Tech:NYC Digest: February 17

Tech:NYC Digest: February 17

February 17, 2022 • Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes

Thursday, February 17, 2022

In today’s digest, Gov. Hochul accepts the Democratic nomination for Governor, subway ridership hits new pandemic-era records, and the rise of “returnships” to welcome caregivers back to the workforce.

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By the numbers:  

  • New positive cases statewide: 3,687 

    • New positive cases, NYC: 1,170

  • NYC Positivity Rate: 1.4 percent (-0.3 percent)

  • NYC Hospitalizations: 1,132 (-83)

  • Statewide Vaccine Progress: 

    • Percentage of all New Yorkers with least one dose: 88.4 percent

    • Percentage of all New Yorkers who are fully vaccinated: 75.1 percent

Today’s latest: 

  • The number of coronavirus cases reported nationwide is now lower than during the peak of the Delta wave last September. (New York Times)

  • Mayor Eric Adams met with 100 CEOs of major New York companies yesterday, encouraging them to call their workforces back to the office to help the city’s economic recovery efforts. (Washington Post)

    • Subway ridership topped more than 3 million swipes across five days last week, and bus ridership is also on the rise as more people head back to the office. (PIX 11)

  • Gov. Kathy Hochul said New York is now ranked first among large states in the percentage of fully vaccinated 12-17 year olds. (NYS) Yesterday she announced the opening of 29 additional #VaxforKids sites, bringing the statewide total to 222 sites. You can find them all listed here.

  • The New York State Democratic Convention was held today, where Gov. Kathy Hochul officially accepted the party’s nomination for Governor with 85 percent of the vote. She became the first woman nominee for governor in state history. (ABC New York)

  • COVID–19 death rates are starting to decline in the US, driven by drops in the Northeast and Midwest. (Wall Street Journal) But scientists are now monitoring an Omicron subvariant that they believe is even more contagious. (New York Times) 

In other reading:

  • COVID Won’t End Up Like the Flu. It Will Be Like Smoking. (The Atlantic)

  • Vaccine mandates depend on local politics (Axios)

  • The return of ‘revenge travel’: As Omicron wanes, Americans eagerly book vacations (Washington Post)

Since the pandemic began, we've seen countless warnings about the millions of women who left the workforce, many of whom felt forced to choose between work and caregiving obligations when schools and child care centers were in flux. (CNN)

But women’s labor force participation rate is beginning to turn back around — albeit very slowly — and to help reacclimate them to the workplace, employers are increasingly building “returnships” into their 2022 hiring strategies.

  • Re-entering the workforce after an extended absence is often difficult, and the longer you're out, the harder it can be to get back in, especially when recruiters view career gaps on a resume negatively.

Returnships typically run for a few months, offering training, experience, and networking opportunities to workers — usually mothers — who've been out of the workforce for an extended period of time.

  • HR executives are relying on them as a way to double down on their gender equality targets. Harvard Business Review named them one of the top five ways to get women back into the workforce. 

Oscar Perez, Meta’s manager for diversity recruiting and programs, said its Return to Work initiative helps contribute to its goal of doubling the number of female employees globally by 2026. (WorkLife)

  • Other tech companies like IBM and Cloudflare have similar programs, and Grubhub recently completed its first returnship program. The company is also focusing on training managers to know what to look for in applicants different from their traditional hiring process. 

Many tech companies’ programs are built in partnership with nonprofit Path Forward. Returners: You can see their full list of programs here to learn if your company has one. Employers: If you’d like more information on how to start one, learn more here. 

In other reading: 

  • Tech Companies Face A Fresh Crisis: Hiring (New York Times Magazine)

  • The four-day workweek is gaining ground in Europe. It’s time Americans give it a serious look. (Washington Post)

  • This Is the Worst Trend in Hybrid Work. It Has to Stop (Inc.)

  • Advisr, a New York City-based B2B sales operating system startup, raised $5.8 million in new venture funding. Next Frontier Capital led and was joined by Granite Capital. (Newswire)

  • Thrive Capital, a New York City-based VC firm, raised $3 billion for its eighth fund. (TechCrunch)

  • February 22: Virtual: Investor Series, with Greycroft co-founder Alan Patricof. Hosted by New York Venture Partners. Register here.

  • February 24: Virtual: The Face of a Founder Summit, with Backstage Capital founder Arlan Hamilton, Fanbase CEO Isaac Hayes III, Wellthi CEO Fonta Gilliam, and others. Hosted by Black Women Talk Tech. Register here.

  • March 3: Virtual: Recruiting and retaining talent in the new world of work, with Slack SVP Brian Elliott, Cisco VP of talent acquisition Zohra Yafai, and others. Hosted by Protocol. Register here. 

  • March 4: Virtual: Sharing America’s Role in a Post-Pandemic World, with Meetup CEO David Siegel, Bolster co-founder and CEO Matt Blumberg, and others. Hosted by 8W8 Global Business Builders. Register here.

  • March 5 – 6: In-person: NYC School of Data 2022. Hosted by BetaNYC with the NYC Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics. Register here.

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