Kris

As far as "landing at Xbox", the mountains you climbed are not visible in the who you are now. I had to explain just how many mistakes I made and the indirect paths I had to take. Most journeys in life are indirect...don't stress that your trip isn't going ideally, rarely does anyone else's.

So yes...I have "regrets" or at least insights that I wish I had then. The biggest one is: stop putting roadblocks in front of doing the thing you love. You want to program? Then just go write stuff, learn at your own pace and don't wait for someone to tell you that it's okay to code...{more}

During a Mentorship conversation I had a moment of forced recognition of the difference of perspective. The mentee asked me what regrets if any I had about College and applying for positions. And then maybe I don't because I landed at Xbox I must not have had regrets...hoo boy...{more to follow}

Savage.

I'm hoping it's that your life is better because you like your new gig more :)

And to sort of close out the thought - really what this means is recognizing that you are not your work and being able to let go of defending the limits of past you and instead accept them and grow beyond them. Keeping your ego out of your empowers you grow better. Pride and ego can limit you.

listening and internalizing the core of the feedback and the _intent_ of it. Taking your ego out of your work also means accepting that your "best" at any one time might not be that good and being open to learning to be better... It's a nuanced difference that matters...

Taking Pride means: knowing you did the best you could with what you had and bringing that energy every time. Ego is - feeling that any critique or feedback of your work is a reflection on you. Taking your ego out of your work means not responding emotionally to feedback but instead...

"Take your ego out of your work.". It's a simple phrase but I think it took me years to really fully understand and realize it. It's okay to have "pride" in your work, but it's worth being mindful that pride and ego are twins, they look a lot alike but they are not quite the same...

And accountability doesn't mean never making mistakes - it just means doing the necessary steps to rebalance the scales when a mistake happens.

And to wrap this up and bring it round to being a manager - when you are a leader with people who are directly impacted by your actions - being consistent in acknowledging the accountability you have and when your actions fail to rise to your spoken standards is crucial. We are human after all.

And to follow up with this - trust is lost when your stated intent, ethics or ideals are constantly in conflict with your actions. Smart individuals avoid someone who doesn't reflect in their actions what they say - you cannot negotiate in faith with someone who isn't trustworthy.

Words matter but every action signals the intent that people around you will see. When your words and actions are out of alignment no one will trust you. Once you understand this and recognize the accountability of every action you take, it's possible to be more intentional about how you show up.

During 1:1 meetings I keep open space for any topic to come up. It's surprising to me how many times something small and seemingly unrelated to the core work we do has turned out to be a crucial idea or insight that solved a hard problem. Creativity in engineering requires multi-dimensionality.

A weird insight about management training: often these are useful tools to use on yourself. I don't think we talk about this enough but self-managing proactively is an incredible tool for protecting and magnifying the impact of your own efforts.

New Year, New Rewards with Xbox - Xbox Wire Rewards with Xbox are our way of, well, rewarding you for your love of gaming, and today we're thrilled to announce new ways for players to earn points.

So my team has been working on amazing things. Amazing things that you all now can have now that it's out in the wild and publicly announced. news.xbox.com/en-us/2025/0... My team is amazing, I love my job.

Welp, it's only 7 days into this year and I've already exceeded my quota of days where I see sunrise and also my quota of days where my sleep schedule is ...non-functional. We shipped a thing though! I hope you all find it rewarding.

What do I look for in people? 3 things really: Can you learn from your mistakes? Can you be relatively consistent in your actions? Do you try to do your best? If I can see a clear "yes" in all of these for someone, I find it very easy to find a path to work with them.

For me the biggest stress/frustration of being a manager is seeing a problem, calling the problem out and seeing people still hit the problem and struggle with it. The desire to just fix everything directly is strong but letting the team learn is often more critical.

Sometimes I end up in your archive looking for a strip (or a post) that I swear exists but I can never find. Y'all hit the mark for repeatedly relevant sentiments.

My year in review is kinda weird because I mix work and play too much. That said. This is worth sharing. I'm happy any time I in the 0.5% of anything.

Rewards! Did you know we give points for simply playing the games you play every day on our platform?

🍬

Oh and Flight Sim 2024....I am in the middle of a bushpilot tour that's been fun.

What is Kris playing these days: Indiana Jones (just started), CODBO6 (probably on the wind-down...I think I've seen what I might need to see), Mechwarrior 5 Clans, Mechwarrior 5 Mercenaries, Donut Country, Return to Moria (though I may not play much). A handful of smaller games as well.

Accountability is both simple and nuanced. Sometimes it's not so much about not making the mistake - but making sure that the harm of a mistake is minimized to to best you can manage. And then taking the lessons of that mistake forward so you don't repeat it.

Isn't everything associated with Malört a bad idea?

You know the rules, the cat must be appeased if the doing of things must be done.

This time of the year is often a time of reflection for me. Little known fact, my "tenure" on Xbox Live coincides with my time at this crazy place called Microsoft. So many little moments and memories captured in this simple profile from my console.

I just acquired a ROG Ally, I'm putting it through its paces and honestly for an alternative to having a full on gaming PC, it's a lot better experience than I was expecting to get. I may have to rethink some of my prior expectations.