OOO Memo

It’s officially summer, aka vacation season, aka the time when people find themselves in one of two camps: “I’m taking off” and “I can’t possibly take a vacation right now.”

Over the past few weeks, I have been having work-life-growth check-ins with folks, and one thing is abundantly clear: everyone needs to take more time for themselves. That could mean unplugging for 30 minutes a day to take a walk, or finally using some vacation time.

We all work hard, but part of our culture is to also take time to restore. Unlimited PTO, the requirement for full-time employees to take two consecutive weeks of vacation per year, and flexibility for everyone all support this (see the Away Time Policy for more). A well-rested you yields a more productive you - it’s called working smarter.

If you feel like you can’t pull away, or generally find it hard to disconnect, here are a few tips from our friends at august:

Work in public in the month leading up to your vacation. (And I’ll jump in here - you should be doing this already!) Share your messy drafts, and before you’re out, let your team know what’s done, what’s not, and where you’d welcome input. That way, teammates can jump in and keep your work moving while you’re away, and you can avoid the night-before scramble or pings asking, “So where did this thing end up?”

Empower others to make decisions with Even Overs. The work doesn’t stop just because one person is out - decisions still need to get made. If you’re handling a lot, it can feel like you’re never fully able to sign off. That’s where Even Overs come in. If you set your priorities in advance - Progress Even Over Perfection, Reach Even Over Depth, Candor Even Over Comfort - your team will feel equipped to make decisions without you, giving you the peace of mind to fully silence notifications. Even if you don’t use this method, you should still be finding a way for decisions to be made (or not) in your absence.

Communicate! This one isn’t from august, but it should go without saying: let your team know in advance that you’ll be out, and whether or not you’ll be reachable (though ideally you shouldn’t be - at the very least not during your two restorative weeks off). Clear communication means no one will assume you’re “on” unless you say so, and your team can plan ahead and coordinate coverage accordingly.

And don’t forget: if you’re taking time off, request it, add it to the HR calendar, and post in the #everyone Discord thread before you head out. Looking forward to seeing a few more OVDs over the next few months!

Erika

Metrics

• Unique Buildings: 20,403 (Real time, via Admin panel!)
• Annual Run Rate: $3.43M

Development

• Bug Count (P-0 and P-1):

This Week’s Highs and Lows

• We landed three new measures in prod this week (Daisy Chain, DHW gas condensing boiler, and Window AC Power Bank demand-response), refined our cost logic to better model volume discounts on heat pumps, and cleaned up our explanations (FRH)
• Rapid iterations on the BKB continue, with a unified end-to-end building search backbone, better address matching (30k new matches), and ability to distinguish small structures as “auxiliary” (FRH)

Any missing highlights? Please share in Discord comments.

On Deck for Next Week

• Mid-year review (EP)

Upcoming Releases

Please Leave Feedback

Please note your reaction to this update in the Discord channel. It helps us to know what is resonating, what is unclear, etc. Thanks!

• What are your highlights / low-lights?
• Did we miss a highlight? Something else you want to react to?