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Thinking about making a README or personal operating manual for a current or future employer? Here's a look at a README I set up in 2020 to give you some ideas.
Last week, a friend asked me for feedback on her personal "README" for a future manager, so I thought I'd use today's blog post to riff on READMEs and personal operating manuals in general.
If you're a software developer, you’re probably familiar with a "README" file. It's usually found in the main folder of a project and provides key information to help new users understand how to use or contribute to the project. READMEs typically include things like installation instructions, licensing details, how to contribute code, contact information for the core team, and other relevant resources.
In recent years, I’ve seen a growing trend of people creating personal READMEs, especially during job transitions. Just like a software README helps people get to know a project, a personal README helps managers or teams learn more about you.
I haven't updated mine since moving from Union Square Ventures to Bolster in 2020, but I dusted off the old Google Doc and popped it into Gamma.app to share how I structured it—and to give you some ideas for your own.
There are a lot of reasons why a README might help you. A few include:
Share a little bit about yourself that may not have come across in the hiring process
Introduce yourself quickly to a large group of new colleagues
Set early expectations about things like working style or communication preferences
Get people excited to work with you
But I think the best reason to make a README isn't about any of these. It's just about spending the time and personal processing power to understand yourself a little bit better. Even if you never share your README with a soul, you'll still have the experience of writing down the things that matter the most to you, which means you'll be setting yourself up for success in future professional relationships.
You can include whatever information feels relevant in your README, but no matter what you include, the most important advice I have is to keep yours brief enough for people to pay attention to the whole thing. And look for ways to tie the stuff about you back into the stuff about them.
Here's an AI-enhanced version of a README I made back in October 2020. Admittedly I didn't do a good job at demonstrating to my future team how they might best apply me in their current organization. If I were to make another one today for a full-time role today, I'd probably include a section, "Projects You Should DEFINITELY Include Me In" and list out the 3-4 areas of work where I could really make their organization or team shine.
Here's how I structured each section, and some ideas to get you going on your own:
No matter what you include in your README, set the context with your colleagues with some basics. Names of kids, partners, and where you live is a good place to start. I tried to give mine a little humor by referring to the fact that I had been coming out of a 5-year stint at a VC firm as a "pre-existing condition." Find a few things to make you stand out.
Particularly for fractional workers or remote workers, including a section on your work schedule and communication style is hugely important. At the time when I wrote this (in Oct 2020), I was breastfeeding a 6-month-old baby and had mandatory "off hours" around bedtime, so it was important for me to list those constraints right off the bat.
I used this section to give my future colleagues a sense of the types of things that I like to spend time on at work. At the time when I joined Bolster, my role hadn't yet evolved into its "final form" so I shared a few indicated areas of interest to coax people along into helping me figure out the right place for me to spend time on their team.
I also wanted to get ahead of a few obvious things about my personality to prepare people for my working style, so I decided to share some brief feedback from past performance reviews and peer feedback sessions. Don't be scared to do this, it honestly feels good to get ahead of yourself like this.
I love including a section of things you like to do outside of work. Particularly because I was joining an all-remote team in the midst of a pandemic, I knew it was going to be harder to connect with colleagues than it would have been IRL. This short list of three talking points immediately gave the team a "buzzword" list of things to talk with me about, without needing to fish too much in small talk.
One of my biggest fears about taking on a new full-time role at the time was that I was going to need to forfeit some of my "side hustle" projects that I'd been nurturing for many years. To get ahead of this fear, I put these interests front and center, both to demonstrate that I have stuff outside of work, and also to normalize the idea that I might occasionally need time for myself on some of these other areas.
Notably, these side projects also provided my colleagues with some interesting talking points for me, and also demonstrated right off the bat my multi-faceted nature of work, as well as indications of interest for the types of things that matter most to me.
Your README will inevitably change as you grow and evolve into different types of work. Whether or not you take the time to update yours with every job change is up to you. Since 2020, I've changed a lot about how I work and done a lot more internal work to articulate the why behind my work. I also work across many projects and teams, as opposed to just one. As a result, if I were to update this for 2024, I'd lead right off the bat with my personal north star mission: Use technology to elevate the way we learn, work, and connect.
This would help anchor people in my brainspace a bit and also invite them to start to play with the intersections of the multiple streams of work that I do. I'd also focus less on personal side projects and more on some of the big-picture vision dreams and some conceptual ideas I'm pursuing in each of the three work pillars (education, the future of work, and community). I'd also update the bits on my personal profile, obviously. I've got two kids now, and as you know, a death-defying cat.
I'd love to hear other examples of READMEs or operating manuals that have worked for you. How do you use yours? What's worked? What hasn't?
