Learning
At Nebulab, we believe that learning, specifically when helping solving day-to-day problems,
is the cornerstone of personal and professional development.
It's not by chance that one of our values is 
Pragmatic Learners : our culture is built around the pursuit of knowledge and the continuous evolution of our skills.
Pragmatic Learners : our culture is built around the pursuit of knowledge and the continuous evolution of our skills.From in-depth training sessions to collaborative learning opportunities, we provide a variety of ways to ensure you're always growing and staying ahead in your field. Embracing learning at Nebulab means embracing a journey of endless possibilities and achievements.
Table of contents
Table of contents
Investment Time
Finding time for… Investment Time
Tracking Investment Time
Learning Library
Using the Library
There are no best practices
Conferences
What conferences should I attend?
Team Retreats
Learning and Development Program
Learning English
Improving your English
Professional coaches
Work interactions
Articles and books
Podcasts
Movies and TV shows
Travel
Testing your English
Apprenticeship program
Investment Time
We dedicate 10% of our work time 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 (including 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.
- Do yoga to recover from a stressful day.
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!
Tracking Investment Time
To stay within the 10% budget we ask you to track Investment Time. You can find more details on the budget and how to track it in the other sections of the Playbook.
Learning Library
Nebulab has been around for more than a decade now. During this time, we have dealt with a variety of technologies and challenges, and we've developed a set of principles and recommended practices that we default to. These range from human topics, such as emotional intelligence, all the way to technical details, such as CI/CD practices.
For a long time, these recommendations would be shared tacitly as new hires worked with more experienced teammates. As we continued to grow, we realized this would simply not cut it anymore, and we felt the need to have a single source of truth about the “the Nebulab way.” This is how the The Learning Library was born.
The Learning Library, is a collection of learning resources for all Nebulab teammates. The resources in the Library come in all shapes and sizes: courses, articles, books, tutorials and more for different roles and levels of expertise. They have all stood the test of time, and they have all been carefully picked to reflect our work culture and methodology.
Using the Library
While it might be tempting to consume the Library top-to-bottom, the sheer amount of resources it contains makes it very hard to do so. Instead, the Library has been designed to be a “Choose Your Own Adventure” resource: feel free to dig into the specific sections and resources you're most interested in. If you're unsure where to start, your manager can also help you create a tailored learning path based on your growth journey here at Nebulab.
As you go through Library resources, you are strongly encouraged to discuss what you consume with your manager and with your teammates: after all, talking about new-found knowledge is the best way to consolidate it!
Some of us also keep our personal learning paths in the internal playbook. It's a good way to establish a consistent and structured learning process, and it can lead to some pretty interesting conversations with other people at Nebulab about what you're working on and why!
There are no best practices
We try not to use the term “best practice.” Instead, we use “recommended practice”, “standard practice” or anything else that doesn't imply that one way of doings things is inherently better than all the others.
The Library exists to minimize the cognitive load around making routine, unimportant decisions and to provide consistency for Nebulab teammates moving across projects. With that said, we trust the people doing the work to always come up with the best solution for the problem at hand—in fact, we need people to challenge the status quo and come up with better ways of doing things.
If you don't know anything about Continuous Delivery, for example, you can go to the Library and learn about our recommendations for setting up a CD pipeline. Those recommendations should work in the vast majority of scenarios, but that doesn't mean they're always right, or that there's no room for iterating on them. You might want to use a different parallelization or deployment model, and that's perfectly fine as long as you understand both the benefits and the cost of your decision.
We like to think of the Library as a starting point, not a destination. Follow the recommended practices if you don't know any better or have no particular reason to deviate from them. But if you do have a reason, go ahead and enjoy the journey!
Conferences
Attending conferences is more than an event—it's a vital part of your professional growth. These gatherings offer a wealth of knowledge, emerging industry trends, and invaluable networking opportunities. By stepping into these diverse learning environments, you gain fresh perspectives and inspiration, bringing back insights that enrich both your personal development and our collective expertise.
We actively support your participation through our dedicated conference budget, ensuring these experiences are accessible and impactful.
What conferences should I attend?
We will gladly help you attending any conference which is somewhat work-related. Finding the right conference is always a challenge but we've attended many so we can help you out!
You can reach out to your manager to help you decide what conference would be best for you—also joining #learning-conferences is a good idea.
Team Retreats
Nebulab retreats are always a great time not only to chillout and relax... they're also the only time of the year where we get to meet face to face altogether! These occasions are a great time to share knowledge, reflect and focus on Nebulab's everyday challenges.
Every team retreat comes with a closed doors conference full of talks and workshops organized by our team. Here are a few pictures:
Learning and Development Program
<TBD>
Learning English
Because all of our communication with clients happens in English, it is extremely important that we can all read, write and speak the language fluently. Being able to communicate in a clear and concise way is a sign of professionalism and has a tangible impact on the quality of our work.
