People leaving and joining companies is not unusual, and typically doesn’t warrant much discussion. But this one is a little odd: Jared Palmer, who was appointed VP of engineering at Xbox by Asha Sharma, has left the company after just three months.
When Asha Sharma took over as the big boss of Xbox, she brought over some of her cohorts from Microsoft’s CoreAI team, including Jared Palmer. He was supposed to be in charge of developer tools, engineering, product and infrastructure.
“He’s spent his career building developer tools that remove friction and increase productivity,” Sharma said. “That’s exactly the mindset we want, using technology to support creators.”
Since Palmer the brand, Xbox has endured a rather rollercoaster ride. At first, Asha Sharma and her new team seemed to be saying all the right things, before kicking things up a gear with a fantastic Xbox showcase.
However, things quickly went downhill again. Xbox’s big reset saw thousands of people lose their jobs, while multiple studios were sold, closed, heavily reduced or downright decimated.
Perhaps that turmoil helped trigger Palmer’s decision to leave, but the man himself is saying very little on the subject. His departure message is a fairly generic piece of text that offers no real clues as to why he chose to walk away from the role after just three months.
All we know is that he’s leaving to take a job at Cognition, a a rapidly growing, multibillion-dollar AI startup best known for developing the autonomous coding agent Devin. It was founded in 2023, and has already recieved hefty investment.
It could simply be that Palmer viewed the opportunity as too good to pass up. Or it could be that he sees Xbox as a sinking ship. Since joining Xbox, Palmer’s social media still strends heavily toward AI, so it seems like there’s where his current passion resides.
Whatever it is, it doesn’t look great from an outsiders perspective. In total, Palmer spent around 8 months at CoreAI before Sharma hand-picked him for Xbox where he was around for just under 3 months, totalling slightly less than a year at Microsoft.
It’s not a great look for the hand-picked guy to serve just three months before sailing off into the sunset. Is this another alarm bell for Xbox as a brand?
Palmer’s departure also continues a worrying early trend under Asha Sharma. Xbox Game Studios boss Craig Duncan and chief of staff Louise O’Connor both left in June, meaning three high-level executives have now departed Xbox within roughly a month and a half.
WGB 