JR Tharakan

Thank you for featuring my story @BroadCastPGH. Hoping every tale sets the example for an even better, more audacious story in another life. twitter.com/broadcastpgh/s…

Today we’re introducing a new Legal Agent in @Microsoft Word, built to support the precision and rigor legal work demands. Every clause matters. Every redline tells a story. That’s why this agent was built to follow the structured workflows lawyers use while keeping them fully in control. Early in my career, I asked for a computer on my desk because I believed technology could change how lawyers work. It did. Today, I believe this next generation of tools will do the same, grounded in trust and responsible use.

To mark the broad rollout of Agent Mode in Copilot, we had some fun recreating an iconic 90s Excel ad: same ad, smarter Excel.

Grateful to @satyanadella for spending time with some of the best AI founders and builders at our inaugural AI Builders Salon. A few insights that stuck with me: 1/ The hardest transformations for incumbents are "new-new" categories, where they have no natural reason to win. 2/ Conviction compounds quietly, then shows up all at once. Microsoft's $1B investment in OpenAI was rooted in decades of focus on NLP, and a belief that transformers and scaling laws reflected a real inflection point. 3/ Concentrate capital and talent behind strong teams with strong beliefs. Do not spread resources evenly for the sake of fairness. 4/ Cooperation and competition can coexist when partnering during platform shifts. The goal is durable, long-term win-wins, even when there is overlap. 5/ Vertical AI wins will come from workflow capture, not just AI features. Codify an operating playbook, and own a strong eval loop. 6/ We are heading toward artifact explosion. As document and code generation becomes on demand, the constraint shifts to reviewing, validating, and refining what agents produce. 7/ Tokens are becoming a real budget line. Empower your top builders, but install the right guardrails to avoid scaling low-quality output. Thanks to @sonyatweetybird and the @sequoia team for launching this new forum. Looking forward to the next one.

Supporting #TechInPink2025 @BCRFcure with @Microsoft GSI team during #MSGive! @MicrosoftLife

Hey @Amtrak - when you don’t have to crowd control, doesn’t make any sense to limit people’s time in cafe cart so your conductors can have it to themselves to chitchat!

Honored to be featured in @GlobalWIC #empowHER50 campaign alongside incredible women I look up to for inspiration in charting my own career. Thank you for the spotlight, for sharing our stories & building a community of partnerships with a purpose womenincloud.com/empowher50-joe…

Back in nyc with @MUWCI #uwcgala supporting education for peace. If you’d like to learn more, ask me how 2yrs on a hill shaped my perspectives & impressed upon my formative years that there there is more that unites us across time, nationalities and cultures than divides us…

A couple reflections on the quantum computing breakthrough we just announced... Most of us grew up learning there are three main types of matter that matter: solid, liquid, and gas. Today, that changed. After a nearly 20 year pursuit, we’ve created an entirely new state of matter, unlocked by a new class of materials, topoconductors, that enable a fundamental leap in computing. It powers Majorana 1, the first quantum processing unit built on a topological core. We believe this breakthrough will allow us to create a truly meaningful quantum computer not in decades, as some have predicted, but in years. The qubits created with topoconductors are faster, more reliable, and smaller. They are 1/100th of a millimeter, meaning we now have a clear path to a million-qubit processor. Imagine a chip that can fit in the palm of your hand yet is capable of solving problems that even all the computers on Earth today combined could not! Sometimes researchers have to work on things for decades to make progress possible. It takes patience and persistence to have big impact in the world. And I am glad we get the opportunity to do just that at Microsoft. This is our focus: When productivity rises, economies grow faster, benefiting every sector and every corner of the globe. It’s not about hyping tech; it’s about building technology that truly serves the world.

The H-1B was designed to be 6 years. In 2000, employers were struggling because the H-1Bs they had sponsored for green cards were facing a backlog due to the green card caps on each country and their H-1B would expire before they got their green card. Rather than abolishing the caps on each country and expanding the number of green cards to meet the age of the internet economy, Congress modified the H-1B so that workers in the green card backlog could renew their visa in perpetuity as they wait. H-1B is now used as an endless waiting room for employees in the green card backlog. Not having a green card after working here for many years causes a multitude of problems. Not only do they have a lot more bureaucratic hurdles and restrictions when it comes to switching jobs, the children they brought with them age out of their dependent visa status when they turn 21, causing them to get kicked out of the green card line and potentially the country. Even the dependents with high paying job offers can be rejected by the visa lottery, or the Department of Labor can take too long to approve their employer's green card petition and they're forced to leave anyway. They also can't freely travel back home without stopping at a consular office abroad to renew their authorization every 3 years. The renewal process is unpredictable, and people might be stuck in another country for months as the State Department processes their visa renewals. Why are people still getting in the green card line if the backlogs are so long? Because the government is terrible at projecting how long it takes to get a green card. One year, they say an applicant could get it in 5 years. The next year it could be 20 years. That lack of transparency makes people believe they can wait it out, but it also gives people false hope as their estimated wait rapidly fluctuates. These people have already bought houses, built families, and have become well seasoned professionals in our broader economy, defense industrial base, and health care workforce. But rather than worrying about these very real issues, the discourse is centered around imaginary instances of H-1B baristas and cooks making $30,000. Hint: if most RNs aren't considered educated and specialized enough for an H-1B, then a barista certainly is not eligible.

Happy New Year, from God’s Own Country. May 2025 bring us peace, hope, and our collective best yet!

@amitaravikumar @imravikumars Happy new year @amitaravikumar and @imravikumars - may 2025 be your best yet!

Grateful for everything ❤️ #happy 2025 !!🎉@imravikumars

👋 Immigration attorney here. With all the talk about H-1B visas, it’s interesting that no one seems to question TN, L-1, E-1, or E-2 visas, which are not capped and have no minimum wage requirement. If H-1B holders, who actually have a minimum wage requirement, are “cheap foreign labor” and “stealing American jobs,” wouldn’t these other categories do the same? Or is the issue really about where a majority of H-1B talent is coming from? We’re literally talking about 85,000 visas that cost employers thousands of dollars to sponsor—that have generated some of the brightest minds fueling innovation and growth in the U.S. Let the trolling commence.

@Delta So many poor decisions from @Delta employees today, which each part of the operations team coming with lame excuses or blaming another part / “that’s what the company makes us do”

On top of it all @Delta gate agent makes everyone gate check hand luggage saying space is limited but when you enter the plane 30-40% of luggage space is empty. Now that the flight is delayed, you’ve had it tight connections at risk of not getting their baggage…

This might be the last straw for me - it’s become completely impractical to fly @Delta out of @JFKairport as one needs to arrive at least 3, maybe 4hrs, prior to make it thru traffic, security and the never ever ever ever ever ending T4 to get to B gates beyond 20s.

Happy holidays from the past & present of @MicrosoftLife #MSFTAlumniHolidayReunionNYNJ ❤️💚💙💛

The #MSIgnite keynote starts NOW🎤 Tune into the live broadcast: twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1…

Nearly 70% of Fortune 500 companies use Microsoft 365 Copilot daily. At #MSIgnite, we’re expanding its role: empowering employees and transforming business processes. msft.it/6006WtWjg

Windows 365 Link is the secure, purpose-built device for Windows 365, delivering a seamless Windows desktop experience in the Microsoft Cloud. No local data, apps, or admin users—security is built in. msft.it/6005WSSrU #MSIgnite

Over the past year, @Microsoft has made new investments in 15 countries across 6 continents to meet growing cloud and AI demands.🌎🌍🌏 #MSIgnite