual freelancers. Still, the benefits far outstrip that of the revolving-door freelance circus:

Image by Dirk Wouters from Pixabay

● Freelancers are singular. Clearview is plural. When you work with Clearview, the entire team stands behind each teammate — knowledge-sharing and pitching in to iterate each project.

● Freelancers disappear. Clearviewers persist. When life happens, freelancers often drift into radio silence. Clearviewers back each other up to prevent interruptions and costly delays.

● Freelancers lean on your guidance. Clearview self-manages. We bring processes and systems for everything from onboarding to project management, lifting significant weight from your operational shoulders. The result is that there’s less oversight needed from your side and that you’re freer to do the big thinking your project requires.

This works. Reliably.

It is not, however, the kind of magic that happens without collaboration. Working with Clearview helps you to engage in a process that bubbles with the kind of synergistic success you’re aiming for.

How to Get Clear: A Three-Step Process

When someone from a scaling company first reaches out to us, it’s very commonplace that they haven’t worked with contract engineers before. It’s our consultancy on all this product and software engineering that sets us apart, and we’ll be right there with you from step one.

1. We’ll help determine your first-level needs.

These are the easy-to-point-at requirements of the job — the bullet points that would (or already do) appear on a job listing.

We’ll start here:

● Do you already know what roles you need to fill, or do you need help determining what actors will march out onto the stage of your startup?

● Do you need someone to design the product’s entire architecture? A UI designer to wireframe the interface? Data engineering?

● What’s your tech stack? (We can help even — especially — if you haven’t decided.)

Having a solid framework here sets proper expectations right from the start. Our team is ready to help with this:

Image by Alex Kotliarskyi from Unsplash

2. We’ll help determine your all-important second-level needs.

These are the subtler criteria that set a distinctive tone for each role: the organizational structure within which the developers are meant to fit, the self-direction they are meant to express, and the processes they are meant to either engage or build.

● Do you need developers to step in and own a repeatable process that you or your team has already built, or someone to do a one-off project with no established processes?

● Do you already have management in place for this role/these roles, or do you need to bring in a fully-fledged small, self-directed team?

● What persons or groups of persons will be decision-making for the project, and how are they going to communicate those needs to the new team (or teammate/s)? Figure out where your new teammates will sit on your org chart.

These “second-level” considerations will have a major impact on who you bring in, at what budget, and with what timeline expectation. The determinations here will set our search parameters as much as the choice of tech stack. We will help guide you through.

3. We’ll help determine your monthly budget.

Since Clearview works based on monthly resources, you’ll need to know how much to budget for each month of developer work. Again, this is something that Clearview can help you plan — especially if we’ve been involved from the needs-determination stage. Here, you’ll find that a healthy dose of realism helps — but we’re very sure that you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the quality-price matrix of our Clearview team — — and the guardrails we’re able to help you set.

The Pause

2021-04-19T19:39:07+02:00

Photo by Gantas Vaičiulėnas on Unsplash

I find myself staring at my laptop screen, a half-written email in front of me, and an endless to-do list swirling around in my head. The all-too-familiar urge to just walk away from it all arises and I immediately beat it back with thoughts of “I have so much that needs to be done.” I sat there completely ineffective and paralyzed by these two conflicting thoughts.

My thoughts shift to the well-intentioned self-care regime I had so carefully detailed in my journal, and then completely ignored. I didn’t have time for it now. I will start tomorrow.

Then there are another 10 minutes spent struggling with that same email, beating myself up inside because what should be a simple task continues to elude me.

The dog is staring at me (and has been for some time), so I finally put my laptop down, let her out, and sat on the bench outside.

I close my eyes and start to breathe. I can feel how tense my body is.

What the hell is going on with my jaw?

Another breath.

I need to get back to work, I don’t have time for this.

I can hear the birds singing in the trees. The cold spring air is fresh against my face. A few more moments of this. Then a few more.

Starting to remember something, I walk inside to pick up a book from a friend and I find these words:

“Often the moment when we most need to pause is exactly when it feels most intolerable to do so.
As happens in any addiction, the behaviours we use to keep us from pain only fuel our suffering.
The unfaced and unfelt parts of our psyche are the source of all neurosis and suffering.”

- Radical Acceptance — Tara Brach

When I finally got back to that email, I knew exactly what I needed to say — but it doesn’t matter anymore. The faceless name on the other side of the communication no longer needs my assistance — or even my response. They’ve figured out their issue on their own. As I delete that cursed draft I wonder: how many other of my perceived problems could be solved with a simple pause?

