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}

"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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

@mc.frontalot.com This is seemingly too timely to be listening to these days. open.spotify.com/track/73ucsX...