Happy Tuesday! And a happy birthday to my little brother who turns 18 today. I miss him, so he gets a special shout-out!

I sent him a picture of the companies we visited today, and he really appreciated it. Microsoft had a section where they had Minecraft blocks to play with at their office! Understandably, my brother was heartily jealous.

I really enjoyed the visit to Microsoft. They had such a good vibe (for a lack of a better word). Microsoft had a clear separation between work and pleasure. They had all the benefits that are currently trendy in work offices like gyms, yoga studios, cafes, and nap rooms… but they also had a good work setup built into the architecture of the structure of the building. Along with a creative room where the engineers, sales teams, and kids visiting can play with robots and create what their minds imagine, they had well-built conference rooms for large group meetings, separate closed-off mini-rooms, and entirely open floor collaborative working spaces. The two presenters there were also honest about their reasons for working there. Work is work and life is life; they all mostly clock off at 4:30PM and have the opportunity to be sponsored by the company for a graduate program, should they wish to do one. I think these professional benefits, beyond the social ones, are what make successful and innovative workers. If you are interested in what you do for work and your work is supportive of your personal and professional boundaries and goals, you end up loving your job and that was evident in the Microsoft environment and company culture I witnessed. They also had an interesting take on the conversations surrounding AI. As a technology company, Microsoft is moving forward with AI and coining the term “responsible AI” as its main approach to this phenomenon.

Interestingly, I found THINKHOUSE’s outlook by far the most enlightening of them all. As an independent advertising agency, THINKHOUSE has always been present in the digital market. They were the most thorough company we have visited so far! Heads of different creative, social, service, and film departments came in to talk about their day-to-day and what those jobs entail within the company with extreme attention to detail, which was helpful to understand their company culture of collaboration, interconnectedness, and inspiring creative innovation. They entirely revamp their client’s brand narratives from the ground up, start social media campaigns that go viral, and have their own in-house production team to shoot commercials and ads for brands as big as Netflix! They quoted someone that said something along these lines: “You won’t lose your job to AI; you will lose your job to someone who knows how to best use AI.” I found that perspective extremely eye-opening. In support of this, they showed they had the mindset of being open to learning more about what AI can do for them as an agency that relies so heavily on human creativity without taking credit away from the human beings that have pioneered these jobs for so long and continue to do so, especially at their office. Finally, they said they don’t believe in “unpaid internships” because young people deserve to be paid for their ideas which was the cherry on top of their wonderful presentation. I’ll definitely be applying and I’m going to write this down here to manifest working in their film department in the future. Here’s hoping for a future led by an ethical combination of tech and youth! Thank you THINKHOUSE!

Tomorrow, I venture out in search of that water bottle I mentioned before. See you then!