The Origin of Software Engineer Culture: 'Personal User Manual / Public User Guide'

Tadashi Shigeoka ·  Sat, September 23, 2023

I’d like to share information I learned about the origin of the “Personal User Manual / Public User Guide” that software engineers write.

Getting to Know Me Through My "Personal User Manual / Public User Guide"

An expert provided me with helpful information about the origin of the “Personal User Manual / Public User Guide.”

Urs Hölzle (Google’s 8th employee) had published his own Personal User Manual.

via: Ask HN: Do you have a public guide to working with you? | Hacker News

Q) Do you have a public guide to working with you? by jashmenn on Aug 8, 2018

A) I’m reading Elad Gil’s “High Growth Handbook” and the interview with Stripe’s COO Claire Hughes Johnson. In that chapter they mention the Google engineer Urs Holzle who wrote “A Guide To Urs” about the interaction approaches that work best for him [1]. “The idea is that if you needed to interact with him or you wanted things from him, you knew what to do. And apparently that really helped streamline how people worked with him.”

Claire, wrote a similar document called “Working with Claire” (the full text is included in the book).

She mentions that it “spread quickly through the organization … and now a lot of people at Stripe have written their own guides themselves.”

I think this is a fantastic idea — I’ve worked long enough to recognize that I have my own quirks and it’s better that everyone knows up front how to best get something from me and what I expect from them.

I’ve started to a draft of “Working with Nate”, but I’d like to know: do you have a document like this you’re willing to share? (Perhaps some Stripes would like to share their own?)

I’d love to read other people’s examples of how they think of themselves and their work, and how they best interact with others.

[1]: https://www.quora.com/Is-there-a-public-version-of-Urs-Holzles-personal-user-manual-If-so-where-can-I-find-it

cloudwaretech on Aug 10, 2018 [–]

I am also Looking for this guide for working with Urs to learn from. below is Working with Claire Guide. https://growth.eladgil.com/book/the-role-of-the-ceo/insights-working-with-claire/

→ “High Growth Handbook” = 「爆速成長マネジメント」(Explosive Growth Management in Japanese)

Where I Learned About "Personal User Manual"

My memory is not certain since it’s from the past, but I remember learning about this from GitHub - yoshiori/manager-readme.

When I asked internally, I was also told about a recent article: A User Guide To Working With You - by Julie Zhuo.

That’s all from the Gemba, where I researched the origin of Personal User Manual / Public User Guide.

References