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Not sure why your mate's manager had a problem with passive voice. Passive voice is often the correct choice in documentation. Passive voice emphasizes the doing, not the doer. People usually don't care about who did the doing in technical documents.

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As a native Swedish speaker, I tend to follow Swedish documentation writing rules even when I write English. In particular, one should always use passive voice, and also avoid terms such as "you".

In other words, write "How to achieve X", rather than "How do I do X"?

The point I want to make is that when I write documentation, and change the latter to the former, most people seem to agree it's better.

Disagree. Pervasive passive voice is an obfuscating irritant. In a description of a multi-step procedure, IMO better to switch to "you". It clearly flags actions for the reader to take. Keepin' it clear & simple.

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