Latest news with #ex-Microsoft
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Amazon Bets on ZeroOne for Next-Gen Gadgets
Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) edged higher after unveiling ZeroOne, a dedicated group led by ex-Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) executive J. Allard to develop breakthrough consumer gadgets. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 2 Warning Sign with AMZN. The Seattle-based teambacked by offices in San Francisco and Sunnyvalelaunched in September 2024 and aims to revive Amazon's hardware edge after mixed results with Kindle (over 200 million devices sold), Echo smart speakers (100 million units) and the ill-fated Fire Phone that bowed out after 12 months. Allard, the architect behind Xbox and Zune, will helm product strategy and R&D to fast-track next-gen experiences. ZeroOne follows Amazon's February AI-powered Alexa reveal and reflects the company's push to diversify revenue beyond retail and AWS. Investors should care because a successful hardware reset could unlock new high-margin revenue streams and deepen user lock-in across Amazon's ecosystem. With Amazon rumored to host a fall hardware event, markets will be watching ZeroOne's first prototypes and timeline for product rollouts. This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Amazon Bets on ZeroOne for Next-Gen Gadgets
Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) edged higher after unveiling ZeroOne, a dedicated group led by ex-Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) executive J. Allard to develop breakthrough consumer gadgets. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 2 Warning Sign with AMZN. The Seattle-based teambacked by offices in San Francisco and Sunnyvalelaunched in September 2024 and aims to revive Amazon's hardware edge after mixed results with Kindle (over 200 million devices sold), Echo smart speakers (100 million units) and the ill-fated Fire Phone that bowed out after 12 months. Allard, the architect behind Xbox and Zune, will helm product strategy and R&D to fast-track next-gen experiences. ZeroOne follows Amazon's February AI-powered Alexa reveal and reflects the company's push to diversify revenue beyond retail and AWS. Investors should care because a successful hardware reset could unlock new high-margin revenue streams and deepen user lock-in across Amazon's ecosystem. With Amazon rumored to host a fall hardware event, markets will be watching ZeroOne's first prototypes and timeline for product rollouts. This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Time of India
14-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
From fitness to networking, ex-Microsoft employee shares suggestions to bounce back after a layoff
When a tech giant like Microsoft makes headlines for laying off 6,000 employees — its biggest round of job cuts in over two years — the industry pays attention. As the company doubles down on artificial intelligence and trims managerial layers, the ripple effects are being felt across teams and geographies. Amid the uncertainty, Sital Ruparelia , an ex-Microsoft techie, took to LinkedIn with candid career advice and thoughtful suggestions, striking a chord with thousands navigating similar crossroads. Sital Ruparelia has more than a decade of experience at Microsoft and firsthand experience navigating corporate upheaval. He's offering free 30-minute coaching calls to those affected, as he understands the emotional toll of losing a job overnight. 'Happy to listen, answer questions and offer a perspective,' he posted on LinkedIn, opening his calendar and his heart to those reeling from the blow. Ruparelia's message isn't just practical—it's powerfully empathetic. Here's what he suggests- Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like New Container Houses In Thon Cham Container House | Search Ads Search Now Undo Embrace emotional ups and downs He suggests that it's completely normal to feel like one is riding an emotional rollercoaster after a layoff. One day might feel full of hope, the next clouded with frustration or doubt. Sital calls it 'four weather seasons in a week.' He believes there's no shame in needing comfort — whether that's a duvet day, comfort food, or venting to a friend. Recognising the volatility as part of the process helps reduce guilt and sets realistic expectations for the emotional journey ahead. Reconnect with your network when you're ready He advises reaching out once one has had the time to process the layoff. According to him, the next role is more likely to come through one's network than a job board. Whether it's colleagues, mentors, friends or clients, they can offer support, advice, and even leads. There is no need to dive in immediately, but when the moment feels right, re-engaging with people who care can open unexpected doors and reduce the feeling of isolation. Share the news early and directly He urges not to let shame or hesitation delay the conversation. According to him, it is good to let close circle—friends, family, former coworkers—hear the news directly and not through whispers or LinkedIn. People often want to help, but don't know how unless one invites them in. A simple message can lead to a coffee, a call, or a new connection. Clear finances Sital Ruparelia advises getting clear on finances to reduce stress and guide smart decisions. Spending must be adjusted, and if one is considering a career shift, it is best to aim for at least six months of savings. Move your body, calm your mind He emphasised that exercise plays a crucial role not just in physical health but in maintaining mental well-being. Simple routines like daily walks, yoga, or gym sessions can boost energy and provide structure during uncertain times. Pairing physical activity with mindfulness practices such as breathing exercises or meditation, helps manage stress. These small, consistent habits act as vital tools for staying grounded and resilient through transitions. It can be a turning point He pointed out that while it may be hard to see now, a layoff can often be the turning point for something better. Many eventually discover it led them to more fulfilling roles, healthier lifestyles, and clearer personal values. The experience forces reflection and action on things we typically delay. Though challenging, this period can spark unexpected clarity, growth, and long-term transformation.
