It\u2019s 7:30 am on Saturday and I\u2019m wandering the streets of Lisbon with my 2 year old, searching for an open restaurant to feed him in because we landed at 9pm the night before and there\u2019s no food in the house \u2013 tired, groggy and becoming increasingly more frustrated with the lack of open cafes I grumble moodily at my partner that \u2018everything in Australia opens at 06:30am, where are all the stores!?\u2019 He chooses to ignore this. We stumble across a woman unloading a van of fresh fruit to a restaurant…which doesn’t open until 9am..<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My toddler is becoming difficult, he\u2019s hungry and waiting isn\u2019t a forte of his. We ask the lady if we can buy one banana from her, to keep my kid from devolving into an actual spawn of hell. She stomps off angrily to the back of the van and comes back with an entire bunch of bananas, shoving them into my hands. \u201cSolo uno, solo uno” I say, putting my limited Spanish to use even though we\u2019re in Portugal and, this is true, they speak Portuguese here. She shakes her head and pushes the whole bunch onto me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She then refuses to take payment, despite my insistence. The bananas were all for us, free of charge because we had a hungry kid and nowhere to go. And that right there is the epitome of who the Portuguese are as people, and why I chose to stay here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
You may well be asking at this point what relevance bananas have to you, or IT or indeed anything; to which the answer is very little. But it\u2019s not about the bananas it\u2019s about what the bananas represent, OK? It\u2019s a metaphor, it\u2019s about what it means to be Portuguese and why I love living here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A quick google search will easily give you a list of arbitrary reasons about why you should relocate to Portugal; good wine, good food, great weather, awesome beaches \u2013 but I had all those in Australia, and there are a dozen other places that could tick the same boxes. It isn\u2019t until you come here that you start to understand the feeling behind the country, the subtle nuance between Portuguese people and their culture compared to other places I\u2019ve lived in the world, it\u2019s not until you\u2019ve spent time living here that you really get the banana story. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Did you know that pregnant, disabled, or elderly people are given priority in queues by law? It\u2019s not just a nicety that you\u2019re expected to do to show you\u2019re not a terrible human, they actually wrote it in there. \u2018You, moved aside so the lady growing a tiny human inside her can rest her feet\u2019 (not the literal translation).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s also a lot of diversity here, I can travel two hours from my home (If I\u2019m ever allowed out of it again) and feel like I\u2019ve entered an entirely different part of the world (A two hour commute in Sydney and you\u2019ve barely left the city center.) And the beaches are beautiful, which means for most of the year while it\u2019s warm and sunny I actually get a chance to enjoy them without having to worry about potentially being eaten by a shark. Or a crocodile. Or both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was born in the U.K originally, so managing the time-zones no longer means waking up at 6am to try and catch Dad last minute before he goes to bed, only to find the clocks went forward and you already missed him(seriously, how do people keep track of that?).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But life-threatening beach swims and complicated zoom-management aside, there\u2019s another reason I love Portugal: My job. I actually asked to work at BOLD (true story). I sent across my CV with a little note saying that while I know I am absolutely unqualified for the job in question, I\u2019d really like to work for the company, so if they had anything relevant for me I\u2019d love to talk. And here I am! Four months later and I\u2019m sure my boss has no regrets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Which brings me nicely to my next point, or maybe the point, of this article (yes, there was one thank you very much).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Look, the reality is whether you think remote work will be the \u2018new normal\u2019 or not, the pain-in-the butt we\u2019ve come to call COVID has cemented technology\u2019s role at the heart of transformation. Research suggests that the companies who will thrive are the ones that see this as an opportunity to transform how they do business – so what does transformation look like? Transformation is a blanket term that can mean anything from the total digitization of a company to the installation of GSuite; it\u2019s not a one size fits all option. It can involve, among many other things, potentially looking at Nearshoring with BOLD as the solution to scarce resources, overhead costs and cultural pitfalls.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Nearshoring to Portugal<\/a> doesn\u2019t involve managing multiple time zones or complicated calendar organizing which means there’s more control over quality, workflow and deadlines. \u00a0It decreases lag time and allows greater flexibility for the company to fill resource shortages more easily. It can mitigate potential cultural differences, removing communication obstacles or language barriers that can often slow down projects. Engaging with a Nearshore team that possesses cultural similarities, shared language & technical expertise makes it easier to integrate them into your business & \u00a0assures quality of work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, one often overlooked benefit of Nearshoring is how easily organising a face-to-face is; shorter flight times make it much more manageable to organise a FIFO if necessary, resulting in less airtime hours lost on commuting and an easier work\/life balance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the pressure mounts to lower costs, increase revenue and decrease risk, organizations that want to bounce back must be strategic on how best to digitize; and part of that strategy should look at how to keep down fixed costs. The fact that Portugal also happens to be a fantastic place to have a beer and watch the sunset is just an added bonus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Do you need more reasons to choose Portugal and BOLD for Nearshore IT ?<\/strong> Get in touch<\/a> with us and start your journey here, to learn more about our N<\/a>earshore Centre in Portugal.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s 7:30 am on Saturday and I\u2019m wandering the streets…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","tags":[],"class_list":["post-7293","expert-view","type-expert-view","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n