About Microsoft

The 3rd target company in the world with a market capitalisation of $1.83 trillion, Microsoft is an American MNC that sells computer softwares and electronics. Microsoft was founder in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Microsoft is a dream company for millions of people across the globe. 

What does Microsoft do?  

Source: https://www.microsoft.com/en-in 

About the leadership team at Microsoft

Executive Officers at Microsoft 

• Judson Altoff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/judsonalthoff/ ,https://twitter.com/judsonalthoff 
• Chris Capossela : https://www.linkedin.com/in/chriscapossela/ , https://twitter.com/chriscapossela/ 
• Kathleen Hogan: 
• Amy Hood
• Satya Nadella: https://www.linkedin.com/in/satya-nadella-3145136/ , https://twitter.com/satyanadella 
• Brad Smith: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradsmi/ , https://twitter.com/bradsmi 
• Christopher Young: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopheryoung4/ , https://twitter.com/youngdchris 

Board Members at Microsoft 

Microsoft in India

Microsoft India began its Operations in 1990. Key leaders for Microsoft India are as below

Source: https://news.microsoft.com/en-in/leadership/ 

Offices of Microsoft in India

Microsoft has office in the below cities in India

• Bangalore
• Gurgaon
• Hyderabad
• Mumbai
• Noida

Latest financial information of the company can be viewed at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/ 

Work at Microsoft 

As of 30 June 2022, Microsoft employs 221,000 employees worldwide. 122,000 of these professionals are in the United States and 99,000 International. 

Culture at Microsoft 

The glassdoor ratings of the the company are fantastic. 

• 93% recommend to a fried
• 98% employees approve of the CEO
• The overall rating was 4.5

Details: https://www.glassdoor.co.in/Reviews/Microsoft-Reviews-E1651.htm 

How to apply for a Job at Microsoft 

Typical Salary at Microsoft

Software Engineer Salaries at Microsoft (Data Source: https://www.glassdoor.co.in/ )

• Software Engineer typically gets 14,00,000 – 18,00,000 
• Software Engineer – 2 on average gets between 23,00,000 to 29,00,000 Source:  https://www.glassdoor.co.in/Salary/Microsoft-Software-Engineer-II-Salaries-E1651_D_KO10,30.htm 
• Sr. Software Engineer on average gets 40,00,000 at Microsoft

3 reason why you should consider working at Microsoft 

• Microsoft hires the top people and you can expect to work with other smart people that helps you grow
• Good benefits – People, on average, like the compensation at Microsoft along with other benefits like health
• Flexible work-setup allows for top talent to be attracted to Microsoft

3 reason why you should not consider working at Microsoft

Given the kind of large organisation Microsoft is, there are typical people issues of a larger organisation.

• When so many people undergo yearly Performance Appraisals, a lot come out dis-satisfied
• Some people did not like their managers based on the glass door review. They felt that their managers were confused. 
• Work-life balance: Some people complained of long working hours on the weekend. 

Hope this blog was useful for people planning to apply for a Job at Microsoft and for the ones who already have an offer and wanted to know more. If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments below. We will be happy to bring existing employees of Microsoft to answer those questions for you.

Thank you for reading

Do you need to provide an appraisal letter to someone and need help with it? No problem, this article would help you by broadly covering the below topics

• What is an appraisal letter
• Types of Appraisals
• How to write appraisal letters
• Mode of communication for appraisals
• Who should appraisal letters be shared with 
• FREE Samples

Meaning of Appraisal 

According to the Cambridge dictionary, Appraisal is examining someone or something to judge their qualities, success, or needs. For our context, we are considering it as an Appraisal done at the workplace.

What is an appraisal letter? 

In a more contemporary understanding, Appraisal letters mean appreciation letters in general. 

The objective of Appraisal Letters

Appraisal letters should be written when HRs/company management need to appreciate employees and provide them appraisals. Providing timely appraisals has become necessary as the battle for talent gets more fierce. Retaining their top performers is a must for organisations to retain their top performers and an appraisal from management is a good step in that direction. Appraisal letters reinforce the idea that individuals win and go a long way in keeping the team engaged in the workplace. The appraisal letters also improve the HR KPIs of an organisation (Employee Engagement, attrition etc.) and contribute to the company’s overall success. There could be two types of Appraisal.

