Microsoft Research Podcast

For Microsoft researchers, COVID-19 was a call to action. The reimagining of work practices had long been an area of study, but existing and new questions that needed immediate answers surfaced as companies and their employees quickly adjusted to significantly different working conditions. Teams from across the Microsoft organizational chart pooled their unique expertise together under The New Future of Work initiative. The results have informed product features designed to better support remote work and are now being used to help companies, including Microsoft, usher their workforces into a future of hybrid work. In this episode of The New Future of Work series, Chief Scientist Jaime Teevan and Principal Productivity Engineer Brian Houck discuss what the massive shift to remote work meant for developers—both employees of Microsoft and customers using Microsoft developer platforms to support their work. They’ll talk about how taking a holistic approach to developer productivity can benefit both efficiency and happiness, with an emphasis on the important role social connections and processes play in a field often thought of as an isolated endeavor. They also explore pros and cons of everyday developer tasks, like code review and whiteboarding, being done in a hybrid work setting. https://www.microsoft.com/research

For Microsoft researchers, COVID-19 was a call to action. The reimagining of work practices had long been an area of study, but existing and new questions that needed immediate answers surfaced as companies and their employees quickly adjusted to significantly different working conditions. Teams from across the Microsoft organizational chart pooled their unique expertise together under The New Future of Work initiative. The results have informed product features designed to better support remote work and are now being used to help companies, including Microsoft, usher their workforces into a future of hybrid work. In this episode of The New Future of Work series of the podcast, Chief Scientist Jaime Teevan and Senior Research Economist Sonia Jaffe delve into the “Personal Productivity and Well-Being” chapter of the report, beginning with why measuring productivity isn’t as easy as just observing output or counting hours worked. They also explore how people already working from home helped them better understand how people adjusted to remote work, the diversity in experiences among workers, and how we can be better coworkers to our remote colleagues whether we’re working from home or not. https://www.microsoft.com/research

For Microsoft researchers, COVID-19 was a call to action. The reimagining of work practices had long been an area of study, but existing and new questions that needed immediate answers surfaced as companies and their employees quickly adjusted to significantly different working conditions. Teams from across the Microsoft organizational chart pooled their unique expertise together under The New Future of Work initiative. The results have informed product features designed to better support remote work and are now being used to help companies, including Microsoft, usher their workforces into a future of hybrid work. In this episode of The New Future of Work series of the podcast, Chief Scientist Jaime Teevan and Abigail Sellen, Deputy Lab Director at Microsoft Research Cambridge in the United Kingdom, explore the dynamics of meetings and collaborations in the context of remote work. They specifically address the difference between weak and strong ties in our professional networks and why both matter to employee and company success. They also break down the phenomenon of video fatigue and share ways in which remote meetings may actually have the advantage. https://www.microsoft.com/research

For Microsoft researchers, COVID-19 was a call to action. The reimagining of work practices had long been an area of study, but existing and new questions that needed immediate answers surfaced as companies and their employees quickly adjusted to significantly different working conditions. Teams from across the Microsoft organizational chart pooled their unique expertise together under The New Future of Work initiative. The results have informed product features designed to better support remote work and are now being used to help companies, including Microsoft, usher their workforces into a future of hybrid work. In this episode of The New Future of Work series of the podcast, Chief Scientist Jaime Teevan and Director of Applied Science Brent Hecht of the Experiences and Devices group in Microsoft share how an internal SharePoint document led to what they believe is the largest collection of research on the pandemic’s impact on work. They’ll discuss the role of research during times of disruption, the widening scope of productivity tools, why going back to work two to three days a week is ideal, and what else companies should keep in mind as they decide on new work models. https://www.microsoft.com/research

In the world of economics, researchers at Microsoft are examining a range of complex systems—from those that impact the technologies we use to those that inform the laws and policies we create—through the lens of a social science that goes beyond the numbers to better understand people and society. In this episode, Senior Principal Researcher Hunt Allcott talks with Postdoctoral Researcher Evan Rose about Allcott’s work exploring the everyday decisions people face, like buying fuel-efficient cars or taking out payday loans, and how a clearer understanding of these decisions can shape meaningful public policy. Allcott shares how his and others’ research shows that policy can often have complex outcomes resulting in hidden benefits and drawbacks, as in the case of taxes on sugary beverages. The researchers also discuss why individuals often feel the competing motivations of making bad versus good decisions—a tension that often lies front-and-center in scenarios primed for behavioral public economics research. https://www.microsoft.com/research

