The VSHN Handbook

vshn logo

Dear (future) VSHNeer,

Welcome to the VSHN (pronounced like “vision”) Handbook! We’re glad you’re here. This handbook serves as your navigator through the workday at VSHN, showing who we are and what matters to us—without any empty promises or marketing fluff. It documents the current state and reflects the outcomes of our genuine, collaboratively made decisions that shape our organization.

In the handbook, you’ll find essential information about VSHN’s vision and mission, values, business overview, structures, responsibilities, and practices. It’s a practical guide designed to help you find your way from day one and to perform your work successfully. It’s like internal documentation, just publicly available — at least for what is not legally or business strategically confidential.

In contrast to our Wiki, we maintain the handbook as curated documentation; it’s not where everyone directly edits. We ensure this by using Git merge requests and by adhering to the Contributing Guidelines.

You see, at VSHN, we do things differently, starting with maintaining this public handbook.

Not sure where to start reading? Why not check out our "Why and What is VSHN", Culture Overview or Your First Day to get started.

Contributing to the handbook

Of course, not all questions have been asked yet and the VUCA world and with that, our organization develops faster than we can keep up with documentation. This is why this Handbook is open for collaboration. Just go to the project home page in GitLab and follow the instructions there. Small fixes can be done in the GitLab editor; for bigger changes, we suggest a local editor of your choice and a git client.

We might even open the handbook for public contributions in the future. Think about that for a while — wouldn’t it be interesting to see what comes through as merge requests? Or for potential VSHNeers to see what we’re working on?

This Handbook contains a lot of information, but definitely not all of it. There is a whole Wiki with more "internal" and not-so-curated documentation, whose contents are continuously updated — by everyone, including you!

And as the saying goes: "Question, don’t assume!" We’re here to help.