This is a joke right?

No, check the URL – It's on search.msn.com/s/jobs/openings/....

But check it quickly, I got a feeling the Microsoft PR team might remove this page :)

Of course, there's the possibility this job offer has been insterted by a disgruntled MS employee...

No I dont think so, maybe this is something like the mturks in a different way!!

AFter all that basically can obtain "mindshare" results

"Successful handcrafters can typically find top 10 results for a real-time user’s query in less than 3.8 seconds. "

This is definitely a bad joke.

Gee, how dumb is that. The sad part is that MS actually has the potential to squash Google.

But last I checked having potential doesn't mean that you'll win in life...

That's a joke. No company is that stupid.

Aside from the naming, is the difference between MSN's job offer and Google's evaluation lab really that big? Do you really think that "real time" means that the answers will be sent back to the user after 3.8s instead of automated results? That doesn't seem likely.

This is a joke. And a funny one.

Google also has "raters" as part of "evaluation lab", but there the emphasis is on giving the ranking algorithm developers feedback on the quality of search results so that they can tweak their algo (at least that's how I understood it).
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2005-06-04.html#n80

I think what everyone is missing

"This is an opportunity to truly connect with customers, because the queries that get routed to you are precisely the ones that the engine cannot answer well."

incredible.. eheh , at least MS shouldn't publish such "misunderstandable" calls-to-arms, IMHO of course.

Joke or not, it's really funny :)

Although it might make sense to review some very spammy keywords it's too bad that they can't even deliver substantial serps for keywords with no blackhats in da business.

Definitely a joke. Does anyone know what "Simia-Lico method" is referencing? Some sort of Latin inside joke?

Dudes on Digg could be very happy abotu this: http://www.digg.com/technology/MSN_Hand-crafting_Its_Results

You can reach the offer via 4 clicks from the main msn search sites. so it's no insert or something. (About -> Jobs -> Open Positions -> Openings -> There you go!)
http://search.msn.com/s/jobs/openings/default.aspx

oO..

If you google the "Simia-Lico method" --whatever this may be-- you'll see other pages with the same ad. Also some Russian pages apparently connected to MS Russia. Bizarre.

And virtually no-one can type at that speed anyway, no matter how you calculate it... – the fastest typist in the world (using a special keyboard) only has an average typing speed of about 150wpm!

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute for details...

pjh: so does that mean it's not real?

That seems to be the logical conclusion... ;-)

This is definitely a joke. Look at the other entries on the website:

'Running the supercomputer

The autopilot team builds an infrastructure for MSN Search and other distributed applications. The main challenge is turning unreliable hardware and software into a reliable cluster with 99.9% uptime, only 9 to 5 operations support, and less than 1 operations person for maintaining 1000+ machines.'

I updated the post with a disclaimer at the end...

bobob: I don't consider the "running the supercomputer" paragraph that far out there. Basically asking for folks who are skilled in architecting a "lights-out" operation – not unusual to have no staff on-site after hours ... so part of that process is setting up automatic monitoring/notification for on-call folks. I was a bit puzzled by the use of the "unreliable" word which seemed wierd ... but yea, one admin/1000+ machines is not outside the realm of possibility for a highly replicated environment. I've done this type of stuff for a living.

Having said all of the above, ditto other comments that someone at MSN was having a bit of fun writing this up when they wrote the "hand-crafters" ... but this is on **MSN's Web Site** ... so Philipp accurately reported it – good find.

At technion.ac.il there's a list of intern positions available at MSN Search for computer science students, and this position is on the list amongs a whole host of apparently serious and quite fascinating positions:

http://www2.technion.ac.il/~studex/ATS/positions.php#33

Now I think this is probably a joke, but if you wanted to it would be possible to deliver the promised "10 hand-picked results in 3.8 seconds". Here's how:

1. User queries MSN Search.

2. Suddenly, the screens of "approximately 132 handcrafters" fill with organic search results including extended snippets and thumbnails.

3. Each handcrafter sees a random 10 of the top 100 results, and is expected to quickly click on one or two that seem genuine and useful.

4. After 3.7 seconds, MSN search calculates the 10 results most-clicked by the 132 handcrafters and presents them to the user.

Of course this wouldn't need typing skills at all – just clicking skills. The typing skills is the giveaway that this is a prank.

"Simia-lico" is a bogus term (a Google search for /"simia-lico" -microsoft/ returns no pages) but I'm sure the phrase "simia-lico" hides a joke.

"Simia-lico" might be a kind of pun.

Linnaeus divided the primates into three genera, of which "Simia" was more-or-less the monkeys:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simia

LICO is a term used in Canada for "Low income cut-off", often taken to mean the "poverty line":
http://oldfraser.lexi.net/publications/forum/1998/june/welfare.html

So, Simia-lico is "monkeys working for peanuts".

what's funny is that the job postings are still up after an ENTIRE workday

Very funny.

BTW, MSN actually delivers pretty good results on my comparisons.

its not professional to make a useless jokes which doesnt makes us laugh...compared to google..msn search results are good...They are rocking with Live.com...and google where are you?....dont always try to just launch as much products as you can..better stay or launch with products which will be REALLY helpful to users...except google search(but i am not using it anyhow)...everyother products are just rated 2 out of 5....you should THINK before you create a new project or a product...

I find that MSN Search results still tend to be poor to be honest. They only neat Google with their range of OneBox answers.

Another signal that it isn't just a joke but maybe even a funny hack, is that "they" refer to a "MSNRank". What is that? I don't remember one to exist and found no official reference, of course. Did someone?