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
At Microsoft she was in charge of professional development for 90,000 employees. She found this trait prevents women from getting promoted
Good morning! Bill fighting revenge porn passed by Congress, UPS to cut 20,000 jobs, and Fortune's Nina Ajemian talks with former Microsoft exec Sabina Nawaz about how managers can overcome the pressures of leadership. - Management 101. Managers in the workplace adopt a few identities, according to Sabina Nawaz, the ex-Microsoft exec and executive coach behind the new book You're the Boss. There's the flash, a leader who gets things done at warp speed in the name of efficiency; the straight-A student, a perfectionist with high standards; and the whack-a-mole, a boss who is always putting out fires. But one identity is more likely to hold women back in the workplace: the caretaker. Caretaking can, of course, be healthy—but being too caring can often manifest in managers constantly picking up the slack for their employees and 'rescuing' their team. This behavior hurts employees' growth and often makes managers feel like they are being taken advantage of. Men and women are equally likely to be caretaker-style managers. But that quality can manifest—and be perceived—in different ways. For men, this may look like being a superhero, jumping in when they notice their team is busy. Women, on the other hand, often take their team's feelings into consideration, not wanting anyone to feel badly if they push too hard, Nawaz shares. 'In many ways, that's great,' Nawaz says. 'It's that richness of emotional intelligence and that awareness of my impact on other people, which helps with all the other traps that we talk about.' These qualities often become clear during a person's first promotion to manager. and McKinsey have termed that promotion the 'broken rung' on the career ladder, when women often fall behind men in the workplace. But Nawaz has found that that time can be risky even for the women who do get promoted. The characteristics that led to their promotion can hurt them as managers. Often, for women, that's being detail-oriented—an asset for an individual contributor, but an often unfairly misinterpreted signal to leadership that a manager is not a 'strategic' thinker. Through her coaching, Nawaz has heard from women who get that feedback when they are first promoted to manager. 'I realize, 'Oh, you're plenty strategic. There's nothing wrong with your strategic thinking,'' she says. 'It's some of that caretaking…and how you're doing that that get[s] in the way.' Nawaz, who was Microsoft's senior director of HR, wrote this book after reflecting on how she changed after her boss left the company—and left Nawaz in charge of professional development for Microsoft's 90,000 employees. Plus, with increased responsibility came increased visibility, as she was now working more directly with Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates and former CEO Steve Ballmer. She wasn't the boss she wanted or needed to be, she discovered. 'Without realizing it, I slid from being a caring and supportive boss to one who was snippy and belligerent,' Nawaz writes. She lost connection with her team. Feeling the pressure that came with a bigger job, she became a micromanager. In You're the Boss, Nawaz describes a low point: when she made team members come in early to individually test the 50 pens gifted in swag bags after an attendee received a defective one. A colleague staged an intervention, and told her she wasn't aware how her actions were coming across to her team. 'We love to put these binary judgments [on people]: good boss, bad boss. Good person, bad person. No! All of that is inside us,' says Nawaz. 'For me, it was about coming clean, showing people that all of us succumb to this, and being as open and vulnerable as I could be. Was it easy? No. But if I am, then other people hopefully are as well, and then they can get to what's really at play.' Nina The Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter is Fortune's daily briefing for and about the women leading the business world. Today's edition was curated by Nina Ajemian. Subscribe here. This story was originally featured on Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
12-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
DeepSeek hired talent from Microsoft's controversial AI research lab in China
Multiple employees at DeepSeek – the fledgling Chinese chatbot that sparked a $1 trillion selloff in US tech stocks last month – previously honed their skills at Microsoft's controversial artificial-intelligence labs in China, The Post has learned. At least four current DeepSeek employees, including a key department chief, previously worked at Microsoft Research Asia, according to public profiles on the coding site GitHub and LinkedIn viewed by The Post. Microsoft Research Asia consists of two labs in China – one in Beijing and one in Shanghai. Microsoft has faced mounting political pressure on Capitol Hill about the labs – to the point that top executives like company president Brad Smith and CEO Satya Nadella have reportedly discussed whether it was 'tenable' to maintain the facilities. DeepSeek's crop of ex-Microsoft employees includes the head of its AI 'alignment team' – which refers to the process of ensuring models follow a specific set of social values. The team leader spent 10 years at Microsoft Research Asia from 2013 to 2023 — first as a research intern and later as a senior researcher, and his work included large-scale language AI model training. Another DeepSeek researcher spent six years as a research intern at Microsoft Research Asia's 'natural language computing group' from 2017 to 2023 before joining the startup as a researcher, according to a GitHub profile. Both were listed as 'core contributors' on the research paper detailing DeepSeek's R1 reasoning model, which helped spark the market uproar last month. The other two current employees were listed as regular contributors. Microsoft has employed several prominent Chinese tech executives over the years, including TikTok parent ByteDance's founder Zhang Yiming, SenseTime founder Tang Xiao'ou, Alibaba CTO Wang Jian and Baidu CTO Wang Haifeng, among many others. When reached for comment, Microsoft confirmed having ties to the researchers, but sought to downplay the training they received from the company. 