If you feel like you're still not entirely comfortable with the language, don't worry! We've all been there and everyone else at the company is also constantly improving their English. There are several ways to improve your skills—here are some of them!
Improving your English
Professional coaches
There is no replacement for good, old fashioned coaching. A professional coach will not only follow your studies and always be there to answer any questions, but they will also be able to create a custom learning path for your learning style and the specific contexts where you expect to speak the language. While they may seem intimidating at first, coaches are there to help you and are one of the best ways to expedite your learning.
A lot of folks here at Nebulab have used and strongly recommend italki , where you can choose your coach and interact with them remotely, but feel free to choose the online or offline platform that best suits you. Remember you can use the English bonus .
We usually recommend holding a 1-hour session with your coach every week. However, as this varies with your learning style and experience, only your manager will be able to provide tailored guidance and tell you how many classes you need to take.
Work interactions
This one is quite straightforward: as most of our clients are based in the US, you probably already have access to some native speakers you can interact with and learn from. Even if you're not confident enough to speak (or write), you can learn a lot just by reading their messages and/or listening to meetings.
Because most of the communication with clients is work-related, this is a very good way to learn business-specific terms and phrases, which go a long way towards establishing your professionalism when you interact with people.
On the other hand, our clients are spread all across the US, which means we get to hear a lot of different accents. Native speakers (who are not coaches) are also often not entirely aware of the difficulty of trying to explain and/or understand work-related concepts in a foreign language, so you may find yourself a bit lost at times. When this happens, don't be afraid to ask them to repeat!
It's much better (and cheaper) to have a client say something twice than have a developer re-write a feature that was misunderstood.
Articles and books
Reading articles and books can be very helpful, because they give you all the time you need to research the meaning of a foreign word or sentence. It doesn't matter whether the content is technical or not, and it's actually far more important that it's something you're passionate about. The most clever and well-written book in the world won't do you any good if you find it boring.
A good way to start is to ask your manager to suggest some English content. Mention your interests and any challenges you have faced in the past, and they will be able to offer something you will like! You can also try to go back and re-read any books from your past in their original language.
Podcasts
Podcasts became a big thing in the last few years. Now, you can find a podcast on nearly any topic: science, finance, world news, technology… you name it.
The good thing about podcasts is that most of the podcast apps let you increase the playback speed, so you can start a bit slower than normal and then, as you get to know the speaker and the language, increase the speed until it's just outside of your comfort zone.
You can easily find good podcasts online or through your manager - don't be afraid to ask!
Movies and TV shows
Movies and TV shows are also great, because you get to experience a variety of different accents and language registers. Also, you can use subtitles, either in English or your language, until you're comfortable enough to turn them off.
You're probably not going to need any recommendations, but just in case, we're here for you!
Travel
This can be a bit hard to do constantly, but travelling is one of the best ways to learn a new language - visiting a new country is a full-immersion experience and can be very helpful.
As a company, we frequently organize trips abroad for conferences, client visits and other occasions, so you should hop along whenever you have the chance if you want to improve your English.
We also encourage you to travel in your free time as much as you can, it's a really great experience for so many reasons.
Testing your English
Whenever you want to validate your knowledge, and add a tad of self-confidence, you can ask your manager to send you an English test.
If you're actively trying to improve your English skills we advise you take the test at least once per year to have a feeling of progress.
The test is held on The English Quiz and consists of a 50-minute listening, reading, writing, and speaking assessment. At the end of the test you will receive a final detailed evaluation with a score and some tips to improve your English.
How to track time spent learning English? English lessons should be considered Investment Time , while the time spent to perform the English Quiz should not be tracked at all.
Apprenticeship program
Sometimes, we'll talk to a promising candidate who simply hasn't had the time or opportunities to hone their software development skills at the level we require for professional work. When this happens, and provided that we have enough bandwidth to undertake this journey, we'll offer them a full-time, paid position in our The Apprenticeship Program .
Apprentices join one of our teams and report to an Engineering Manager, just like all other teammates. Unlike other teammates, they are not focused on project delivery, but rather on learning the fundamentals of professional software development. They do this by going through a carefully curated curriculum which includes:
- standard study material about software fundamentals, mandatory for all apprentices;
- extra material tailored to each apprentice's strengths and growth opportunities;
- shadowing (and eventually joining!) their team in day-to-day ceremonies and work.
The program—which is more thoroughly documented in our internal playbook —is split into modules, with each module containing a final evaluation. Apprentices need to pass the evaluation in order to graduate to the next module, and any apprentices that successfully graduate from the entire program are offered a full-time position at Nebulab!
The Apprenticeship Program is our way of giving back to the community that has provided us with such great teammates. The program has been extremely successful so far, and we're excited at the idea of developing it and using it to coach even more amazing people!