{"id":29924,"date":"2024-12-10T14:29:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-10T22:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/?p=29924"},"modified":"2024-12-11T09:53:50","modified_gmt":"2024-12-11T17:53:50","slug":"we-are-hiring-at-microsoft-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/archive\/2024\/12\/we-are-hiring-at-microsoft-ai","title":{"rendered":"We are Hiring at Microsoft AI"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Since <a href=\"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/archive\/2024\/01\/one-year-at-microsoft\">reflecting on one year at Microsoft<\/a> almost 12 months ago, a lot has changed. Most visibly to the outside world, we&#8217;ve completely re-designed and re-engineered our Copilot consumer app from the ground up with a a craft- and quality-first mentality.<\/p>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/blog\/images\/inline\/inline_home.png\" alt=\"Copilot Home\" width=\"900\" height=\"900\" class=\"noborder\" \/><figcaption>The New Copilot mobile app<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/blog\/images\/inline\/inline_dailybriefing.png\" alt=\"Copilot Daily Briefing\" width=\"900\" height=\"900\" class=\"noborder\" \/><figcaption>Copilot Daily helps you catch up with world events<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/blog\/images\/inline\/inline_imagegen.png\" alt=\"Image Generation\" width=\"900\" height=\"900\" class=\"noborder\" \/><figcaption>Generating images is easier than ever<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Every element moves more gracefully, every response loads much faster, and every detail is more considered. Copilot may be the tip of the spear when it comes to how we are thinking about our products over the next decade, but we&#8217;ve also begun to modernize Edge, Bing, and our news offerings. We are just getting started.<\/p>\n<p>Here is a preview of a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-copilot\/blog\/2024\/12\/05\/copilot-vision-now-in-preview-a-new-way-to-browse\/?msockid=09a32c8f88ca686131893980897069a5\">feature we are working on for Edge<\/a> that allows you to co-browse the internet with your AI companion. It&#8217;s the most powerful addition to the web browser since video:<\/p>\n<figure>\n<div class=\"video-container\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/H3-hHiITH_g?si=EwFLkFg2DEyNsnKH\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture;\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div><figcaption>Copilot Vision in Edge<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>We aren&#8217;t just adding to Edge, but we are also \u2014 just as importantly \u2014 subtracting from it. Although Edge has grown browser share consistently for several years now, we&#8217;ve also grown our feature set a little too aggressively. Every so often, you have to step back from the bonsai tree, look at it from all sides, and prune. The Edge of tomorrow will be both simpler and more powerful than it is today.<\/p>\n<p>Same deal over on Bing. We are pruning away old growth to make room for better-looking, more powerful search results:<\/p>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/blog\/images\/inline\/bing_flat.jpg\" alt=\"Cleaner search results\" width=\"988\" height=\"1478\" class=\"noborder\" \/><figcaption>A world with cleaner search results<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>There is a lot more going on in Microsoft AI as well, including a bunch of new things we are cooking up for MSN:<\/p>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/blog\/images\/inline\/msn_logo.jpg\" alt=\"The New MSN Logo\" width=\"1394\" height=\"883\" class=\"noborder\" \/><figcaption>A new butterfly for a new chapter of MSN<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>If you&#8217;re interested in joining the Microsoft AI team, we have a number of positions open right now that I&#8217;ve listed at the bottom of this post. If we already know each other, please reach out directly.<\/p>\n<p>I mentioned <a href=\"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/archive\/2024\/01\/one-year-at-microsoft\">in my last post a year ago<\/a> how there were a lot of processes we needed to improve in the coming months. I detailed an unbroken chain of 8 steps for great products to emerge:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ol>\n<li>An idea that can improve lives if executed well.<\/li>\n<li>Foundational research to light the path before design and coding begin.<\/li>\n<li>Rich design explorations and prototyping to make the experience palpable.<\/li>\n<li>Buy-in to <strong>build it at a level of quality that makes the team proud<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Impeccable UX engineering and UX writing to make sure every detail is dialed.<\/li>\n<li>Well-conceived server-side engineering to make it scalable and maintainable.<\/li>\n<li>Creative marketing to prime people for the experience.<\/li>\n<li>\u2026 and finally, maybe more important that anything else on this list, <strong>the will to keep refining relentlessly after the experience is launched<\/strong>. This part is so often neglected as companies rush to build more things.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Although we are still in the first inning of this journey, I&#8217;m happy with the progress we&#8217;ve made across the board&#8230; in particular, steps 4 and 8. There is a different energy when everyone who is working on the product knows the standard is not &#8220;good&#8221;, not &#8220;better than our competitors&#8221;, but &#8220;the best version imaginable&#8221;. We are not there yet with any of our products, but there is no confusion where the bar is.