alt.hn

3/22/2026 at 5:06:38 PM

Five Years of Running a Systems Reading Group at Microsoft

 https://armaansood.com/posts/systems-reading-group/

by Foe

3/22/2026 at 7:45:19 PM

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?

by smokel

3/22/2026 at 8:03:51 PM

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.

by eldenring

3/22/2026 at 8:05:25 PM

Good question. Most of the people who participate read papers in their spare time and we discuss it over lunch.

by Foe

3/22/2026 at 5:06:56 PM

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!

by Foe

3/22/2026 at 7:50:59 PM

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.

by SegfaultSeagull

3/22/2026 at 7:07:06 PM

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...

by markus_zhang

3/22/2026 at 7:11:59 PM

[flagged]

by megous