The Two-Word Magic Spell for Product Success

2020-11-05T10:00:00+01:00

We know this already: To build a great project, you don't just need to have a small (sometimes, very small) army of solid devs. You need to refine the project scope. Sure!, you say… But what does that mean?

Creating new software can be a massive undertaking that can take years of development. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to be the first to a solution that's going to be hands-down better than what's already out there.

We're here to tell you how.

Like most magic spells, it's short. It's powerful. And it's harder (but simpler) to pull off than you might dare to imagine.

Choose Wisely

When you are going to do any kind of project, it pays to focus on one thing that your solution can solve. This thing needs to be so important that people will cheerfully pay for it — or abandon using whatever they have been otherwise using. Product-market fit is defined by the fact that customers are pulling it out of your hands without convincing. Look for that magic.

They Gotta Want You. Bad.

To get people to switch — especially for a solution where an existing solution already exists in strong standing in the market and the switching costs (in cash and time alike) are extremely high, you have to be 10 times better than what the current solution is for most adoptees to switch to what you're hawkin'.

So how do you make sure you are on the right track?

Two Words: Magnetic Specificity.

Determine the one, single-use case that you are trying to solve and then focus all of your efforts on that.

You can expand from there, but start from that point or all is, essentially, already lost. Specificity is what magnetizes your market to your side, and that is the only way you're going to win this thing.

Push On

The right kind of tool might never be, technically, "done." There will always be new or additional integrations. Plenty of tools can be so shot through with tempting rabbit holes that it'll be impossible for you to scope it all out completely until you start looking at the scale of the problem you are trying to solve.

Don't let that faze you.

If you have that product-market magic, you're unstoppable.

Photo by Guille Álvarez on Unsplash

How to Reach Full Speed At Clearview

2020-10-06T11:00:00+02:00

You have power under your hood…but you have to get in the driver's seat.

There is no set formula; no pre-ordained path for you to take; and there are no limits — but, to hit your top gear here, you need to take initiative. We are happy to help you grow in any direction you like, but your growth is your responsibility.

Here's how to be proactive about your growth at Clearview. Go ahead: Take it for a drive.

1. Draw your own map.

Before you get going, you need to decide on a destination. Get really clear on what you want to achieve and — very importantly — why you want to achieve it.

Here's a pro tip: Make sure your "why" is strongly connected to your desires, dreams, and values, not just a job title or an arbitrary salary figure. Your success is going to be built out of your day-to-day choices, and the wisest, most motivating choices are the ones aligned with that which you identify as your purpose, your core self, and your highest personal values. Taking the responsibility to meet your goal will be challenging; this method will recruit your whole heart and mind to get you there.

Ask for advice from mentors inside and outside Clearview to help you draw your roadmap. Input from people who have already succeeded where you aim to succeed is especially illuminating.

2. Push your own gas pedal.

We want you to have what you need to grow as a Clearviewer, but we can't give it to you if you don't initiate the process and show follow-through.

If you need to update your tech stack to get where you're going, determine exactly the best way for you to do that within a realistic time frame that challenges you.

Pick a mentor who inspires you and commit to that person that you will be accountable for your goals.

Take a look at the other projects Clearview is working on. Is there a project you're more excited about than the one you're on? Start talking to Brett, Jasmin, and Annette about a lateral move.

3. Roll down the windows and blast your radio.

Your goals — and your desire to grow — should be a surprise neither to your fellow Clearviewers nor to leadership. Make sure you're not keeping secret what you're doing to grow — professionally and personally — and where you stand. That way, when new projects come up, you'll be ready to take them on.

You'll be going, full speed ahead, in the direction of your dreams — and that's exactly what we want for you.

The Next Adventure

2020-09-18T11:00:00+02:00

Head of Operations Annette O'Neil is about to get on a plane. Her task: was to set up Clearview's first overseas office. The place: Manchester, England.

Are you one of those folks who're scratching their head and thinking "uh…England? Why not London?" Well then. Pull up a chair and let us brew you a strong, Northern cuppa, my friend. There are several good reasons we're setting our roots in the North, and Annette's about to tell you why we're walking straight into the champagne supernova of startup culture that is Manchester.

You're our wonderwall, Bee City.

