back to article Microsoft conceals job ad in Bing homepage

Microsoft are looking for a new Bing developer - but you'll need to be pretty smart to apply. Oh, and you can only use Internet Explorer, which rules a fair number of applicants out. Visitors to the Bing homepage are currently greeted with a weird blue environment of some sort as the background to the search bar. But rich …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. jake Silver badge

    On the rare occasion that I use Explorer ...

    ... I don't do bing, and my system reports that I am using Konqueror.

    1. yossarianuk

      Re: On the rare occasion that I use Explorer ...

      So is everybody running Google Chrome - the code came from KDE's browser...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: On the rare occasion that I use Explorer ...

      "... I don't do bing, and my system reports that I am using Konqueror."

      Yeah, we care.

      1. jake Silver badge

        @AC 0949 (was: Re: On the rare occasion that I use Explorer ...)

        Who is "we", Kemosabe?

    3. Erwin Hofmann
      FAIL

      Re: On the rare occasion that I use Explorer ...

      ... how really stupid of Microsoft to integrate such a "Drive-by infection" look-a-like URL in their portal site ... Microsoft should be advised not to employ these kind of click-nerds at all ... bad example ... one dimensional cleverness ... this just shows, again, how little aware Microsoft is of what's going on out there ...

  2. Mystic Megabyte
    Windows

    Test 37

    <click>

  3. Gordon Pryra
    FAIL

    Fail assumptions here

    A person having this window open is no more likely to want to work for Microsoft than the next person smacking their face against the desk wondering why Microsoft have their own implementation of an html standard and wondering wtf is going on.

    Open letter to Microsoft!!!!

    The clue is the word standard, rather than playing silly buggers, read the dictionary

    Screw you and your Bing experience Microsoft, you make our live so much more difficult than it needs to be

    1. wowfood

      Re: Fail assumptions here

      I second the motion. I wish Microsoft would just make up their minds already

      IE0-6 "standards? We don't need no stinkin' standards"

      IE7-9 "Fine fine we've complied with your 'standards' I hope your happy, now pages don't need to be made especially to work with IE.

      IE 10 "Yeah so we like your standards, but we've decided to add some of our own... What do you mean they aren't really standards if only we were involved in making them? Fuck you Im a dragon!"

      It seems like Microsoft are trying to reverse the tide of what happened to them before. Originally they didn't comply with standards and did things their own way, people migrated away because all sites displayed in chrome / opera / firefox / everything but IE. Now they're standards compliant they're adding in their own stuff again so that pages made using these new IE standards work for IE but won't work elsewhere, so you're forced to use IE.

      I've already experienced this problem with a few microsoft sites. Visit with IE works fine, visit with any other browser and you're met with strange 'quirks'

      1. Bert 1
        Thumb Down

        Re: Fail assumptions here

        Mrs Bert works for an organisation which uses hotmail/outlook .com as it's corporate email system. Sadly this only works with IE. At least I only need one shortcut for IE, which points directly to this site. Arrogant shites.

        1. AceRimmer
          Thumb Down

          Re: Fail assumptions here

          It works fine in Chrome

          At least spread some honest FUD if you're going to do it

          1. Bert 1
            Unhappy

            Re: Fail assumptions here

            It didn't work on my Chome. I'll try again. If it needs tech support by comments on El Reg though, it's still not that great.

        2. Mike Taylor

          Re: Fail assumptions here

          Got to say - I'm not a big outlook.com fan - but when I do use it, it's on Firefox or Chromium on Ubuntu and it works just fine, as does our corporate Outlook web app

      2. JDX Gold badge

        IE 10 "Yeah so we like your standards, but we've decided to add some of our own

        Just like Google, Mozilla, and everyone else then.

    2. Gordon Pryra

      Re: Fail assumptions here

      I am guessing a fair few people have never had to design websites twice over in order to get them working.

      Once for IE and Once for the rest of the worlds browsers.

