Investment Time

We dedicate 10% of our work time (~165 hours for full-time employees) every year to our personal growth and well-being—we call this Investment Time, and it's one of our longest-standing traditions.

During Investment Time, we do not work for clients. We don't even have guidelines or fixed lists of projects to pick from. Instead, we just do something that improves our skills, contributes to the community or simply allows us to disconnect from work and recharge.

In these years, teammates have used Investment Time to:

• Write a post on their personal blog or our own.
• Contribute to an open source project (it doesn't have to be Solidus!).
• Read that book that they kept postponing.
• Study a new tool, technology or methodology they were interested in.
• Make progress on their personal learning plan.
• Learn a second (or third, or fourth!) language.
• Coach a teammate and teach them a new skill.

But really, you can use this for anything else you might think of!

Finding time for… Investment Time

Each teammate is free to organize their schedule however they want to make space for Investment Time. Any arrangement works, as long as urgent client work is given priority.

The most popular approach is to use the first or last hour of the workday, when you are mentally disconnected from client work and can invest yourself fully in what you're doing. You could also batch entire hours or days of Investment Time, if the project allows for it.

You're encouraged to use your own judgment and manage your schedule accordingly. If in doubt, ask your manager and they'll figure something out!