Types of Appraisals

• Appraisals without a monetary component
• Appraisal with monetary component

• Appraisals without monetary component: These are the easiest ways to keep your team engaged. A simple “Great Job done” and “Thank you for your efforts” could motivate your team and keep them engaged in the role. Besides, these do not require unnecessary financial approvals and can be practised by all managers/HR. These appreciation letters are, in most cases, given by managers directly. 
• Appraisals with monetary component: In some cases, appraisals may be coupled with a financial component. These financial components can be in the form of employee gifts, performance bonuses Or an increment. In most companies, this is an annual exercise commonly referred to as Performance Appraisal OR Employee Appraisal. Providing appraisal letters to employees is the final stage of a formal Performance Appraisal Process.

How to write Appraisal letters? 

• Mention the specific activity/impact of the employee’s effort: A lot of times, simply saying “Good Job” is not enough. The detail of the Good work done and its impact on the team/business is generally more effective. Example:
• Keep it personal: In a world of “so many google searches”, it is imperative that you keep the Appraisal personal to drive more impact. 

Where to write Appraisal letters? 

• Appreciation letters without any monetary component can be distributed in an informal setting. Here are some ideas for the same
  1. They can be shared with the individual and CC to other team members by the manager. 
  2. They can also be distributed via WhatsApp groups OR other modes of communication between the team members.
  3. Weekly/Monthly team meetings/review calls are a great place to appreciate the team members.
• Appraisal letters with a financial component are mostly provided privately by the HR/management to the employee via an email/hardcopy. Kindly note that these letters need to be formal, for example, written on company letterhead. The financial component of the Appraisal should be outlined clearly and when and how it would be paid. For example, a performance could be paid once on a particular date, OR an increment could be valid w.e.f. from a particular date etc.)

Who should appraisal letters be shared with 

• Appraisals without a monetary component should be shared with as broad an audience as possible. They should be celebrated widely in the organisation. This would ensure that the star performer feels celebrated in the organisation and others get motivated to perform equally well. 
• Appraisals with a monetary component should be shared as per your company policy. In most cases, these are shared privately with the employees by the HR/management.

Free Samples

• Appraisal without monetary benefits: Thank you Rahul for your help in creating the presentation for Zigsaw. The clients were particularly impressed with your slide on “Impact on similar businesses”. They loved the presentation and your “Out-of-box” thinking might have just won us a critical deal. 
• Appraisals with monetary benefits can roughly follow the below structure.

1. Greet the employee
2. Give the context: 
   1. You might know that we grew by 50% last year. We would want to reward our top performers who made it possible.  
   2. You might be aware that we went through some turbulent times last year. We would want to reward the top performers who stood with us and helped us navigate tough times successfully. 
3. Make the person valued: We would like to mention that you, <<name of employee>>, have been an integral part of our success last year. Hence, I would like to present to you a small token of our appreciation for your hard work in the past year.
4. Details of Appraisal: Gifts, Performance Bonus, Salary revised etc. 
5. Align for future company vision: I would like to take this opportunity to share with you that we are all geared for the growth that lies ahead of us. As we scale new heights in the coming years, we are love to see you as a partner of success in the coming years. 

Here’s another sample from Razorpay

[Company_Name]

[Company_Address]

14/12/2021

Appraisal Letter – CONFIDENTIAL

Dear [Employee_Name],

Employee ID: [Employee_ID]

[Company_Name] has and continues to move forward because of your hard work and contributions. [Company_Name], as always, stays committed to its people first approach and puts you and your contributions at the forefront.

In continuation to that thought and philosophy, we are taking this opportunity to congratulate and recognise you for your contributions and thank you for all your efforts.

