--- title: Five Years of Running a Systems Reading Group at Microsoft description: A Microsoft engineer shares a five-year retrospective on running a systems reading group at Microsoft, starting from a small database internals group in 2021... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/five-years-of-running-a-systems-reading-group-at-microsoft-lvji0dsyr twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Five Years of Running a Systems Reading Group at Microsoft | daily.dev og:description: A Microsoft engineer shares a five-year retrospective on running a systems reading group at Microsoft, starting from a small database internals group in 2021... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/five-years-of-running-a-systems-reading-group-at-microsoft-lvji0dsyr og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/LvjI0dSyr.png og:image:alt: Five Years of Running a Systems Reading Group at Microsoft og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Five Years of Running a Systems Reading Group at Microsoft **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 5 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A Microsoft engineer shares a five-year retrospective on running a systems reading group at Microsoft, starting from a small database internals group in 2021 and growing into a broader systems reading group. The post covers how the group evolved from one-off papers to guided reading series, and offers practical lessons: start small and stay consistent, let scope grow organically, use multi-session series for depth, have a co-organizer, and make it easy to show up unprepared. The author highlights both the learning benefits and the unexpected value of connecting with curious engineers across the company. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [14 More lessons from 14 years at Google](https://daily.dev/posts/14-more-lessons-from-14-years-at-google-qzitzyald) · Elevate · 1 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#microsoft](https://daily.dev/tags/microsoft), [#backend](https://daily.dev/tags/backend), [#distributed-systems](https://daily.dev/tags/distributed-systems) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/five-years-of-running-a-systems-reading-group-at-microsoft-lvji0dsyr) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Five Years of Running a Systems Reading Group at Microsoft","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/five-years-of-running-a-systems-reading-group-at-microsoft-lvji0dsyr","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/five-years-of-running-a-systems-reading-group-at-microsoft-lvji0dsyr"},"datePublished":"2026-03-22T22:01:28.941Z","dateModified":"2026-03-22T22:01:52.574Z","description":"A Microsoft engineer shares a five-year retrospective on running a systems reading group at Microsoft, starting from a small database internals group in 2021...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--CxzD6vbw--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2005","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--CxzD6vbw--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2005","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Hacker News","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Hacker News","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/hn","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/five-years-of-running-a-systems-reading-group-at-microsoft-lvji0dsyr","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"microsoft,backend,distributed-systems","timeRequired":"PT5M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Hacker News","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Five Years of Running a Systems Reading Group at Microsoft"}]} ```