Interviewer: Okay, let's start at the beginning. If Clearview is a fully remote company, why do you need to, like, find another office? Isn't that a lot of work for not a lot of return?

Annette: You know what, it is a lot of work. I'm already spinning with the paperwork and taxes I've already had to do, and there's plenty more to come.

Even with that said, the fact is that, even in a theoretically location-agnostic field, location is still everything. We've been around long enough as a fully remote company to know that in-person stuff isn't necessary all the time but it is important — with clients, with prospective business, and with each other as a team of, like, actual human people. It's an investment of time and resources, but we're confident in the importance of that investment.

We have a growing family of developers in Europe. Even our CTO is based in Sarajevo. We're looking to take on more developers from this region, as well as South Africa, within the next year. Having a place that's reasonably convenient for all of the above to meet up and collaborate that feels like "home turf" is going to be golden. Also, a home base in Manchester will mean that I will be leading operations from a friendlier time zone.

We're also looking directly at growing the business in the greater European region. Since software development — especially, ecosystem — projects are often complex, long-tailed, variable, and critical to the client's strategic future, the communication channels between client and developer have to be strong and cohesive. Presence in the UK provides a spatial platform to facilitate that connection.

Clearview's new home: Media City UK. Photo credit: Arran Bee, Millennium Bridge, Salford Quays (license)

Interviewer: Why now? With COVID and Brexit, isn't this a weird time to be setting up shop in the UK?

Annette: Actually, with all that's going on, we think Clearview can offer a lot more value right now in the UK than ever before. We're actively moving to expand into the growing market for software ecosystem development that's been engendered by the twin digital-driving phenomena of COVID and Brexit. We're betting that a physical presence in the heart of Manchester's rapidly expanding tech hub will provide a growth-rich springboard from which to generate new business, while our inherently remote nature will serve clients across much wider geography as Britain's geopolitical and geoeconomic landscape changes.

We're reasonably sure that the soil is only going to get richer in the UK for elite staff aug businesses like ours. Globally, KPMG predicts something like a 41% increase in the use of offshore/nearshore for IT application maintenance and development by 2021 — squarely in our wheelhouse. The UK is currently the world's second-largest market for ITO outsourcing as well as Europe's top-scaling tech nation. Globally, it's second only to the U.S. and capturing a little over 5% of the world's market share. And it's going to need to extend its digital reach even further to clear the twin COVID/Brexit hurdle. We want to be there when that happens.

Even if the current climate constricts the astronomic growth the tech space has been seeing in the past handful of years, there will be plenty of room for a lean, powerful outfit like Clearview to grow.

Source: Tech Nation and Dealroom, 2020. "VC investment change (2018–2019) by stage of growth shows a mature, scaling UK ecosystem. Consistent increases, as opposed to volatile increases and decreases, illustrate the stability of the UK tech sector relative to some other European nations, where a lower baseline of investment is seen at each stage of company growth."

Interviewer: Clearview isn't marketing on price. Won't clients be looking for the cheapest possible option right now?

Annette: The idea that outsourcing development and engineering is only done for cost is a 2000's thing, actually. Sure, cost optimization is still an important criterion for outsourcing, but companies don't make decisions based on that — certainly not rising tech stars. Right now, the surveys are crystal clear that cost-cutting isn't even in the top five reasons firms reach for ITO.

Software outsourcing companies are no longer seen as mercenary pinch-hitters — like they were when Clearview started 16 years ago. Today, companies see outsourced developers as strategic business partners who can help grow their business and enhance their market reputation. Firms reach to the world's talent to inject their business processes with innovation, to build more diverse thinking into their teams, and to enjoy access to IT specialists with the specialized experience and expertise that they've sorely needed but been unable to find closer to home.

Sure, the business landscape of the UK is going to change. Amid the unfolding uncertainty around how the COVID-19 crisis and Brexit will affect the business landscape of the UK, agility, efficiency, and efficacy will be key. Over the course of the past decade, we've learned that, when executed well, disruptive outsourcing has the ability to transform the way organizations operate. They become more agile, efficient, and effective. For a company like Clearview, the UK is a slam dunk as far as places to be, now as much as ever.

Interviewer: That's the UK in general — but why Manchester specifically?

Annette: The northwest of England offers a perfect intersection of lower operating costs and a high concentration of opportunity. And to put it a little more clearly, Manchester is a unicorn farm. Greater Manchester is Europe's fastest-growing major tech cluster, with investment increasing 277% since 2018.