In recognition of your performance and contributions to [Company_Name], we are delighted to promote you to [Employee_Designation] and revise your Cost to Company to INR 330000, effective from [Appraisal_Date] The break- down of your CTC is mentioned in Annexure A.

We wish you tremendous success in the coming years and look forward to your long-term association and contributions to [Company_Name].

Best,

[HR_Name] [HR_Designation]

Annexure A

This is your expected monthly salary structure.

Note: You will receive salary, and all other benefits forming part of your remuneration package subject to, and after, deduction of TDS, PF, ESI and professional taxes in accordance with applicable law.

Five reasons why Companies look to hire Indian Talent

• Tremendous Talent Pool: In 2022-23 alone, 5860 Engineering institutes absorbed 2369831aspiring engineers. The “too many engineers” problem in India translates to a very healthy talent pipeline for companies outside India.

A simple LinkedIn search with the below keywords for profile searches keeping the Location as India fetches the below number of results

1. Java: 23,40,000
2. Sales: 45,60,000
3. Marketing: 53,70,000

The above numbers showcasing the number of potential hires in India are astounding, mainly because only less than 6.5% of the Indian population is on LinkedIn. 

The Talent in India is aplenty that international companies can use to their advantage.

•  Expected Pay: Average salary candidates expect in India is much less, in some cases even less than 10% of their international counterparts

Source: https://www.glassdoor.co.in 

• Good penetration of English in India allows English-speaking employers to connect effectively with their remote workforce. 
  

Image Source: https://twitter.com/Stats_of_India/status/1514844191670824962/photo/1 

• Indians are hardworking: Coming from a conservative culture also makes Indians someone ready to listen and do more of what is expected. Also, they are more disciplined in general. 
• Indians are problem solvers, and they love doing it. Besides, Indians are also hungry to acquire new skills. Besides, India produces way too many engineers, which makes it very lucrative for foreign companies to recruit from India.

Can a foreign company hire employees in India?

Absolutely, Yes. Foreign companies can hire and employ Indian employees directly without the need of any 3rd party.

How do companies hire remote Indian Talent?

• Sourcing: Relevant candidates can be found via LinkedIn, Job-boards, OR via Recruitment Companies in India
• Screening & Coordination and engagement during the Interview process: It is better to keep all interview rounds as video interview rounds to ensure that there are no fake candidates in the process. Also, connecting with the candidate on LinkedIn is recommended to ensure that the candidate is exclusively employed with your organization.
• Employee Management: Companies can hire employees directly OR hire them on the payroll of an Indian company. 

Here’s a recruiting from India checklist 

• Make sure you set up a minimum of two interview rounds (a minimum of one functional interview and 1 HR discussion) with the candidate before making an offer. Make sure that the below questions are covered in the HR Interview.
  • How would the candidate manage the time-zone difference (if any and if required)
  • Infrastructure: In the case of Work from Home, it is best for HR to confirm that the candidate has the required resources Examples

1. Uninterrupted internet connection, 
2. Laptop as per the configuration required by the company in case the company is not providing laptop on joining, 
3. Others include comfortable seating (desk/chair), mobile, etc. 

• Holidays: It is best to discuss your company’s leave calendar and policy at the start. 
• Growth opportunities: The Indian market is booming (especially IT), and if HR can showcase company growth and potential project growth for the employee, it might have a very positive impact on the candidates’ performance
• Mode of salary transfer. It is imperative to communicate in advance about the mode of salary transfer and transfer deductions if any. The tax liability rests with the individual, and HR should ensure that it is also mentioned in the candidate’s offer letter.
• Open a line of communication: The HR interview is a fantastic place for HR to build a rapport with the candidate. Suppose the selected candidate was working with an Indian company earlier. In that case, HR must proactively communicate to the candidate that there might be cultural differences and differences in “how the company works”. Ask the candidate to expect that and make them comfortable to be able to communicate if they face any challenge. A 1, 3, 15, 30, and 90 days feedback could be an excellent idea in this scenario. 

Why do Indian employees prefer international organizations? 