<\/p>\n<p>Reorienting our cross-functional teams to prioritize user experience has been a gratifying (and ongoing!) challenge. The vast majority of companies are not set up this way for a variety of reasons, some good, and some bad. In some industries, surviving might mostly about cost minimization, and not user experience. In other industries, &#8220;good enough&#8221; might be all people expect or need. But in just about all companies, there is some form of diminishing returns when it comes to how much time is spent getting every detail just right. The question is: where does a company draw the line?<\/p>\n<p>One sign your company draws the line too low is if people insist that every detail, no matter how esthetic, be rigorously tested in order to prove it is instantly metrics-positive. This is a sign of a culture that rejects the value of taste and long-term vision.<\/p>\n<p>Does that mean you should test nothing? Of course not. You should test everything, at the very least, to prevent accidentally messing something up. I still remember more than 20 years ago, during my first week at ESPN, causing our entire front page to disappear because I forgot a semicolon in a Javascript file. Testing for safety and information, though, is different than testing as religion. Furthermore, there are some things \u2014 particularly in the world of large language model training \u2014 that should absolutely follow a cycle of train\/test\/release\/repeat. <\/p>\n<p>Culturally speaking, this rebalancing of our values has created a spark for great work to emerge. Many of the same people who have been working on Bing, Edge, MSN, and Copilot for years simply have a new set of product-building principles now, in addition to some great new teammates and refreshingly smaller, evenly staffed cross-functional teams. It&#8217;s been wonderful seeing everyone exercise muscles that show up more often in startups and creative agencies than in 49-year old tech companies. The ingredients have been here all along, but the recipe is changing.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of ingredients, we are looking for more Designers and User Researchers to join the team at Microsoft AI.<\/p>\n<p>These positions are <strong>United States only, Redmond-preferred<\/strong>, but we&#8217;ll also consider the Bay Area and other locations:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/jobs.careers.microsoft.com\/global\/en\/job\/1792740\/Principal-UX-Researcher\">Principal UX Researcher<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/jobs.careers.microsoft.com\/global\/en\/job\/1790680\/Principal-Design-Director\">Design Director &#8211; News &amp; Interests<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/jobs.careers.microsoft.com\/global\/en\/job\/1790885\/Principal-Product-Designer\">Principal Designer &#8211; News &amp; Interests<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/jobs.careers.microsoft.com\/global\/en\/job\/1792846\/Senior-Product-Designer\">Senior Designer &#8211; News &amp; Interests<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/jobs.careers.microsoft.com\/global\/en\/job\/1790886\/Principal-Product-Designer-%7C-Consumer-Ads\">Principal Designer &#8211; Consumer Advertising<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/jobs.careers.microsoft.com\/global\/en\/job\/1790670\/Principal-Product-Designer-%7C-OneMicrosoft-Growth\">Principal Designer &#8211; Growth<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/jobs.careers.microsoft.com\/global\/en\/job\/1792482\/Senior-Product-Designer\">Senior Designer &#8211; Growth<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/jobs.careers.microsoft.com\/global\/en\/job\/1790672\/Principal-Product-Designer-%7C-Microsoft-Rewards-Team\">Principal Designer &#8211; Rewards<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/jobs.careers.microsoft.com\/global\/en\/job\/1790606\/Principal-Product-Designer-%7C-Design-Systems\">Principal Designer &#8211; Design Systems<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These positions are specifically in our lovely <strong>Mountain View office<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/jobs.careers.microsoft.com\/global\/en\/job\/1780342\/Creative-Producer\">Creative Producer<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/jobs.careers.microsoft.com\/global\/en\/job\/1780336\/Motion-Creative-Director\">Motion Creative Director<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/jobs.careers.microsoft.com\/global\/en\/job\/1780338\/Brand-Writer\">Brand Writer<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/jobs.careers.microsoft.com\/global\/en\/job\/1779685\/Principal-Product-Design-Lead\">Principal Product Design Lead<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Note that we are looking mainly for experienced, hands-on individual contributors to join our team. If inventing the design patterns for the next phase of the consumer internet sounds right up your alley, we&#8217;d love to talk to you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since reflecting on one year at Microsoft almost 12 months ago, a lot has changed. Most visibly to the outside world, we&#8217;ve completely re-designed and re-engineered our Copilot consumer app from the ground up with a a craft- and quality-first mentality. The New Copilot mobile app Copilot Daily helps you catch up with world events [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":29966,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29924"}],"version-history":[{"count":46,"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29979,"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29924\/revisions\/29979"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}