As well as being home to a fast-growing £5 billion digital ecosystem, "Manc" is now officially the UK's Top Digital Tech City, and it's going full gladiator with the explicit ambition to become a top-five European digital city and global influencer. Something like 10,000 digital and tech businesses call Manc home, and lots of them need Clearview, either now or soon. These include everything from startups and SMEs to global brands, among them Google, Microsoft, IBM, and Cisco, as well as a whole mess of homegrown unicorns with an IPO above $1 billion. The pipeline of prospective billion-dollar-valued firms is healthy and growing in the north, general global uncertainty be damned.

Clearview wants to be poised in person to capture that market. After all, our business is built on close, long-term partnerships with rapidly scaling businesses. We honestly can't think of a better fit.

Also: the office is right across the water from Manchester United. I think we'll have to keep face paint under the desks.

Interviewer: Glory glory indeed.

Escape From Slack Island

2020-07-07T12:00:00+02:00

A lot of what people like about going into the office is that, well, they spend time with people.

That's what the co-working concept developed around, naturally. You are in an office, doing all that familiar work stuff, but because you are actually in a space with people, you get some opportunity for good ol' "water cooler conversation" — the emotional connection of being with people. And we need that.

What a lot of people end up experiencing when they go to remote — when they're just doing Zoom calls and ticking through Slack reminders — is that all of their contact with their coworkers distills down to being just about the work. They're just talking about the logistics of what they are doing. They're not chit-chatting about their own lives and interests, and so they lose that emotional (you could even say spiritual if you're a granola-chompin' hippie or somethin') connection.

And that connection is important.

Important.

It's key to a healthy life, to great work, and to the sense of irreplaceability that remote workers often lose. (Unfortunate fact: If you're not part of a thriving ecosystem of interlinked minds and lives, you're just a doer of tasks, and that makes you replaceable.)

People foster and maintain connections with each other as human animals with nervous systems interacting on subtle levels. Often, a vital but overlooked step in going remote is to find a way to keep that human connection in addition to the work connection.

Here's what we do at Clearview, if you're curious.

1. We make space and time for non-work yammer in our "office."

We check out each others' pets doing silly things, coo at each others' babies, share music, celebrate each others' totally not-work-related accomplishments, and offer DM shoulders to 😭😭😭 on when necessary.

When we get together for a call, it generally kicks off with a solid round of totally off-topic "personal stuff." Everybody gets to know where everybody else is at, before the "work" even starts getting discussed. And we love that. "Can we get back to business" is not something you'll ever hear a Clearviewer say. The business always happens, so we make sure the non-business gets its more-than-fair share.

2. We make an event of it.

Get everybody in front of everybody, Clearview holds two summits a year, in the regional centers of our distributed presence: CEE (central/eastern Europe) and southeast Asia. We invite the entire Clearview clan to each, but we've found that our Clearviewers with young families like to stay close(ish) to home, so we've made that easy.

3. We offer co-working allowances for people who vibe the water cooler.

Super-few of our folks actually use this (which says a lot for the culture of sharing we've worked to build), but we offer co-working allowances for people who really dig the feeling of a sacred space where work lives that they don't. This is part of our commitment to honoring the way each individual person, in each individual body with each individual brain, works best.

4. We encourage meet-ups.

We keep a budget for our Clearviewers to get together locally since plenty of them are within driving distance. Dinner, games, beers, whatever — it's all encouraged. (We get lots of fun photos from these.)

The upshot? Working remotely doesn't have to be a life sentence to some sort of prison island. In fact, it can be the best-connected work you've ever done — if you approach it right.

The End of the Lip-Service-Only "Team"

2020-07-07T11:00:00+02:00

As ASIFA-Hollywood and the animation industry at large were celebrating the 47th Annual Annie Awards in February, we were celebrating our tenth year of partnership with the org.

Honestly, that long-haul vibe is one of the things that really makes Clearview so different — and we're super proud of it.

Most outsourcing dev shops — that is to say, many of the many of those that have something along the lines of what we do, a structure by which we place developers long-term — need to be managed. To be a little clearer: Most outsourcing developers need to be managed. They need to be given tasks. They don't end up becoming a part of the product team, or product decisions, or even architecture-level decisions. They might be working hard, but they're essentially floating in space.

At Clearview, we live on the flip side of all that.

The mission statement is this:

We build teams that work deeply and collaborate as core decision-makers, both within Clearview itself and in the products we build.

