Tech:NYC Digest: August 25

Tech:NYC Digest: August 25

August 25, 2021 • Estimated Reading Time: 11 minutes

Wednesday, August 25, 2021

In today’s digest, average New York City rents overtake San Francisco, Johnson & Johnson boosters get a vote of confidence, companies make it more expensive to be unvaccinated, and how some tech workers secretly juggle two jobs.

  • Tomorrow at 12pm ET: Tech:NYC chief of staff Sarah Brown and Chime chief of staff Dennis Yu are leading a virtual roundtable on the latest hybrid and remote work trends, with HR/people leaders from Betterment, Primary, LinkedIn, BentoBox, and others. If you’d like to join us, reach out here and we’ll send you the Zoom details.

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Today’s latest:

  • Gov. Hochul is working on a COVID-19 vaccine requirement for all school personnel in New York, where teachers and other staff will need to take the shots or agree to weekly testing. Her team is also pursuing a universal mask mandate where everyone must wear face coverings inside school buildings. (Gothamist)

  • A new CDC study found unvaccinated people are about 29 times more likely to be hospitalized and nearly 5 times more likely to be infected with COVID-19 than those who are fully vaccinated. (CNBC)

  • New York City rents have overtaken San Francisco as the most expensive in the US, a sign the city is outpacing the West Coast tech hub’s financial recovery. The median one-bedroom rental in the boroughs is now $2,810 versus $2,800 in the Golden City, according to a new study by online rental platform Zumper. (New York Post)

    • As New Yorkers return — or arrive for the first time — with expectations to return to work or in-person classes in the fall, they have flooded the rental market looking for anything they can find. (NBC News)

  • A booster shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine dramatically raises the levels of antibodies against the coronavirus, the company reported on Wednesday. J&J will submit the data to the FDA, which is evaluating similar studies from Pfizer and Moderna. If authorized by the agency, the Biden administration wants to provide booster shots eight months after vaccination. (New York Times) 

    • A new Morning Consult poll shows that over 3 in 4 vaccinated Americans would receive a booster shot if recommended. (Forbes)

In other reading:

A growing number of people across industries, including tech, appear to be hacking WFH by working two or more full-time jobs at once. (Wall Street Journal)

The pandemic has given some workers new opportunities to shirk and fib. No matter how many check-ins they load on someone’s calendar, it’s a lot harder for bosses to keep tabs on remote workers like they used to from one desk over.

  • Alone in their home offices, they toggle between two laptops. They play “Tetris” with their calendars. Sometimes they log on to two meetings at once. 

  • They use paid time off to juggle the occasional big project or ramp up at a new gig. 

  • Many say they don’t work more than 40 hours a week for both jobs combined. 

The upside: The overemployed are seriously upping their earnings to hundreds of thousands a year, including bonuses and stock. (Business Insider)

  • They’ve used the extra income to pay off chunks of student loan debt, plump their kids’ college-savings accounts, and purchase everything from engagement rings to sports cars.

The downside: Anybody who lives a double life for long enough will experience a close call.

  • Workers still playing the game say they worry constantly about someone catching on, but say the sense of control they feel they’ve gained outweighs the risk.

  • A site called Overemployed has gone live to provide workers with tips on navigating dual employment. (Forbes)

Even if companies start calling people back to the office, those with two jobs say the world of remote work has given them options.

In vaccination mandate updates:

  • Goldman Sachs will require anyone who enters the bank’s US offices, including clients and other guests, to be fully vaccinated starting on Sept. 7. (New York Times)

  • CVS Health will mandate vaccinations for some employees. CVS pharmacists will have until Nov. 30 to be fully vaccinated, while other employees who interact with patients and all corporate staff have until Oct. 31 to comply. (New York Times)

  • Chevron will require COVID-19 vaccine mandates for employees who travel internationally and expatriates. (New York Times)

  • Walt Disney World’s unionized employees in Florida must be fully vaccinated by Oct. 22. (CNBC)

  • Delta Air Lines will require any unvaccinated employee to pay an additional $200 per month to stay on the company’s health care plan starting Nov. 1. Unvaccinated workers must wear masks and will soon have to take weekly coronavirus tests. (New York Times)

In other reading:

  • It’s ‘Back to That Isolation Bubble’ for Workers Pining for the Office (New York Times)

  • Worker Support Grows for Harsher Vaccine Stances From Employers (Bloomberg)

  • The death of the job: what if paid work were no longer the centerpiece of American life? (Vox)

  • Offices Dangle Beehives and Garden Plots to Coax Workers Back (New York Times)

  • Antidote Health, a New York-based virtual HMO, raised $12 million in seed funding from iAngels, Well-Tech Ventures, Flint Capital, and other angel investors. (FinSMEs)

  • Calibrate, a New York-based weight management platform, raised $100 million in Series B funding. Founders Fund and Tiger Global co-led the round and were joined by Optum Ventures, as well as existing investors Forerunner Ventures, Threshold Ventures, and Redesign Health. (Forbes)

  • Grafana Labs, a New York-based open observability platform, raised $220 million in Series C funding at a $3 billion valuation. Sequoia Capital and Coatue co-led the round and were joined by existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Lead Edge Capital, and GIC. (Bloomberg)

  • Knock, a New York-based leasing platform for landlords and management companies, raised $5 million in seed funding co-led by Accomplice and Boston Seed and were joined by angel investors in the cybersecurity space and Hippo co-founder Eyal Navon. (FinSMEs)

  • Knoetic, a New York-based social network and analytics platform for chief people officers, raised $18 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Accel and was notably joined by over 100 angel investors, including a number of executives, VCs and former and current chief people officers of companies such as Mozilla, Pinterest, Gusto, Box, Twilio, Fitbit, Kickstarter, Looker, Hired, and GitHub. (TechCrunch)

  • August 26: Virtual: Approaches to Hybrid and Remote Work, with Betterment director of HR and employee experience Caitlin Sudor-Savin, Primary chief experience officer Cap Watkins, LinkedIn chief of staff of workplace Chris Butterick, and BentoBox chief people officer Jessi Marcoff. Hosted by Tech:NYC and Chime. Reach out to register here.

  • August 26: Virtual: What’s Next in Cybersecurity, with Adobe chief security officer Mark Adams, Salesforce chief trust officer James Alkove, Microsoft vice president of security Ann Johnson, and others. Hosted by The Information. Register here.

  • October 6: In-Person Outdoors: 2021 Propelify Innovation Festival, with Tech:NYC founder and executive director Julie Samuels, Capsule CEO Eric Kinariwala, Noom CEO Saeju Jeong, Bowery Farming CEO Irving Fain, and others. Hosted by TechUnited:NJ. Use code WeInventTheFuture to register for a free general admission ticket for a limited time here.

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