Non-billable priorities

As an agency not everyone is ‘billed’ at the same time. This means that we might not all be working on something that we’re being paid for. This is a good thing!

Project work, tight deadlines, and heavy workloads are stressful and having a bit of ebb and flow is good for our motivation.

But it’s important that if one of us isn’t on client work, we’re still spending our time valuably on something that helps further Pixie Labs objectives.

With that in mind, we prioritise our non-billable time by asking ourselves the following questions, in this order:

1. Are there any support issues I can help with?

We are paid for support, so fulfilling that comes first. Still no rabbit holes though! Support issues should be dealt with in 30 minutes or backlogged. See our guide on Support processes.

2. Is there any business development I can help with?

Ask Philip! Sometimes a pitch or a conversation would benefit from some engineering investment e.g. investigating an API, building a prototype, or validating assumptions and estimates.

3. Is there any marketing I can help with?

We regularly write and publish blog posts, and downtime is a great time to stick your headphones on and bash out a blog post for marketing to review. We have (non-public) guidelines to help do this. Ask someone if you need help finding them. Failing that, ask Philip what you can help with.

4. Does our open-source software need some attention?

Are there issues to respond to, PRs to review, or new features and fixes to write and release?

5. Can I level up my skills by learning something new?

We’re always looking to learn new skills and technologies and downtime is perfect to carry on with that course you’re working through or check out that sweet library you saw on Hacker News the other day.