Engineering organizations are typically measured by their productivity and outputs — especially at high-growth companies. As a leader, I am constantly focused on removing obstacles for my team so they can achieve more and deliver customer-facing features even faster. Therefore, it may be shocking to hear that the number one thing I challenge my team members to do is to take a step away from our own technical stack and focus time on contributing to open source projects.

In most tech startups and big companies, working on open source software (OSS) becomes a passion project for engineers or requires a dedicated team. As an organization with a passion for open source, we wanted to change that.

I recently did an experiment with my team where an engineer was given a month of uninterrupted time to work on open source contributions and projects. The results were remarkable and made it clear that this had to be a new norm for our team. We contributed to a total of three projects with numerous pull requests (PRs) for each repository, but we also gained a lot of happy, engaged engineers who were excited to jump back into their day jobs.

Here are five reasons why other leaders should consider giving their team time to focus on open source.

1. It’s Not Just Code, It’s A Community

Typically, when engineers first start participating in open source they do it to learn and contribute. Over time, they realize that these side projects can actually come a long way in helping their career. From my experience working in technology for over a decade, I truly believe that our community is bigger than just us. For example, devoting time to open source has helped me and my team forge important partnerships with other companies. It also makes it possible to for us to help shape the direction of certain open source projects and stay informed on what technologies are resonating best with the community. 

2. It Boosts Engineer Morale

Working on open source projects can give engineers a much-needed break from their daily routine, allowing them to tackle new challenges and go beyond their assigned tasks. During our open source experiment, a talented engineer on my team worked on a few different projects. One project typically would have taken several months and a team of engineers, but he was able to complete it in a matter of weeks. He changed 14 repositories, created 78 commits, authored 16 pull requests and reviewed eight pull requests. His work was certainly impressive that month, but it also left him feeling recharged and energized. He remains a top performer and continues to excel in his work, and I’m glad I was able to help him achieve these personal successes in the OSS community.