 Disclaimer: Kindly note that the below points are blatant generalizations and might not hold in some scenarios. However, here are the top 4 reasons why Indian employees prefer international organizations

• Better pay: Indian candidates typically expect a 20-30% hike while switching to the Indian market. However, they may expect a 30-50% hike when switching Jobs to a company with an office outside India. 
• Work from Home: After covid, as more employers start calling employees back to the office, some of them prefer a Work from Home regime and can easily switch to an international organizations
• Increased Work-life balance: Some Indian companies expect impractical working hours, and their foreign counterparts offer a better work-life balance. 
• Exposure & future career opportunities: Working with international employers gives them better exposure and opens up opportunities for several other Jobs. 

When not to consider hiring a remote Indian employee

• When your complete team is from a particular geography, a manager from the same culture would understand the team better, and it might be counter-intuitive to hire a manager from a different culture altogether.
• Sales roles where relationships play a significant role: Every culture has nuances that might take some time for outsiders to adapt. For roles that require meeting customers in person, it might be efficient to hire a local candidate.
• In cases where proximity with the team can be more efficient, remote hires might not be the best option.

Have questions related to recruiting from India? Let us know in the comments below and we will be happy to answer them

On 27th February 2020, a fully autonomous Australian robot with no human on board used a pre-programmed route with remote supervision to undertake and complete its mission. Australia also won the Silver medal at the 2021 Robot Olympics six months later. In this event, the Australian robot used AI to autonomously explore, map, and discover models representing lost or injured people, suspicious backpacks, or phones while navigating harsh conditions. Clearly, Australia is at the forefront of robotics, autonomous systems, and AI research and development. Australia intends to use AI for security and defense applications and is also developing governance structures in line with Australian values, standards, ethical and legal frameworks. 

Kate Devitt & Damian Copeland have discussed this in their research paper titled “Australia’s Approach to AI Governance in Security and Defence” which forms the basis of the following text.

Importance of this Research

AI has enormous potential in Security and Defence applications. AI applications could threaten human rights in warfare and pose ethical and legal risks. This research paper outlines the approach of Australia to make use of AI in Security and Defense. 

The research paper also outlines that Australia’s Department of Defense recognizes AI as a priority for future developments. The research paper also outlined the definition of AI and explained the need for Artificial Intelligence for Australian Defense. 

Use of AI in Defense

As per the Australian government, Australia focuses on AI to build robotics capability, autonomous systems, precision-guided munitions, hypersonic weapons, and integrated air and missile defense systems, space and information warfare, and cyber capabilities. 

AI Governance in Australia  

Source: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2112.01252.pdf 

AI Ethics Principles 

Source: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2112.01252.pdf

The research paper also discusses in detail about

• Standards Australia’s Artificial Intelligence Standards Roadmap: Making Australia’s Voice Heard, Human Rights, and Australia’s action plan for AI,
• AI governance in Defense and Ethical AI statements across the Australian Navy, Army & Airforce,
• Human governance in Defense,
• Ethics in Australian Cybersecurity and Intelligence; and the Framework for Ethical AI in Defence, and
• Defense Data Strategy

Concerning the use of AI, it is helpful to establish 

• Responsibility: Who is responsible for AI?
• Governance – how is AI-controlled?
• Trust – how can AI be trusted?
• Law: How can AI be used lawfully?
• Traceability: How are the actions of AI recorded?

Conclusion: 

AI has tremendous potential for security and defense applications. Nations can use it to counter-terrorism, for border conflicts, and help them save armed personnel’s lives. Australia has identified the criticality of AI in defense and tried to build a framework around its application

In the words of the researchers

Australia is a leading AI nation with strong allies and partnerships. Australia has prioritised the development of robotics, AI, and autonomous systems to develop sovereign capability for the military. Australia commits to Article 36 reviews of all new means and method of warfare to ensure weapons and weapons systems are operated within acceptable systems of control. Additionally, Australia has undergone significant reviews of the risks of AI to human rights and within intelligence organisations and has committed to producing ethics guidelines and frameworks in Security and Defence (Department of Defence 2021a; Attorney-General’s Department 2020). Australia is committed to OECD’s values-based principles for the responsible stewardship of trustworthy AI as well as adopting a set of National AI ethics principles. While Australia has not adopted an AI governance framework specifically for Defence; Defence Science has published ‘A Method for Ethical AI in Defence’ (MEAID) technical report which includes a framework and pragmatic tools for managing ethical and legal risks for military applications of AI.