And we want you to really catch our meaning there, so we're gonna elaborate. Grab a coffee and meet us back here…

The thing that we're proudest to bring to the table — what makes Merit, another one of our long-term clients, love working with us, for instance — is that we don't just build what's handed to us. We're able to challenge the assumptions in a project. We dig, we think, and we ponder to find out what needs to be built. Then we discover the best way to build it. Then we ask wider-context questions about the market for the product.

We see the whole picture. And that's gold.

The other important part of that is that Clearview is itself a community: a fertile network of ideas and resources. We're not just throwing a lonely developer out here and there to pinch-hit.

As part and parcel of that, we choose our clients carefully.

We seek ongoing partnerships that lead to a deep understanding of the business domain — and mutual shared growth because we're not simply adding engineering capacity. We're bringing in talent on several different scales and phases of the project. We're a bit more expensive than most other outsourcing shops because we don't go hard on competing on cost. However, we provide huge value — and a big part of that value is the creative agility and on-point self-management of our devs.

Our strong community culture means that our developers share ideas and support each other across projects.

If one person has a question about the project they're working on and needs help, they know that they have our entire team, from junior dev to CTO, standing in support of them. And, therefore, when a client hires Clearview, they're not just hiring a developer. They're getting access to our entire team.

The Clearview team — overlapping monograms, the whole team standing in support.

We take this "team" stuff seriously.

We get to know each other by chatting on Slack, having fun behind the scenes when we end up in the same geographical location, and meeting up at big ol' biannual adventure-fest summits (because you're more likely to help people that you care about when you feel part of something). Everyone's being uplifted together, all across Clearview — and our clients, very naturally, come with us.

…Want to come with us?

Work While Living in a Body

2020-06-09T15:38:56+02:00

At Clearview, we have bodies. You probably have one too. Hooray for bodies.

The thing is: information-age work tries its damndest to ignore the fact that we're showing up in these soggy meat vessels. And, to complicate the situation, bodies insist on being heard to let the brain inside them do good work.

It's a problem.

Luckily, it's a soluble one.

Let's start with the simple fact of the circadian rhythm. You're undoubtedly aware that there are certain periods in the day when people simply are or are not productive in any meaningful way. Everybody has a certain rhythm. So many studies corroborate this that it's almost a truism. So why do so many workspaces, physical and virtual, pretend that it's not?

Reasons for failures at work

One of the big reasons for failures at work — both small missteps and compounded-over-time faceplants — that is the person involved is (wo)manning a nervous system that's really wanting something else, and simply ignoring the fact that that's happening.

They really want to do good work, but there's some other biological need that keeps popping up and getting decked like a hopeful, dogged little whack-a-mole.

It might be a need to work earlier, or later, or more hours for fewer days, or super early and super late with a huge midday gap. It might be the need to catch up on an ugly sleep debt, or spend snuggle time with a new baby, or find meaningful social connection, or spend committed time to get properly moved into a new house, or adjust to the daily rhythm of a new situation. Whatever it is, when that need shows up, it's undeniable.

More often than it's comfortable to think about — especially if it shows up in a person whose body doesn't work on the world's invented 9–6 schedule — that biologically honest need gets diagnosed as ADD.

The person on the receiving end of it thinks they're broken. They might go to the doctor and pop some medication to try to zone them in, the dosage ramping up and up as they go all-in on the Sisyphean struggle; they might, if they're in an office, spend hours pretending not to be scrolling; they might tuck into yet another marathon procrastination session, getting more and more stressed about the things their body just won't give them the focus to do.

Such a waste, for a talented human in a body that just needs to burn some ATP.

And here's another thing about the way that our brains are lashed to our bodies:

We don't get a free pass to escape our various traumas just because we've clocked in to code.

And those traumas are real.

A lot of what's going on right now — and this is going to be a little less evergreen, but it has been a topic of conversation around our various personal and professional networks and across the greater Clearview diaspora — is that a lot of people are having a lot of uncomfortable feelings come up around the current COVID-19 circus. Largely, and very unfortunately, they're not in the kind of position where they feel safe to, well, to feel them. Or even recognize what they are.

Over the long term of showing up to work (for many, their personal lives, too) and playing that old, familiar brain-in-a-jar charade, they've gotten used to pushing them down.

And what that feeling is, for most people, is grief.

Dangerous stuff, grief.

