Tech:NYC Digest: April 5

Tech:NYC Digest: April 5

April 05, 2022 • Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes

Tuesday, April 5, 2022 

In today’s digest, cases in Manhattan continue to climb, OMNY fare capping program has a standout launch month, and the latest polling on what employees think about in-person and hybrid work.

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By the numbers:  

  • New positive cases statewide: 2,611    

    • New positive cases, NYC: 1,025

  • NYC Positivity Rate: 2.1 percent (-0.1 percent)

  • NYC Hospitalizations: 276 (+18)

  • Statewide Vaccine Progress: 

    • New Yorkers with at least one dose: 89.7 percent 

    • New Yorkers who are fully vaccinated: 76.3 percent  

In today’s latest:

  • A new study shows the lifting of masking and social-distancing restrictions last month could lead to a resurgence of COVID-19 deaths in most states. However, the study also found that delaying lifting restrictions would not prevent surges in deaths for those states, concluding that there is no “magic moment” to lift restrictions. (CNN)

    • Cases in Manhattan have now passed the CDC threshold to move to the “yellow” medium COVID alert level.

  • A new COVID-19 variant has been identified in the UK, but experts say there is no cause for alarm yet. The "recombinant" variant, known as XE, is a combination of the original Omicron variant and its subvariant BA.2. (ABC News)

  • City officials have declared the first month of the MTA’s fare capping program a success, with more than 168,000 riders making enough OMNY swipes to receive an unlimited pass for that week and saving them over $1 million in fares. (Gothamist)

  • The Biden Administration will extend the moratorium on federal student loan payments until August 31. The moratorium was previously scheduled to expire on May 1. (CNN Politics) 

In other reading:

  • Do home coronavirus tests expire? (New York Times)

  • Another booster? A vaccine for Omicron? Here's what could be next for COVID vaccines (NPR)

  • The Library Ends Late Fees, and the Treasures Roll In (New York Times)

Yesterday we highlighted executives from some of our member companies following a discussion of their RTO plans in a new cover story from Crain’s New York Business. The key, they said, will be flexibility as major NYC tech employers embrace a hybrid model for their returning staffers. 

But executives aren’t the only ones excited about hybrid work: two-thirds of adults believe that office and remote work will continue to coexist in the future, a new Axios-Momentive poll found. (Axios)

  • However, just 13 percent of poll respondents believe the days of working in an office five days a week are officially finished. A majority (66 percent) believe that hybrid work will persist, while a few (18 percent) predict most workplaces will go back to how things were before COVID.

The death of the metaphorical water cooler has had certain unintended consequences, as 44 percent of adults said that work-related changes during the last two years have made them feel less connected.

  • After all, connection matters: 34 percent of people who feel less connected say they've considered quitting or changing jobs in the last year, compared with 19 percent who feel “about as connected” and 23 percent who feel “more connected."

While workers say they prefer hybrid work over working full-time in the office, they say they are also running into new problems as they adjust to both virtual and in-person work — those small, but not insignificant, details like keeping track of their possessions across two functioning workplaces and coordinating travel to the office that coincides with that of their coworkers. (Washington Post)

In other reading:

  • Why JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon expect only half of his workers to return to the office full time (Crain’s New York)

  • The job hunt can be exhausting. Here’s how to cope (CNN)

  • Finally: a to-do list app that wants you to do less (Protocol)

  • Novel, a NYC-based creator of NFTs for companies, raised $6 million in seed funding. Lerer Hippeau led the round and was joined by VaynerFund, Costanoa Ventures, Roth Martin, Sugar Capital, and others. (Wall Street Journal)

  • Tinybird, a NYC-based software developer for real-time data analytics, raised $37 million in Series A funding. CRV and Singular Ventures co-led the round and were joined by Crane Ventures. (TechCrunch)

  • 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.

  • April 19: Virtual: How is tech setting and measuring its climate goals?, with Salesforce chief impact officer Suzanne Dibianca, Drawdown Labs director Jamie Beck Alexander, and others. Hosted by Protocol. Register here.

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