We hack every Friday

Rayday is an initiative at Raycast that designates every Friday for employees to work on projects that benefit the company, such as developing new features, fixing bugs, or addressing user feedback. This approach fosters creativity and innovation by allowing team members to act on their ideas and feedback from the community, similar to initiatives at companies like Google and Atlassian. Rayday is structured with a morning Slack thread where intentions are shared, and work is showcased the following Monday, encouraging projects to be completed in a single day or broken into manageable chunks. This initiative has led to the creation of popular features and tools, such as the My Schedule menu bar app and various internal extensions. Despite dedicating 20% of their time to these side projects, Raycast maintains its regular release schedule by prioritizing focus time and minimizing meetings, allowing for deep work and bi-weekly updates. Challenges arise when urgent tasks take precedence, but the company emphasizes planning and process improvements to sustain Rayday as a central and anticipated part of its culture.