Everybody is feeling some kind of grief, on some level, even if you haven't lost anybody yet. There's grief for what you lost in your lifestyle; in your expectations for this year and beyond; the loss of thinking you know what's going to happen; the loss of a shared collective narrative of more-or-less certainty; the loss of our sense-making capacity; the loss of the belief that you were going to be able to do the things that you wake up in the morning for; the loss of all those nice economic numbers that are currently going straight down the toilet.

We're not saying that everybody needs to rush into video-conference therapy, but this is a great moment to give yourself the space — in whatever form that takes — to let those feelings come up for air. If you give them your attention and a valve and a voice, they'll be much less likely to invade your personal and professional life in the way only feelings can. (If you have half an hour, check out this 10% Happier podcast with Oren Jay Sofer. Worth it.)

So: How do we steal our brains back from the jars and put them back in these bodies where they belong?

The specifics are yours to own and action, but we'll just say this: pay focused attention.

When it knows you're listening, your body will speak up, and it'll be your best teammate.

Guaranteed.

The Eight Virtues of Remote Bushidō: A Handbook For Digitally Nomadic Developers

2020-05-28T11:00:00+02:00

Photo credit: Mischa van Dalen, dō-maru armour via photopin (license).

Dear Fellow Adventurer,

Awesome — you've made it to the Eight Virtues of Remote Bushidō. That already proves you're ready to uplevel.

As you can tell, we're passionate about this stuff. The core team at Clearview has already been on this path for more than three collective decades, refining and refining and refining.

Suffice it to say: We've learned a few things. Sometimes, we learned them the hard way.

The best part of this lifestyle is the way that it flexes and scales to your current priorities, goals, and preferences. You might not want to or be able to travel even a quarter as much as we do — at least, at the moment — but the tools you'll find in this guide will serve you well in any context where independent, self-directed development is the optimal way forward. (And isn't it always?) Investing in these skills and habits will ironclad your value, both to yourself and to any project you choose to engage.

Key to note: This goes way beyond a paycheck.

We strongly believe that the right kind of remote work ethic can be a force for good in the world. As Henry David Thoreau put it:

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him.

At Clearview, we're interested in living the biggest, fullest lives we can, and we recognize that doing so requires an unconventional approach to work. Since you're reading this guide, we're assuming you feel the same way. The next step is to familiarize yourself with the strategies and tactics required.

We believe in you.

…So let's get started.

The Office Is a Crutch. And You Don't Need It.

Humans are funny creatures, aren't we?

Where there is no (or just a little bit of) discipline, we have to create elaborate structures to replace it — forcing discipline from the outside, instead of allowing it to grow organically from the inside.

For this reason, humankind has invented the office.

In an office, workers remain more-or-less accountable because if they're not, they will soon receive a visit from a red-faced manager making angry faces. In an office, workers communicate information regularly because it's hard not to do so when you're standing at the same coffee machine. In an office, it's easy to walk around and see who's working and who isn't. To put it simply: The office was invented as a human-proof information trap. Unfortunately, it traps the people within it just as effectively.

Well, we don't believe that trapping our humans makes for great work.

We believe that, with strong internal discipline, we can hang up the external discipline of a physical office location like Grandpa hangs up his cane in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. (Everybody remembers that scene, right?) We believe that discipline is the golden ticket to the kind of office-free liberty that we crave down to the marrow of our bones.

And we believe that you're holding that ticket right now.

But you're going to have to get disciplined.

Defining Discipline

As a location-independent company, our very existence relies on each of our developers demonstrating daily that strong communication and steady productivity are possible across distances and time zones. That takes discipline — from every team member, every single day.

We use the word "discipline" because it carries with it a few important nuances. First, let's take a look at the words:

discipline ˈdisəplən

the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behavior: a lack of proper parental and school discipline.

the controlled behavior resulting from discipline: he was able to maintain discipline among his men.

activity or experience that provides mental or physical training: the tariqa offered spiritual discipline / Kung fu is a discipline open to old and young.

a system of rules of conduct: he doesn't have to submit to normal disciplines.

a branch of knowledge, typically one studied in higher education: sociology is a fairly new discipline.

You can see that discipline is not simple. It's several entities wrapped up into a single word.

It's a practice.
It's a process.
It's a personal experience of training towards strength.
It's a system.
It's a branch of knowledge unto itself.

Because it's so complex, true discipline isn't a binary error-and-punishment system. True discipline takes study and training.

