🎓 Recommended reading

We encourage you to take some time to learn about topics related to your tasks and our collective mission. For reference, 50% of a core contributor's billed hours during their first 1-3 weeks could be spent learning and ~2 hours per week after that on an ongoing basis. This is just an example, and we encourage you to figure out a learning cadence that best helps you succeed in contributing to IFT.

Inform your fellow project core contributors about your online and offline status, so that the project's progress is not hindered. Feel free to discuss it openly and agree on timings with everyone involved.

We offer an annual learning budget of USD 170 to each core contributor. You can use these funds towards things like books, conferences, or online courses.

If you wish to purchase learning and development materials exceeding the USD 170 amount, you'll need to get approval from your Project Lead and/or PeopleOps partner.

For instructions on how to expense any learning and development materials, please refer to the expenses section of this guide.

Essential reading

We've curated a selection of "essential readings" below that provide context for our vision and culture. Read them at your own pace!

The first book is the most foundational for understanding the IFT's philosophical motivations, as it is co-authored by our co-founder, Jarrad. We recommend that you start there, and strongly encourage you to read all of the first group; the second group is nice to go through, but less critical.

We've added PDFs whenever possible, but you can order any that are not freely available as part of your learning and development budget.