'Anyone who thinks that a handful of former Microsoft interns were the secret of DeepSeek's recent success doesn't understand what DeepSeek has accomplished,' a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement. Microsoft requires full-time and internship candidates in China to sign agreements on confidentiality and IP transfer to prevent leaks, the company added. In response to past pressure from Congress, Microsoft has said it imposes guardrails blocking researchers from working in sensitive areas such as quantum computing and facial recognition. However, one of several current job postings for a research intern position at Microsoft Research Asia in Shanghai suggests the company hires top-shelf talent with actual experience for the roles, which are focused on 'the study of cutting-edge machine learning algorithms.' 'Preference will be given to those who have published papers in top conferences or journals in related AI fields,' according to the listing, which also suggests applicants will 'conduct world-leading scientific research.' Tasks include 'data analysis, algorithm design, algorithm implementation, experimental analysis, and result presentation' and applicants must be Master's or PhD students to be considered. Three of the four employees spent at least five years as research interns at Microsoft – much longer than a traditional program, according to public profiles. One spent about two years as a research intern. 'If you're working for Microsoft for five years at any other job, that's enough time to climb into a mid-senior or senior position,' said Geoffrey Cain, policy director at the Tech Integrity Project. 'Your typical intern does not spend five years developing AI software with that title, only to go on and to help release one of the most successful AI releases of all time.' There is no evidence that any DeepSeek employees with ties to Microsoft engaged in wrongdoing. However, critics have long alleged that Microsoft's Chinese labs ripe targets for intellectual property theft, including secrets related to AI, as well as the poaching of key talent. 'This is a deeper problem,' Cain added. 'It's that Microsoft is handing the training and the technology to China. It's not necessary for these software developers in Microsoft to literally hand the tech to the CCP. They don't even need to do that because Microsoft does it for them.' Of equal concern, according to experts, is the fact that Microsoft Research Asia serves as a proving ground for some of China's best tech talent – many of whom later utilize their expertise to start or work at firms that directly compete with US interests with the backing of the Chinese Communist Party. 'Any American company that provides employment to China, Chinese engineers, is, per se, transferring American know-how,' said Paul Rosenzweig, a former Homeland Security deputy assistant secretary. 'I have no doubt that that know-how, to some degree, is empowering Chinese advancement.' The startling sophistication of DeepSeek's AI chatbot has cast doubts on startup's claims that it was developed for less than $6 million and despite a lack of Nvidia's most advanced computer chips. It also has sparked fears that US tech companies are in danger of losing their edge on China. DeepSeek, which does not appear to have a dedicated media relations team, could not be reached for comment. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), a vocal critic of Microsoft's work in China, told The Post that 'American companies have no business conducting research in China only to empower our greatest adversary at the expense of our own strength.' 'DeepSeek should be a wakeup call to Congress to modernize our export control system to protect our own AI development—not the Big Tech and corporate lobbying pipeline,' Hawley said in a statement. Microsoft had reportedly held internal debates for years on whether to shutter or relocate its AI labs in China, the New York Times reported in January 2024. Among the key concerns is that top researchers could leave the company to join Chinese firms with ties to the CCP, or even that China could hack the labs, Cofounder Bill Gates, who cited a desire to tap China's 'deep pool of intellectual talent' when the lab first opened in 1998, has reportedly pushed to keep the labs open. Microsoft pushed back on the Times' report last year, with executive Peter Lee stating there was 'no discussion or advocacy to close Microsoft Research Asia.' Last May, Microsoft asked hundreds of China-based employees in AI and cloud-computing roles to consider transferring to other countries, including the US or Australia – a move widely attributed to the scrutiny the company has faced in Washington DC. As The Post reported in December 2023, lawmakers specifically warned Microsoft against maintaining cozy ties with China on AI development. That came after Microsoft's Smith said the company wanted to 'actively participate in the digital transformation of China's economy.' DeepSeek's success appears to be a source of significant concern for Microsoft, whose security researchers discovered as far back as last fall that DeepSeek-linked individuals were extracting huge amounts of OpenAI data and are now actively investigating the situation, Bloomberg reported. Microsoft-backed OpenAI has said it has proof that DeepSeek improperly used its technology to train a competing model. DeepSeek's chatbot displays obvious signs of censorship – such as refusing to answer queries about China's leader Xi Jinping or the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Experts also say the app poses many of the same national security risks that led Congress to crack down on TikTok, including collecting troves of data ranging from IP addresses to keystrokes and more and storing them on servers based in China, where they are subject to CCP laws. DeepSeek 'poses significant risks to our economy and national security in the years ahead,' according to a spokesperson for the House select committee on China, which is pushing for tightened export controls on AI technology. 'It's crucial for American technology companies to carefully reconsider their AI collaborations with PRC entities, especially regarding cutting-edge research,' a committee spokesperson told The Post. 'The US, not China, must lead in the development of this critical technology.' Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), another China hawk, told The Post that Beijing has 'no boundaries when it comes to winning AI dominance.' 'Any US tech company doing business in China needs to wake up to the reality their intellectual property is at serious risk and the race with China will only intensify in the coming years,' Schmitt said. 'I urge any US tech company to re-evaluate their ties with the CCP.'