Source: Kate Devitt & Damian Copeland’s “Australia’s Approach to AI Governance in Security and Defence” https://arxiv.org/pdf/2112.01252.pdf 

Can machines beat humans in stock market trading? 

Machine Learning has been an area of great interest for traders because of the insane amount of money that could be made from the stock market. Arguably, Deep Reinforcement Learning can outperform human traders. However, most of the Deep Reinforcement Learning models built to date only consider the stock’s selling price minus the buying price to maximize profit. In a real-world scenario, transaction costs for buying, selling, and taxes affect the actual profit made by the investor. 

Shan Huang has discussed this approach in his research paper titled “Taxable Stock Trading with Deep Reinforcement Learning,” which forms the basis of the following text.

Importance of this research 

The researchers have demonstrated that tax ignorance could induce more than a 62% loss on the average portfolio returns. This research paper by Shan Huang aims to maximize net portfolio returns using Deep Reinforcement Learning while considering transaction and tax calculations. 

About the research 

The research paper mentions the mathematical details of the model built for Deep Reinforcement Learning. 

Assumptions

• The data set includes SPY’s (Exchange Traded Fund consisting of S&P’s top 500 companies) daily closed price and volumes from 13th November 2008 to 13th November 2018.
• Minimum time step dt = 1 representing one trading day, and hence the total trading days per year is 252.
• The tax regime is as mentioned below (in the US)
  • When a stock is held for more than one year, a 15% tax rate is applicable for capital gains.
  • When a stock is held for less than one year, a 25% tax rate is applicable for capital gains.
  • Investors can get a tax rebate to offset their capital gain for losses.
• The length of the trading period is set to be five years.
• A transaction cost of 0.1% is also included for more realistic calculations.

Research Data

The researchers have created a new OpenAI Gym environment where the observation in each timestep is SPY’s daily closed price, trading volume, averaged-basis, and average holding period. 

About the Model

In the words of the researchers

To represent the policy, we use the same default neural network architecture as PPO with fixed-length trajectory segments, which was a fully-connected MLP with two hidden layers of 64 and 64 tanh units respectively. The final output layer has a linear activation. policy and value function are estimated through separated network. The number of steps of interaction (state-action pairs) for the agent and the environment in each epoch is 5000 and the number of epochs is 50. The hyperparameter for clipping in the policy objective is chosen to be 0.2 and the GAE-Lambda is 0.97. The learning rate for policy and value function optimizer is 0.001 and 0.0003 respectively. If tax is not included in the model, the average expected return is 0.44 which seems quite promising. This considerable return is the result of exploiting price trending and frequently adjusting holding positions correspondingly, similar as the results of other AI platforms. However, this is not compelling since tax is heavily charged in a taxable year. Rather than ignoring taxes, the learning of stock trading should consider the effect of tax costs. We use PPO to train the stock trading policy in the environment with tax costs. The optimal stock trading policy in the model with taxes can achieve 0.13 average returns. To illustrate the suboptimality of the policy trained in the model without considering taxes, we apply this trained policy in the environment with tax costs, the average expected return drops to only 0.05.

Research Result: 

• The optimal stock trading policy with taxes can achieve 13% average returns in the model.
• Trained policy in the environment with tax costs, the average expected return drops to only 5%.
• This reduction is equal to 62%, which means that the returns shrunk by 62% upon consideration of taxes. 

