This is a list of managers READMEs (like a projects README, but for working with managers; see Matt Newkirk’s article for a clearer explanation). The origin is a bit sketchy. The earliest one so far is from Luc Levesque from 2012. Most of the current wave are inspired by the README of Roy Rapoport.
Without further ado, here is the (alphabetically ordered) list of READMEs:
- Aaron Lerch at InvisionApp
- Adam Fields at grafika (not exactly a managers README, but his Principles of Work, so close enough)
- Adam Ochonicki at Articulate
- Alan Page at Unity
- Austin Kelmore at ustwo games
- Ben Morris at Shopify
- Daniel Richnak at Woot
- Elliott Carlson at Rent The Runway
- Gergely Nemeth
- Isaac Hepworth at Google
- Jay Desai at PatientPing
- Jim Grey at Emplify
- Katie Womersley at Buffer (plus a Why and How to share your Manager’s README article)
- Lara Hogan, independent engineering leadership coach and consultant, previously VP of Engineering at Kickstarter, Engineering Director at Etsy.
- Liran Tal, engineering manager and open source evangelist at Nielsen.
- Luc Levesque at TravelPod
- Maggie Gourlay at VictorOps
- Matt Blair at OpenTable
- Matt Newkirk at etsy
- Michael Lopp aka rands at slack
- Mike Kleiman at BiblioCommons
- Mindaugas Mozūras at Vinted
- Molly White at HubSpot
- Oren Ellenbogen at forter
- Roy Rapoport at Netflix (deprecated, as he left netflix in January 2018)
- Roy Rapoport at Slack
- Scott Burns at stratasan
- Tom Summer at redbubble
- Lukas Varkalis at KiloHealthdocs: added Lukas Varkalis, Engineering Manager at KiloHealth
If you find READMEs that are not on this list but should be (or vice versa), feel free to open pull requests or file an issue.
Related Links
- The Indispensable Document for the Modern Manager, an article about READMEs by firstround
- Luc Levesque of Trip Advisor, on Frequent Evaluations nytimes interview on his README
- Brennan McEachran wrote about 12 “Manager READMEs” on Hackenoon, where he added his notes on the readmes.
- Jillian Gora wrote How to Set Expectations With Your Team on Soapbox
- Our 6 Must Reads For Creating and Accelerating Trust on Teams on Firstround contains a section explainign that “user guides” build trust.
- Lara Hogan built a Worksheet intended to help you build your own readme