[ellen364]

“Working with Claire” is an interesting comparison. I’ve been trying to think through why I reacted better to it than the main article.

Ultimately, “Working with Claire” seems more aimed at me, the reader / notional employee. E.g. it starts concrete, talking about meetings we’d have together. And it has helpful info about how she tends to work and the kinds of things she might do. In theory, it means I wouldn’t have to work out things like “How much info does my new manager expect?”

Self-reflection is a big part of these personal READMEs. But it’s also important to work out which bits of self-reflection are useful to the reader. For me, that’s where the main article didn’t quite hit the mark.

[bavila]

Without even reading any content, I feel there's a marked distinction just in the titles alone.

"Working with Claire" signals: This is an article about what it's like to work with me.

"How to work with me" signals: This is a set of rules I expect to be followed if we are to get along.

I am just immediately rubbed the wrong way by the latter, while I'd be willing to approach the former with an open mind.