What would you like to do in Microsoft?

mVPstar wrote:

Work in Marketing...


so that we wont have another "Office is for Dinosaurs" campaign or a "Wow starts now" campaign.

Charles wrote: I'd really encourage you to apply for an internship at MSR before you complete your PhD. Summer internships are a great way to get in the door and work on incredibly interesting projects going on in MSR (not to mention learning from and working with some of the best minds in computer science...). C

Hey Charles, I turned 18 last Friday. Does that make me eligible for an internship at MS?

Yes, but still not eligable for a place on the MSR internship scheme.

Lets think BIIIGGGGG....

Chief architect or CTO of MS.....

mVPstar wrote:

Work in Marketing...


so that we wont have another "Office is for Dinosaurs" campaign or a "Wow starts now" campaign.

If Microsoft adopted the Change The World Or Go Home campaign, that'd immediately set right both "The wow starts now" and "Welcome to the social."

I'd like to be whoever it is who takes the good stuff MSR make, and turns it into products.

There's definitely a niche for a company to develop those ideas to see if any of them would actually be popular. (I tend to think MS are too conservative about developing new products; and they should possibly have a "crazy ideas department" releasing wacky stuff under a different brand name. Anything that catches on can be brought under the main MS banner.)

That's a good idea. Sort of like how Disney had Touchstone to release their movies with un-Disney-like themes.

Massif wrote:

... and they should possibly have a "crazy ideas department" releasing wacky stuff under a different brand name. Anything that catches on can be brought under the main MS banner.)

That is MSR. And admittedly Windows Live Labs too. Loads of great stuff in MS comes from MSR, and MSR doesn't just do the math; it actually builds prototypes too! By the time a solution is ready to leave MSR it's either failed or goes straight to a product dev team.

evildictaitor wrote:



Massif wrote: ... and they should possibly have a "crazy ideas department" releasing wacky stuff under a different brand name. Anything that catches on can be brought under the main MS banner.)

That is MSR. And admittedly Windows Live Labs too. Loads of great stuff in MS comes from MSR, and MSR doesn't just do the math; it actually builds prototypes too! By the time a solution is ready to leave MSR it's either failed or goes straight to a product dev team.

Ah! But who decides whether a product has failed or not? It would appear, from the outside, that any ideas coming out of MSR that can't be folded directly into an existing product get canned at that point. (Occasionally there appear to be exceptions, Surface, that 360 degree camera thingy and a very few others...)

Like, we're not going to see that crazy wind-mirror idea, or the visual answerphone any time soon... And why not? How hard would it be to productize any of these things and see if there's a market for them?

That's kinda what I want, a department to develop and try to sell all those MSR prototypes separate from the main MS product divisions.

I'd want to work on ScottGu's team. As far as I'm concerned he owns all the cool stuff in Microsoft right now. And I do have a bit of a man-crush

Massif wrote:

Ah! But who decides whether a product has failed or not? It would appear, from the outside, that any ideas coming out of MSR that can't be folded directly into an existing product get canned at that point. (Occasionally there appear to be exceptions, Surface, that 360 degree camera thingy and a very few others...)

Managers, who decide whether:

• An MSR project will be profitable
• An MSR project will have a suitable Return-on-Investment
• An MSR project is feasible
• An MSR project won't help the competition too much

As for why so few MSR projects get much development, some trivial projects taking years to complete: I understand they're traded internally to work for different departments, leaving little time for blue-sky research.

I'd like to work on the team that makes more of those instructional videos like the ones just released on Youtube. The shorter comercial-like ones could be on Youtube, TV and Soapbox and the more detailed videos would be available on a new website that's kind of like on10.net.

People need better training because technology is overwhelming to the average person and nothing's better than actually showing them in a video.

I'd love to get people who are experts at using their favorite software tools (even if it's not an MS product, just something that runs well on Vista) demoing creative/useful stuff they use every day that most people didn't know how to do because they thought it was too hard.

It would be a mix between on10.net, Crossfader and pixelcorps.

I deal with clueless computer users every day, I'm not a programmer. I know why they get frustrated with their computers and a little basic education would be very helpful to them and topeople like me who have to help them all the time.

Trainer...

fake powerpoint mockup graphics for new projects

I'd like to work in research, in areas ranging from the Kernel, through to compiler, through to devices, etc.

ie I have too wide an area of interest, and too low a threshold for dealing with managment crap, that I'd never make it through the HR stuff. Worse still, I'm not willing to move to a different country. So there's no point pursuing anything. Such is life...

I'd recommend going for an internship at MS, their internship program is the best.

Would like to work in some "creative" dept. Not sure if something like that exists but it would be great to work with those types of people.

Network- and serversecurity.

Come to think of it, I see all kinds of jobs for Microsoft but I've never seen them asking for a systemadministrator, the kind that takes care of the AD, creating domains, ou's, user- and groupsrights, policies, that kind of stuff.

Final one: all jobs published on the website are academic level or just below that. Where do they go for high school education level people, or does everyone there has a college or university degree?

eblonk wrote:



Where do they go for high school education level people, or does everyone there has a college or university degree?

That's a good point. Maybe it's some kind of a royal family tradition. Senior is out of MS and junior joins in? Except that, they might scout people out, or they all have an academic degree.

Not everyone there's a coder though.