      One thing that Google and Apple have in common is a working browser. If even these two can coexist then why cant Microsoft?

      The point to my post being that I feel its ironic that someone who is forced to look at that screen where the job advert is hidden is probably not there for fun and working for Microsoft is probably not on their agenda

      1. Wibble
        Facepalm

        Re: Fail assumptions here

        > I am guessing a fair few people have never had to design websites twice over in order to get them working.

        So you've not heard of "Responsive Design" then? That's the latest let's have it three ways technique.

        Still, the good news is that there's no Microsoft in the mobile world.

      2. BrownishMonstr

        Re: Fail assumptions here

        But I thought Chrome and Safari run the same engine, so of course sites will rendered nearly identical, right?

  4. drunk.smile

    http://bit.ly/ZZayNx+

    88 Clicks as of 9am this morning... most of whom probably come from readers of this article.

    1. Mattjimf

      Re: http://bit.ly/ZZayNx+

      And I bet the first 36 were the devs and marketing monkeys checking to see if it worked properly/show off to friends what they had come up with.

    2. sabroni Silver badge

      Re: 88 Clicks as of 9am this morning...

      You think they did this because they thought it would get a massive number of respondents?

      1. hplasm
        Happy

        Re: 88 Clicks as of 9am this morning...

        ...probably after one particular bing-head who would have all of the hoops enabled to jump through.

        Are they after getting Gates back?

    3. Steven Roper
      Facepalm

      Re: http://bit.ly/ZZayNx+

      That was the bit that got my hackles up right away. A bit.ly URL-shortener link claiming to be a Microsoft job ad?

      Yeah, right. Pull the other one, it plays Jingle Bells. There's a reason I've blocked all those sketchy URL shorteners at the firewall; something to do with I don't want to spend my days picking 0-day trojans out of the office PCs.

  5. xyz Silver badge
    FAIL

    Bing has a homepage team?

    Who knew...and what do they do all day? Do they have a single monkey at the back end going the actual searches then? It's like something from the IT Crowd..."we've developed this great new search engine...here's the home page!"

    Assembled managers..."Wow!"

    "yeah, just type in your search string and click the button and it goes to Google for the results."

    Oh and a Bing in Scotland means a slag heap...nuff said.

    Must say, I think I'm beginning to develop Eadon-itis here.

    1. sabroni Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: hardly...

      it's:

      MUST SAY, I THINK I'M BEGINNING TO DEVELOP EADON-ITIS HERE.

  6. J. R. Hartley

    Shirley...

    Smart developers != IE users

    :/

    1. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

      Re: Shirley...

      But if you are using IE, and it's defaulting to debug mode, then it's probably not you main browser.

      1. Captain DaFt

        Re: Shirley...

        Or... you're a member of Anonymous, trolling for exploitable sites.

        MS just might find it's hiring someone that'll exploit them for 'Teh LULZ'. That'll be... interesting.

    2. sabroni Silver badge

      Re: Smarter developers...

      ... test on all popular browsers.

  7. nuked
    FAIL

    Innovative job advert fail of the highest order.

    1. Roger Greenwood
      Pint

      But . . .

      . . . it got a mention on a tech website like this, and maybe others. That's hardly a fail.

  8. Pollo
    FAIL

    Would you like to debug this page?

    If I saw the most annoying IE dialog appear while landing on the front page of bing.com I would simply turn around and head off to Google. MS really don't have a clue do they? As I think has been pointed out here already, anyone worth their salt as a developer wouldn't be using IE in the first place....

    MASSIVE fail!

    1. JDX Gold badge

      Re: Would you like to debug this page?

      You'd only see it if you're a developer, you muppet. It's great when people rush in to show how clever they are and trip over their own shoelaces...

      1. hplasm
        Happy

        Re: It's great when people rush in to show how clever they are and trip over their own shoelaces...

        It's cruel to laugh at the afflicted- leave MS developers alone.

  9. billium
    Thumb Down

    @The Original Steve

    Give your ill manners a rest.