In the world of economics, researchers at Microsoft are examining a range of complex systems—from those that impact the technologies we use to those that inform the laws and policies we create—through the lens of a social science that goes beyond the numbers to better understand people and society. Interviewed by Senior Principal Researcher Hunt Allcott, Economist David Rothschild discusses how the news media has evolved alongside social media and the internet, from story development to distribution of news via aggregators and wire services. Rothschild illuminates how and where people are consuming news and shares some of the strategies he’s seeing news outlets use to appeal to their audiences. He also covers research insights into media bias, misinformation, and how this knowledge could inform the future of news for the better. In addition, the researchers talk about Rothschild’s work with Project Ratio, which looks at how the news ecosystem impacts public opinion and political polarization while providing a multi-faceted approach to understanding these outcomes through data and infrastructure. https://www.microsoft.com/research

In the world of economics, researchers at Microsoft are examining a range of complex systems—from those that impact the technologies we use to those that inform the laws and policies we create—through the lens of a social science that goes beyond the numbers to better understand people and society. In this episode, Senior Principal Researcher Dr. Hunt Allcott speaks with Microsoft Research New England office mate and Senior Principal Researcher Dr. Greg Lewis. Together, they cover the connection between causal machine learning and economics research, the motivations of buyers and sellers on e-commerce platforms, and how ad targeting and data practices could evolve to foster a more symbiotic relationship between customers and businesses. They also discuss EconML, a Python package for estimating heterogeneous treatment effects that Lewis has worked on as part of the ALICE (Automated Learning and Intelligence for Causation and Economics) project at Microsoft Research. https://www.microsoft.com/research

In the world of economics, researchers at Microsoft are examining a range of complex systems—from those that impact the technologies we use to those that inform the laws and policies we create—through the lens of a social science that goes beyond the numbers to better understand people and society. In this episode, Dr. Hunt Allcott, Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research New England, talks with Dr. Evan Rose, Postdoctoral Researcher, whom Allcott describes as “one of the most engaging and talented researchers in applied microeconomics today.” They’ll discuss how Rose’s experience teaching adult learners at San Quentin State Prison has resonated throughout his research, and they’ll delve into what his and others’ work is uncovering about the criminal justice system today, including the effects of incarceration and parole, impacts of ban-the-box hiring practices, and racial disparities and discrimination. https://www.microsoft.com/research

Today, people around the globe—from teachers to small-business owners to finance executives—use Microsoft Excel to make sense of the information that occupies their respective worlds, and whether they realize it or not, in doing so, they’re taking on the role of programmer. In this episode, Senior Principal Research Manager Andy Gordon, who leads the Calc Intelligence team at Microsoft Research, and Senior Principal Researcher Simon Peyton Jones provide an inside account of the journey Excel has taken as a programming language, including the expansion of data types that has unlocked greater functionality and the release of the LAMBDA function, which makes the Excel formula language Turing-complete. They’ll talk specifically about how research has influenced Excel and vice versa, programming as a human-computer interaction challenge, and a future in which Excel is the first language for budding programmers and a tool for incorporating probabilistic reasoning into our decision-making. https://www.microsoft.com/research

Dynamic random-access memory – or DRAM – is the most popular form of volatile computer memory in the world but it’s particularly susceptible to Rowhammer, an adversarial attack that can cause data loss and security exploits in everything from smart phones to the cloud. Today, Dr. Stefan Saroiu, a Senior Principal Researcher in MSR’s Mobility and Networking group, explains why DRAM remains vulnerable to Rowhammer attacks today, even after several years of mitigation efforts, and then tells us how a new approach involving bespoke extensibility mechanisms for DRAM might finally hammer Rowhammer in the fight to keep data safe and secure.