I’m a big fan of Software Lead Weekly (seriously, it’s great, you should signup for the email list) ran by Oren Ellenbogen. He is also a big champion of Manager Readmes and released a site for creating these.
You can find a variety of opinions on them online, but for me I find it real helpful for a few things:
- If you’re joining a team, and want to quickly let everyone know some basic tenets of your approach. I can’t imagine this would play well if you were more authoritarian though.
- For new hires to get a quick dose of what it’s like to work with you. This should be a supplement and not replacement for 1-1 conversation, but it’s a nice additional reference for a new hire. Team Readmes work great for this as well.
- Prospects during the interviewing process. This has actually been the biggest win for me. It’s an extra bit of insight into how our team works, that I can give to a candidate that we really like (maybe before coming in for interviews, when they are highly curious and have very little info to go on), and let them process it async on their own time. It often leads to great follow up questions in person.
View my Manager Read here.