  10. Crisp

    That's knowing your audience.

    And some cheap targeted job advertising.

  11. oxtan
    Linux

    yes, other companies hide job ads in http headers. Yes, some weird people look at that.

    For example:

    $ GET -Used http://icanhazip.com/

    GET http://icanhazip.com/

    User-Agent: lwp-request/5.827 libwww-perl/5.833

    200 OK

    Connection: close

    Date: Fri, 17 May 2013 07:23:51 GMT

    Server: nginx

    Content-Length: 14

    Content-Type: text/plain

    Client-Date: Fri, 17 May 2013 07:23:51 GMT

    Client-Peer: 198.101.241.44:80

    Client-Response-Num: 1

    X-ICANHAZNODE: dfw.icanhazip.com

    X-RTFM: Learn about this site at http://rkrh.kr/2us and don't abuse the service

    X-YOU-SHOULD-APPLY-FOR-A-JOB: If you're reading this, apply here: http://rackertalent.com/

    (icanhazip.com is a site that lets you query your external ip from a command prompt, sometimes handy).

  12. rogue lj
    Facepalm

    Perhaps they could hire someone...

    ... to work out why Microsoft's Report Viewer, when embedded within Microsoft Sharepoint, wouldn't work when viewed with Microsoft Internet Explorer?

    Chrome worked fine....

  13. alexmcm

    My My, such an outpouring of smugness and bitterness over a quite clever way to advertise a job for a large software company. Err why? So someone who is running IE in debug mode finds the job advert and goes for it, good luck to them. It is certainly one way to get some of the wheat out of the chaff.

    And as for it being Microsoft, so what! There is nothing like having a couple of Multinationals on your CV when you move in to contracting. MS would be a good start.

    I think it would be a great opportunity for someone starting out. I don't get the arrogance of a lot of you.

    1. sabroni Silver badge
      Happy

      re: I don't get the arrogance of a lot of you.

      Yeah, someone like you wouldn't....

      1. Neil B
        Thumb Up

        Re: re: I don't get the arrogance of a lot of you.

        @sabroni I have upvoted you. Don't make me regret it.

    2. Mr Spock

      @alexmcm

      > My My, such an outpouring of smugness and bitterness

      Don't worry - stick around here and you'll soon grow out of it.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: @alexmcm @Mr. Spock

        "Don't worry - stick around here and you'll soon grow out of it."

        Can't tell for sure but that is a joke, right?

  14. mike2R

    "you’ll be responsible for developing and shipping experiences"

    Not sure if that's a typo in the job ad, or some hideous piece of Strategy Boutique language I'd been lucky enough to avoid up till now?

    1. Lamont Cranston

      I had a "shipping experience"

      whilst reading some slash-fiction. Not an experience that I'm keen to repeat.

  15. darklordsid
    FAIL

    The little cynical b4sta7d inside me thinks: "it has more to do with free advertising, being the news re-published by tech websites, than with tech value of browsing that abandoned search site with an abandoned browser in a 'look, I'm a techie' mode on."

    My inner voice has spoken...

    1. JDX Gold badge

      It costs about $100 to advertise a job vacancy. It probably cost more than that to get this into the production version of the website. This is not about saving money.

      1. darklordsid

        It is about free advertisement for MS, with you and me talking about it...

  16. darklordsid
    FAIL

    I may add...

    ...I would never hire a tech guy who uses IE and searches using Bing...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I may add...

      Why? IE has far fewer security vulnerabilities than Chrome, or Firefox, and was fastest when released....

      1. darklordsid
        Trollface

        Re: I may add...

        "I not always user IE, but when I do MS is so happy that offers a job to me..."

    2. Duncan 4
      Thumb Down

      Re: I may add...

      fairly silly remark, not sure what land you live in but i've worked with many talented developers who only use IE, infact many organisations insist on only using IE. Bing less so, i probably use it 20% of the time invariable google first but if i'm looking for something obscure and google comes up blank i try bing, sometimes it pays off , well worth a go an good techie who didn't know this would be missing alot of tricks.

