Aravind Srinivas says Microsoft shaped office work to sell more software, explains why AI could change it

CEO of Perplexity Aravind Srinivas has stirred up some debate with a pointed take on how the modern office job came to be. And, he is placing a lot of the blame, or credit, on Microsoft.

Appearing on the Joe Rogan podcast, Srinivas argued that the whole idea of the “knowledge worker”, someone whose day revolves around spreadsheets, email and word processors, was not some natural evolution of work. It was largely engineered by Microsoft as a way to move more software and hardware.