Tech:NYC Digest: April 4

Tech:NYC Digest: April 4

April 04, 2022 • Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes

Monday, April 4, 2022 

In today’s digest, legal battle over mask mandate for young children continues, Mayor Adams welcomes LGBTQ+ Floridians to NYC, and Tech:NYC member companies officially welcome employees back to the (hybrid) workplace.

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By the numbers:  

  • New positive cases statewide: 2,553    

    • New positive cases, NYC: 1,142

  • NYC Positivity Rate: 2.2 percent (no change)

  • NYC Hospitalizations: 258

  • Statewide Vaccine Progress: 

    • New Yorkers with at least one dose: 89.6 percent

    • New Yorkers who are fully vaccinated: 76.3 percent

In today’s latest:

  • New Yorkers aged 50 or older and/or who are severely immunocompromised are now eligible to get their second booster at one of over a dozen state-run mass vaccination sites. (New York Times) The state also plans to scale down COVID-19 test sites as the focus shifts to over-the-counter, at-home test kits. (NY State of Politics)

  • An appeals court judge has temporarily allowed the city to continue its mask mandate for toddlers in schools and daycare centers after a Staten Island judge struck down the mandate on Friday. (NBC New York)

  • Following a sharp uptick in cases, New York state last Friday renewed its mask-wearing recommendation for five upstate and central New York counties. (USA Today)

  • Mayor Adams today announced a billboard campaign in five Floridian cities in response to the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, inviting LGBTQ+ and other residents opposed to the law to New York City. (POLITICO)

  • Car-Free Earth Day will return to 100 streets across the five boroughs on April 23. The event will also kick-off this year’s summer Open Streets program. (Gothamist) 

In other reading:

It’s ‘welcome back week’ for NYC Googlers! The company’s 12,000+ NYC-based employees are back in the office for at least three days per week beginning today.

But they’re not the only ones. In a new cover story from Crain’s New York, executives from several Tech:NYC member companies shared their reopening playbooks and how they can finally put their plans to the test this month.

The key will be flexibility, said Justworks senior vice president of people Allison Rutledge-Parisi:

  • “We are not going to be a fully remote team. We really believe that innovation and connection arise best from a shared in-person presence and physical space regularly. What that looks like — that's what we can work on."

Other major NYC tech employers are rolling out similar — and gradual — approaches: 

  • Etsy launched a hybrid model for its 2,400 employees last month and created a “Reorientation” program for employees who joined the company during the pandemic and are reporting to the office for the first time. 

  • Squarespace and Olo reopened their West Village and One World Trade Center headquarters, respectively, but both also have hundreds of remote workers and will remain hybrid-friendly.

As companies get settled with their RTO plans (and feel more confident they’ll stick this time), they’re also beginning to revisit the details of their protocols. (Wall Street Journal)

  • Meta reversed its expectation that all employees have a COVID booster shot in order to work in any US office locations. (CNBC)

But as Cockroach Labs chief people officer Lindsay Grenawalt said, this is a period to try new things and respond to the uncertainty of the last two years: "All we're trying to do now is create certainty for this next process to say, 'OK, this is how we believe it's going to be. This is where we're placing our bets.' Let's see how it works."

In other reading:

  • This Is What Happens When There Are Too Many Meetings (The Atlantic)

  • How Companies Can Better Communicate In A Hybrid Work Environment (Forbes)

  • 5 things to consider taking off your resume right now (Fast Company)

  • Expa, a NYC-based venture firm and startup studio, raised $200 million for its third fund. (TechCrunch)

  • Pahdo Labs, a NYC-based game creation platform, raised $15 million in Series A funding. Andreessen Horowitz led the round. 

  • Season, an NYC-based personalized food and nutrition recommendation platform, raised $34 million in Series A funding. Andreessen Horowitz led the round and was joined by LRV Health and Company Ventures. (Fast Company)

  • April 5: Virtual: How to Raise a First Institutional Round, with Neythri Futures Fund investing partners Roli Saxena, Orum founder and CEO Stephany Kirkptrick, and others. Hosted by Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center. Register here.

  • April 5: Virtual: What’s Next Summit 2022, with Bolt CEO Ryan Breslow, Emerson Collective founder Laurene Powell Jobs, Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield, Accenture CEO Julie Sweet, and others. Hosted by Axios. Register here.

  • April 6: Virtual: Data Science Day 2022, with White House Director of Science and Technology Policy Alondra Nelson and IBM Research AI vice president Sriram Raghavan. Hosted by the Data Science Institute at Columbia University. Register here.

  • April 7: In-person: New York Product Conference, with Squarespace VP of product Natalie Gibralter, 1stdibs chief product officer Xiaodi Zhang, Noom VP of product Raj Krishnan, and others. Hosted by Product Collective. Use code TechNYC to save 20 percent off any pass by registering here.

  • April 12: Virtual: Smart Cities and the Emergence of Innovation Districts, with Tech:NYC executive director Jason Myles Clark, National Landing BID president Tracey Sayegh Gabriel, and others. Hosted by Commercial Observer. Register here.

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