Enter The Communication Dojo

Let's make a comparison.

Picture a regular, rank-and-file soldier. Now, picture a samurai. Worlds are different, right? Why is that? Technically, both have the same job: being a soldier. They just do the job of being a soldier very, very differently. And that all comes down to approach.

Defending a homeland is the activity that gets a soldier paid, but not every soldier has the samurai-level discipline that grants its wielder the kind of command and control, adaptability, and morale that decimates an enemy and raises its bearer to a level of esteem enjoyed by precious few.

There are many soldiers, but few samurai.

In the same way: Developing software is the activity that gets us paid; communication is the discipline that lets us work for great clients around the world from wherever we like. There are many great developers, but a remote professional must be the best-disciplined communicator to enjoy the kind of lifestyle people write memoirs about.

It bears mention: We are software developers, sure. But we are also consultants in — and ambassadors for — our unique style of remote work. In living like this, we are examples of the rest of a changing world.

We do the job of being a developer very, very differently.

If you've watched so much as a single samurai movie, you've heard someone reverently spit the word "Bushidō." Bushidō (武士道, "the way of warriors") is a Japanese collective term for the code of expectations that dictated the samurai way of life. The Bushidō was not a list of helpful suggestions. There was no difference between being a samurai and living the Bushidō. You were in, or you were out.

The same holds true for us.

As the samurai lived by the eight virtues of Bushidō to keep their ennobled position, remote developers can't rely on "talent" to stay in the game. We need to, at the very least, live by our own code — just as specific and just as challenging as the samurai's — in order to stay relevant, gainfully employed, and sane.

Mastery of that code requires consistent practice and refinement over time, but with mastery comes, well…world domination, for all intents and purposes.

With mastery comes freedom, whole and entire.

The Eight Virtues of Remote Bushidō

1. Be relentlessly proactive.

When the client has an in-house team, there will be many conversations that happen in person that a remote worker will not be present to hear. So it becomes essential to be relentlessly proactive in contacting in-house team members and informing yourself of discussions that you may not have been involved in.

If there is no standing call scheduled for a project, get a weekly video call on everyone's calendar and attend it like church, well-prepared with any talking points you'd like addressed.

2. Update daily.

Non-communication from remote developers reliably leads to the assumption that no work is being done, whether or not it is. Your responsibility is to kill this assumption every day, and you will do this by keeping clients and colleagues updated about your work on a daily basis.

Do not let a day pass without at least one short comment on any task you're currently addressing. No matter what the status of your task, the final thing you do as you sign out for the day should be to write a short comment describing your progress.

3. Update clearly.

Be detailed. Ideally, use templates to make sure that every communication contains a reliable set of information. You can use this bullet list as a template for those daily check-ins:

What you're working on
The progress you've made since the previous check-in
Any challenges you're currently dealing with (or elements you're waiting to receive from clients and teammates in order to move forward)
How you plan to tackle those challenges today

Bad Example: "I'm still working on my task from yesterday."

Good Example: "I'm working on task X and progress is going well. Yesterday, while debugging some unexpected behavior I found poorly written code in function Y that my feature was calling and I spent some time cleaning it up. I'm still waiting on an API key from Z. Today, I'll continue where I left off and begin implementing unit tests."

4. Engage, meaningfully and visibly.

Make yourself a part of the conversation, especially if anyone is discussing something you've worked on or are currently tackling. So you can get an idea of how they fit into the bigger picture, ask questions that can help you understand more of the context surrounding your tasks. On occasion, share some funny or useful image/link/comment.

The more visible you are, the more your team will respect and respond to you as a human individual, not an automaton that spits out code.

Automatons are easy to replace. Human individuals are not.

5. Commit code often.

You're working hard! Make it the worst-kept secret in the world. Do not wait to finish a task and commit everything all at once. Commit often — daily! — and regularly ask for code feedback.

6. Ask for help.

Along those lines: Don't hesitate to ask colleagues for help, explanations or the support you need to do great work. Take the time to learn about how the code you're working on fits into the broader scope of the application.

7. Revere your commitments.

This one's about integrity, pure and simple. If deadlines are defined, respect them. If deadlines are not defined, set a realistic deadline for yourself and ask for your team lead's feedback on the working timeline you envision. If you've been invited to a meeting, either be there on time and prepared or ask to reschedule for a time when you will be.

Miss no meetings. Miss no deadlines. None.