      If you're actually responsible for hiring techies and you approach it with that attitude i would think you're a pretty crap at your job. in reality your probably just a diseffected youth instead.

      MS bashing looks more and more silly as time goes by, i remember that start of my career in the windows 3.11 days when it was the fashion to bash MS and as a young upstart wanting to fit in with my peers I joined in as well as with some other questionable fashon decisions i made back then but I look back and crindge! time to take off the silly looking clothes and grow up i say.

      1. Tom 38

        Re: I may add...

        fairly silly remark, not sure what land you live in but i've worked with many talented developers who only use IE

        Me too. Well, at first they only used IE anyway. Then they come to me with questions - "How do I see the request and response headers?", "How do I choose a different proxy based upon destination website?", "How do I single step my javascript code?", "What does 'Object expected' mean?"

        It may be different now, IE actually has some developer tools to speak of, but anyone developing websites in the past 5 years ago who wasn't doing most of their work in Firefox or (eventually) Chrome was totally wasting their time, since the debug features just aren't there.

        Even now, for doing certain debug tasks in IE you are better off using Fiddler, rather than the simplicity of chrome's approach.

        1. Duncan 4

          Re: I may add...

          hit f12 in it and you can debug javascript add breakpoints etc etc as browser debugging goes it's pretty dam good, i've used firebug in the past which is also pretty awesome too since things got soo much better in ie i don't feel the need often anymore. recomened a try if you havent recently.

      2. darklordsid
        Mushroom

        Re: I may add...

        20 years of crappy software cannot be forgotten in 3 years of Windows 7 - and by the way with 8 they are attracting more and more laughter.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @Duncan 4

        Try sending your CV in then.

        Uncorrected, mind.

        1. Duncan 4

          Re: @Duncan 4

          if a prerequisit for a job was that i did use bing or IE i wouldn't apply and if in an interview that came i i would take the job either lol luckily for me thats never happend or anyone i've ever know.

          Imagine if it did tho and i lied and then one day someone spotted me ! actually using IE!!! breach of contract... door ! lucky no companies like that actually exist in the realy world and if they did i wouldn't be offering my services...

          Next time you have an interview i suggest mentioning your strong feeling about IE and Bing they might be impressed and give you the job, but i doubt it!

          Imaging a boss like that no ie, no bing, blue pants only on a friday, no employees with the initials MS! right this has got silly enough i'm off... back to WORK, my register session is done for another few months, articles and comments are getting worse every time i come here! suggest you lot go back to playing war hammer or something which the rest of the world gets on with something that might very well include IE and Bing and might not :D

          1. Jamie Jones Silver badge
            Headmaster

            Re: @Duncan 4

            Yes, go away for a few months, and work on your spelling and grammar.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So here is the question-

    How many people running IE feel the need to debug the bing website?

    1. Kubla Cant
      Windows

      Re: So here is the question-

      My recollection is that if you have the debugger enabled in IE, it offers to debug any site with errors (maybe that's just script errors).

      This is especially annoying, as few sites are completely error-free. If you're working on cross-browser pages, especially if you're targeting earlier versions of IE, then you'll certainly have the IE debugger enabled because IE is where your bugs will be.

      A good approximation to hell is trying to debug client script on IE6 using its so-called debugger. It generally terminates with a stack dump on good days, or a BSOD on bad ones.

  18. David Pollard

    Northcote Parkinson

    Parkinson's Law, and Other Studies in Administration (first published in 1957) is the source of this recruitment technique.

    If an advertisement for a vacancy describes the work as easy and well-paid, then there will be lots of applicants. The selection process will thus be expensive and time consuming. On the other hand, if the job description makes the work sound too arduous then no one will reply, and the advert will have to be run a second time.