Source: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1907.12093.pdf

Conclusion: 

Investment in public markets could be a good way to invest in the world’s top companies. Public markets could be a fantastic way to invest the money as the return are, on average higher than the rates offered by the banks and other investment options. Trading stocks by reinforcement learning can guide and help agents increase their portfolio returns. Deep Reinforcement Learning Models built for stock market investment sometimes neglect the tax rates, which can massively impact the overall returns. This research paper by Shan Huang is an attempt to integrate tax calculations in the net return calculations with Deep Reinforcement Learning. The objective is to maximize net returns (after subtracting taxes) for stock investments which are the actual returns for an investor.

Source: Shan Huang’s “Taxable Stock Trading with Deep Reinforcement Learning” https://arxiv.org/pdf/1907.12093.pdf 

Four hundred eighty thousand deaths are recorded every year in the US alone due to smoking. Also, as per research, life expectancy for smokers is atleast ten years shorter than for non-smokers. In recent years, the use of e-cigarettes has been increasing rapidly for adolescents. Sometimes, e-cigarettes act as a gateway to cigarette use, which could be severe. This makes it important to predict the probability of adolescents smoking cigarettes in the future. 

Seung Joon Nam, Han Min Kim, Thomas Kang, and Cheol Young Park have discussed this in their research paper titled “The Study of Machine Learning Models in Predicting the Intention of Adolescents to Smoke Cigarettes”, which forms the basis of the following text.

Importance of this research

Consuming nicotine can cause cancer (lung cancer), cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, respiratory diseases, and perinatal diseases. These conditions are fatal for individuals. If an ML algorithm can predict the probability of individuals smoking cigarettes, efforts can be made to educate these individuals about the ill effects of smoking. This counseling could help adolescents avoid the ill effects of cigarette smoking. Thus, prediction can directly help individuals stay away from the path of smoking cigarettes and help save lives!

Research Objective

The main aim of this research is to

• Find the best-fitting model to predict smoking intention for individuals
• Create a website to help adolescents prevent e-cigarette.

About the Research 

The researchers evaluated different models such as Decision Tree, Gaussian NB, Logistic Regression, Random Forest, and Gradient Boosting to predict the accuracy of ML models for accurately predicting the intention of Adolescents to smoke cigarettes. 

Research Result

Based on the experiments done by the researchers, they found the Gradient Boosting to be the most accurate way to predict smoking tendency in the future. The researchers have also published http://nyts.pythonanywhere.com for an anti-smoking campaign for teenagers. 

Conclusion

While healthcare has made a lot of progress in recent years, the number of medical conditions affecting teenagers has only increased. Often, these diseases are of our own making caused by our lifestyle choices. This research paper attempts to identify adolescents who are more likely to smoke and help adolescents make informed and healthier lifestyle choices. In the words of the researchers

E-cigarette use has increased among adolescents. This is a worldwide problem, because it has been stated in many researches mentioned in the introduction that e-cigarette use can cause future use of cigarettes. Since e-cigarette is a recent rising issue, there is little research done on this topic, compared to smoking cigarettes. Even among the researches done, there is a lack of researches implementing prediction models, which are more practical in preventing adolescents from using (e-)cigarettes. Thus, we researched using the 2018 NYTS data and developed multiple prediction models to predict a adolescent’s intention to smoke cigarette. The most accurate prediction model was Gradient Boosting Classifier with an overall accuracy of 93%. This model was applied in the website we designed to allow the public to input their information in respect to tobacco products, including e-cigarette, cigarette, and cigar. With this information, the algorithm can predict the respondee’s probability of future of smoking. This will help the public become more aware about certain factors in their lives and be attentive about their drug use or how their environment can affect their intention to smoke cigarettes. Further research could include a wider range of ages, since our research is mainly focused on adolescents rather than adults. In order to improve the accuracy of the prediction model, it is essential to increase the amount of data or choose better, more fitting, variables.

Source: Seung Joon Nam, Han Min Kim, Thomas Kang and Cheol Young Park’s “The Study of Machine Learning Models in Predicting the Intention of Adolescents to Smoke Cigarettes” https://arxiv.org/pdf/1910.12748v2.pdf 

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This poll was created after a recent article published in Rajasthan Patrika wherein people charged gullible Job-seekers thousands of rupees for fake Jobs at airport