Teachable Work-Life Balance & Wellbeing

What practice keeps the pace of your work sustainable — and what signal shows it’s working?

We maintain a sustainable pace through capacity planning that accounts for the realities of engineering work. We account for time and effort to properly spike, investigate and plan our work before diving in. We include buffers for technical debt, production issues and professional development. This is intentional space for the work that makes software development sustainable.

We also watch sprint predictability. When we regularly hit our commitments, it signals that our planning is realistic. When we miss, it opens conversation about scope, dependencies or whether unplanned work is eating up our buffer, which usually signals bigger systemic issues worth addressing.

Which policy or norm makes flexible schedules successful — and how do you measure impact?

Our core collaboration hours enable flexibility without sacrificing team cohesion. We have autonomy over our schedules and working styles as long as we deliver on commitments and are available for critical meetings during core hours. We also protect Wednesdays as no-meeting days, giving everyone a guaranteed block of uninterrupted time each week for deep work.

This works because we’ve normalized asynchronous communication as the default. Our automated pull request process requires comprehensive descriptions and context before code can be reviewed. Architecture decisions are documented, and stakeholders review on their own time before synchronous discussion. The impact shows in our ability to ship consistently and hit sprint commitments more reliably with less context switching.

Which resource do people actually use — and what data shows effectiveness?

Our Nectar recognition platform sees active daily usage. Nectar lets us give reward points to colleagues to recognize their work, whether that’s shipping a complex feature, mentoring or going above and beyond for a certain project or task. Points convert to gifts, but the real value is the public recognition and the visibility into who’s doing what across teams.

The effectiveness shows in the high level of engagement and the conversations. It’s a valuable tool not only to acknowledge good work but to leverage for career and growth opportunities.