    It looks as though someone in Microsoft management has come close to achieving Parkinson's optimum. The ideal advert recruits a single applicant who is just right for the job.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Northcote Parkinson

      Nope. This advert just screens out anyone who's any good, by virtue of the medium. It's like advertising for restaurant staff on toilet paper.

      1. David Pollard

        Re: Northcote Parkinson - @AC 10:34

        Why do you assume that I was being complementary? Not everyone is as brash as Eadon, you know.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    And they wonder why Google is dominant.

    "On Bing Homepage team you’ll be responsible for developing and shipping experiences on Bing.com homepage"

    It's a search engine page which users use to find other sites to visit. Users don't want it to be an "experience", they want it to be quick, clean and to the point. There's nothing wrong with offering users other options on that page, just do it discretely, so you don't fuck up the whole point of the page.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: And they wonder why Google is dominant.

      Indeed - every time I decide to use bing, just for a change, I immediately find their choice of "striking" background image rather too annoying ... so back to the other place it is.

  20. Senior Ugli
    Gimp

    The only time I use IE "developer" tools, is when im fixing sites in the piece of shit that IE is

    Also IE adverts can fuck off too.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      lol

      do you shout at the screen like a football fan when the ref or commentator says something you don't like? NO NO ! it's just not the most secure i know it! ARRRRGH, i hate my life! then mum calls you down for dinner... whats up son?

      1. hplasm
        Windows

        Re: lol

        Why, is that what happens to you just as you are about to Bing! ?

      2. Senior Ugli

        Re: lol

        dunno about your personal life but I dont like IE adverts because

        a - it appeals to the type of average backwards Jeremy Kyle watching humanoid that uses facebook, and will believe that IE is actually more secure and faster than the other leading browsers out there

        b - they choose some terrible trendy shit dubstep song that appeals to persons referenced in point a, and the advert is on way too much.

  21. Duncan 4

    i know you are but what am i?

    sorry couldn't resist :D

  22. ecofeco Silver badge
    Windows

    RDM?

    We have a rapid development model

    Oh HELL no!

  23. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Happy

    I feel confident they will get exactly the person they deserve.

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Dilbert's team meeting

    Pointy-haired boss: We need to recruit a new Bing Experience developer. Any suggestions on how to get a good one?

    Wally: We could embed a link to an advert in the search page source so that only someone running it in developer mode will see the advert

    PHB: (Thinking to himself later): But IE is perfect and has no bugs - why would anyone be running it in debug mode? In fact, why do we even have a developer mode?

    1. Havin_it
      Windows

      Re: Dilbert's team meeting

      PHB(cont'd): ...in fact, why do we even need developers?

      Apart from that, I don't buy Wally trying to be helpful. Never seen it.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'm not sure but I think it's Firefox add-ons which get used by Web devs. Firefox itself comes with no dev tools I guess. Chrome, IE10 has.

    1. Havin_it
      FAIL

      Ill-informed. Firefox has had extensive dev tools built-in for some time now. It also had a DOM inspector long before any competing browser offered anything similar.

      That said, I rather dislike this development, as dev addons like Firebug were a better approach IMHO. Why should these things be built into the browser when a vanishingly small proportion of users will ever need them? It smacks of "me too"-ism and frankly is a bit of a diss to the community behind Firebug and its many daughter add-ons (there are some other great dev addons too, the venerable Web Developer deserves a mention for one).

  26. snowweb

    The only time I ever end up on Bing's page or using IE, is when installing a new Window's OS; between doing that and the post-install operation of installing a proper browser & anit-virus for the user. Although, I have to admit, I haven't installed Windows on a PC since 2011 and don't intend to ever do so again.

    I notice on my webserver stats for my website specific to the Philippines, that Google Chrome has 53% of the market share in the Philippines with Firefox at 25.4%, IE at just 14%.and Safari at 5.1%.

    Based on 4,171 unique visitors in April and the site is concerning Online Bookkeeping Services.

  27. Havin_it
    Trollface

    I guess the new hire's first job will be

    fixing that unmatched closing tag ;)

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like