[HN Gopher] Five Years of Running a Systems Reading Group at Mic...
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Five Years of Running a Systems Reading Group at Microsoft
Author : Foe
Score : 93 points
Date : 2026-03-22 17:06 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (armaansood.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (armaansood.com)
| Foe wrote:
| Hi HN, I've been organizing a systems reading group at Microsoft
| for five years now. I wrote down some takeaways on what worked
| (and what didn't). I'd love to hear if anyone else has
| successfully kept an engineering reading group alive at their
| company, or if you have any favorite systems papers we should add
| to our list!
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Interesting. We don't have an engineering culture, so
| definitely no. Did you find similar groups within MSFT?
|
| BTW heard about this paper[1] a few weeks ago, but not
| completely aligned with database and probably a bit too
| introductory for your group.
|
| [1]https://www.cs.fsu.edu/~awang/courses/cop5611_s2024/vnode.pd
| ...
| Foe wrote:
| There are other groups within Microsoft, but they usually
| follow a presentation format rather than a collaborative
| discussion. Off the top of my head, Phil Bernstein[1] and
| Hanuma Kodavalla[2] run great database seminars for invited
| speakers. I regularly attend and have presented in both
| forums; Phil's crowd is mostly researchers, while Hanuma's is
| mostly full of SQL engineers. Different from a small reading
| group, but still great.
|
| Appreciate the paper link! We like going back to the basics
| sometimes, so I'll definitely take a look.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Bernstein
|
| [2]
| https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=9eNQbZUAAAAJ&hl=en
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Thanks for the references!
| SegfaultSeagull wrote:
| This is great and congrats on the success. Many years ago I
| tried starting a cybersecurity reading group in my city since
| the startup I was working at was small and people there weren't
| interested in that topic. I got a lot of very green, aspiring
| and non-professionals to show up. We couldn't really agree on
| where to start and people had different ideas of where to focus
| or even how much they wanted to contribute. Mostly people
| wanted to hear a summary and didn't really put in the kind of
| effort that I had hoped. It didn't last long. Congrats again on
| making it 5 years and covering so much ground.
| Foe wrote:
| Thank you! I think the biggest factor for us was that most
| attendees already had some technical baseline. That makes it
| way easier to pick papers and have productive discussions. A
| cross-experience group sounds much harder. We occasionally
| have non-technical people who attend (e.g., designers), but
| they usually are very eager to learn. The guided series
| format might have helped in your case, where you pick the
| topic and sequence upfront so there's less debate about
| direction each meeting. Honestly, just getting people to show
| up is hard at first, so the fact that you got it off the
| ground at all says something.
| oa335 wrote:
| > I think the biggest factor for us was that most attendees
| already had some technical baseline. That makes it way
| easier to pick papers and have productive discussions.
|
| Thanks for sharing your experience.
|
| How do you suss out peoples technical aptitude, and what
| was the minimum level you were looking for?
|
| How were your discussions structured?
| thi2 wrote:
| Any tipps on finding interesting and valuable papers?
| Foe wrote:
| It depends on the theme. If we're picking something in a
| space the group already knows well, like databases, I'll look
| at "Best Papers" from recent VLDB/ICDE/SIGMOD conferences. If
| we're exploring a topic most people are unfamiliar with,
| we'll go with something more foundational instead. For
| example, we're starting an arc on datacenters (servers,
| racks, networking, load balancing, power, cooling, failures,
| etc.), and most attendees don't have deep background there,
| so I found a book on the topic that we're going to read
| through[1].
|
| [1] https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-01761-2
| aliher1911 wrote:
| Not author, but in the past I was just going through papers
| on biggest conferences for the last year and checked what
| sounded interesting for my own education. But it was a bit of
| a chore. What I tried now is use gemini thinking research and
| asked it to do just that, go through main software/hardware
| conferences for last 3 years, find me papers on the topics of
| interest and give summary and links. The result is pretty
| good!
| smokel wrote:
| I understand that in a research lab or in academia, this is
| common practice. But in the more menial coding industry that most
| of us are probably in, how do you find time for this? Do people
| read papers in their spare time and discuss over lunch, or are
| there enlightened managers who support this during working hours?
| eldenring wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean by menial coding but all my
| employers have supported this in the past. This was a variety
| of companies, big tech, startups, etc. I think its more likely
| your employer is the outlier.
| nico wrote:
| I've been scolded for reading books and documentation for the
| tasks and software I was asked to build (at a startup) during
| my regular work hours
|
| No company I've worked at has ever had dedicated time for
| reading papers or articles
|
| Maybe I've only worked at outliers?
| johngossman wrote:
| In 35 years in the industry, reading and studying during
| work hours were always supported. Frankly, most places
| would let us play video games during work hours as long as
| we met our deadlines.
| userbinator wrote:
| All the companies I've worked at implicitly assume that
| you're supposed to use your working hours for more than
| just coding, including learning what you need for the task
| at hand, although if you're looking at very beginner
| material that might raise some suspicion.
| thi2 wrote:
| Thats my experience as well. Of course not ten paper a day
| but some learning is always encouraged.
|
| One company had a +1 day. You worked 4 days, had 1 day for
| learning - everything relevant for the job was fine.
| Foe wrote:
| Good question. Most people read the paper on their own time,
| and we meet over lunch. The meetings themselves are just an
| hour, so it's not a massive time block. I've found that the
| people who show up are the ones who are genuinely curious and
| would be reading this stuff anyway (and sometimes just need a
| commitment/accountability to do it). Having a group gives them
| a reason to do it on a schedule.
| zihotki wrote:
| That implies that you have a fixed time for lunch and also
| chat during lunch. I may be the minority but I prefer to eat
| when I'm hungry and focus on the food instead of chatting.
| And there is also allergies, as a celiac, I have big troubles
| eating together with others - they may accidently contaminate
| my food
| oa335 wrote:
| > The meetings themselves are just an hour, so it's not a
| massive time block
|
| How exactly are the meetings structured? I.e is someone
| leading discussions? Does each person go around and share
| thoughts? Etc
| zihotki wrote:
| This is a very good question. I also struggle to find a good
| solution to process various signals (papers, tecniques, etc.)
| with my co-workers while maintaining proper work-life balance.
| Either you have to be a full time geek, or be left behind..
| markn951 wrote:
| Speaking as a SWE manager who explicitly "mandates" (not
| actually mandatory but I strongly encourage following your
| passions and interests in an academic kind of way!) we do
| exist, I assume I'm not the only one :)
|
| My team almost always can find an hour between tasks
| organically so I've never really had to push
| oa335 wrote:
| I would be interested to hear others experiences with running
| these types of groups. We've tried this a couple of times at my
| current job and both times it's petered out - people don't do the
| assigned reading and then just stop attending.
|
| Any suggestions on how to keep such a group alive?
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| I lead a book club once (Designing Data Intensive
| Applications)- read a chapter and meet every two weeks. Was a
| real flop. Attendance remained high, but only one other person
| actually finished the book.
|
| What was a real slap in the face - maybe a year after that book
| had concluded, someone told me I should lead another one about
| this other topic. She had not finished the first book, and she
| wanted me to regurgitate another to the group?
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