As soon as you suspect that you may miss an upcoming deadline — whether it's one you set for yourself — communicate with the team and explain the situation.

If you're challenged by a deadline set for you, the team will be far more understanding than if you act like everything's okay and then surprise them with a flub.

If you're challenged by a deadline you've set for yourself, you'll be a hero for averting potential issues down the line.

8. Always be the first to speak up.

If issues arise with your project, your client, or your team members, it falls to you to address them when the bud of the problem is just pushing out of the soil. Don't wait, hoping it'll wither, while it steadily becomes a tree.

If you wait, dear remote reader, there's a good chance that the in-housers will frame the problem with the implication that you — comfortably out of the blast radius of angry stares across a copy machine — caused it.

Remember: Even serious problems are soluble if you catch them early enough and address them with respect, honor, and integrity.

And, at the end of the day, it's respect, honor, and integrity that earn you your place smack-dab in the middle of freedom.

So take it.

Fully Remote Since Forever: Our Origin Story

2020-05-11T11:00:00+02:00

Being location-independent

Clearview was built out of a desire to be location-independent and travel. For 15 years, we have been a network of travelers working from anywhere we want. We never wanted to work in an office. We've always been much more interested in keeping expenses light and overhead low — to give us the most flexibility with pricing and with project flow — and that grew into a desire to design every part of the working space of Clearview to accommodate the best work environment that each of its inhabitants chooses for themselves.

We don't want to limit ourselves to be able to work with people in the same town, because we think that's short-sighted.

Talent is distributed all over the globe, and we want the best talent.

Our founder

Brett Kistler was born in the Cleveland suburbs and started the business there when he was 18.

He had an office because — well — he had free access to his best friend's dad's office (though he never really needed to be in there; mostly, Brett and his brother just played World of Warcraft in there). They didn't get any work done in the office because it felt like an office, and offices are places where Brett doesn't feel creative.

The trip to Mexico

One day, teenage Brett went to Mexico for his brother's wedding.

He realized he could live right there, on the beach, and still be servicing his clients back home. He didn't need to find new clients in Playa del Carmen to try to make his living in Playa del Carmen, and he certainly didn't need to pay for an office.

When he left Mexico, he didn't "go home." He kept going.

Brett decided to live overseas and explore the world while the work kept happening — like most people in that ilk, as a one-human show.

He learned to BASE jump and circled the world doing that for a while. He wanted to be able to be who he wanted to be, first, which was an explorer, and he wanted to make his work fit that, not himself fit the work.

It wasn't too long after that — around 2008 — that Brett started finding other people to work alongside him in that context.

He never hired a full-time employee to go to an office at a particular location. He only hired people who also wanted to be remote. That meant that he was able to find people based on their skills, their philosophy, and their culture rather than their location.

It wasn't easy. There was a lot of early friction with clients. They'd want to have in-person meet-ups: some wanted him to drive for hours to sit across a table for 20 minutes. Plenty of them constantly called him.

Over time, he trained the clients whom he wanted to keep to communicate asynchronously.

While this is business as usual now, at the time it wasn't. Brett had an intuition all along that being in the same place in the meetings was, more often than not, redundant (and often just political posturing or wild brainstorming).

The collaboration

In reality, if people are doing creative work — which is what engineering is — sometimes they want to collaborate.

They need to be accountable. There needs to be communication. But when people are getting the bulk of the work done, they need to be in their own space. They need to be in their controlled environment, and controlled means whatever it is for them. It means different things to different people.

Some of our people want to go to a co-working space where it feels officey and businesslike. Sometimes they even want to dress up a little bit, business casual, just because dressing up feels nice. Other people want to hang out in their bed and code until they pass out at 3 a.m., dream about the code they just wrote, consolidate it, and then wake up and change all the bugs they discovered in their sleep.

The Clearview philosophy

…has developed in a decade-and-a-half, and is just about allowing for the fact that everybody works differently.

For a company to expect everybody to conform to a particular style, location, and form of work-related contact and collaboration is really to some extent shoehorning everybody into some kind of cultural average in an office. By expanding back out to remote work, there is an opportunity to allow the company as a whole to more flexibly fit an individual's work/life balance, work schedules, and work environments.

Now more than ever we have the tools to bridge the communication gap as needed, to bring in all the best of working in an office with people without it having to require the office (and the commute).

So that's what we do, and that's where we're at. Thanks, Brett.

Say hi

Wanna meet him? Say hi.