Tech:NYC Digest: July 12

Tech:NYC Digest: July 12

July 12, 2021 • Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes

Monday, July 12, 2021

Welcome back! In today’s digest, why the “end of cities” eulogies turned out to be wrong, tech companies are becoming more willing to embrace vaccine mandates, and New Yorkers share their condolences for the Astor Place Kmart.

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Not long after COVID began spiking in NYC and metros around the country, pessimistic predictions about the “end of cities” quickly followed. With the recovery in full swing, and life and culture teeming on almost every street, the doomsday takes clearly did not pan out — just like they didn’t after all the pandemics that came before. This hindsight analysis from the New York Times does a good job explaining why.

  • True: Some cities lost residents during the pandemic — including NYC, where residents moved away at higher rates.  

  • But: Data shows many New Yorkers just relocated to the suburbs just outside of the city proper. It’s a pattern that suggests not that cities died, but really that they expanded outward and became less congested. 

  • Almost a year and a half later, New York and other cities have adapted in numerous ways, mostly for the better. Though people have spread out, the appeal of density — all the energy, innovation, and excitement it brings — has not disappeared.

And so New York is back — which is to say, it never went anywhere. The economic and infrastructure challenges in downtown office districts and neighborhood business corridors alike existed pre-COVID, and if the pandemic gave us anything, it resurfaced and accelerated the needs to address them.

  • New Yorkers who decamped for a while last year are returning in droves, and with a reopened city, so are the tourists, who are arriving to find cleaner, more pleasant subway rides and cheaper hotel rooms. (New York Times)

That’s all good news, but somewhere between the lockdown orders and hot vax summer, there was a sweet spot of time where New York belonged to New Yorkers, and for the many of us who stuck it out the whole time, it was glorious.

In other news:

  • NYC’s presumptive next mayor, Eric Adams, met with Pres. Biden at the White House today to discuss plans on reducing crime and gun violence, an issue central to Adams’ campaign platform. (Gothamist)

  • The CDC is encouraging a full reopening of schools in the fall, even if they cannot take all of the steps the agency recommends to curb the spread of the coronavirus. It is also asking school districts to use local health data to guide decisions about when to tighten or relax prevention measures like masking and physical distancing. (New York Times) Here’s what parents need to know about the guidance.

  • The FDA said it will attach a warning to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine alerting recipients of an increased risk of a rare nerve syndrome. (New York Times) Regulators have found that the chances of developing the condition are low, but they appear to be three to five times higher among recipients of the J&J vaccine than among the general population in the United States. 

  • Bicycles are (still) flying off the shelves across the city as cycling numbers remain high. Many New Yorkers also continue to bring in bicycles they bought or fixed up during the pandemic bike boom, when people avoided public transportation for fear of catching COVID-19. (amNY)

The largest tech employers have said they will encourage but not require employees to get vaccinated before returning to the office. However, as more companies reopen their doors — and get more feedback from employees — that’s changing. (Protocol)

  • Adobe, VMware, Twilio, and Asana are now all mandating vaccines for returning in-person staffers, which is a departure from a norm that industry leaders like Google and Facebook set earlier this year.

Sheeva Ghassemi-Vanni, a partner in the employment practice group of the law firm Fenwick & West has been fielding more calls from executives seeking advice on how to require employees to get vaccinated, any associated legal hurdles, and how to accommodate employees who refuse.

  • "It's not a total pendulum swing at this point, but it's definitely gaining momentum," Ghassemi-Vanni said. "I'll be interested to see, in the fall and then through Q1 of 2022, what employers end up doing."

Some companies are tying their mandates to "soft reopenings," requiring proof of vaccination just of those most eager to return to the office this summer while the majority of employees continue working from home. By the time a fuller reopening happens later this fall or winter, some plan to lift those mandates.

  • Salesforce reopened its offices in San Francisco and New York to small groups of vaccinated employees this spring. Adobe and Asana said they’ll continue to assess the need to impose this rule based on the safety risks and government guidance and regulations.

Though still not the industry norm, most office workers support mandates — a Glassdoor survey of more than 2,000 U.S. employees found that 70 percent supported making vaccines a requirement to return to the office. That number is even higher for tech workers: more than 80 percent of them told Qualtrics around the same time that they supported mandates.

In other reading: 

  • ArtSugar, the e-commerce destination for millennials and Gen Z to purchase and learn more about art, has raised $500K in Seed funding from investors that include Curate Capital. (PR Newswire)

  • The Glimpse Group, a diversified platform company providing enterprise-focused VR and AR software & service solutions, closed a $14.1 initial million public offering and began trading on the Nasdaq under the symbol $VRAR. (PR Newswire)

  • Otter, a child care marketplace that matches kids with stay-at-home parents, raised $23 million in Series A funding led by Sequoia Capital. (Forbes)

  • July 13: Virtual: How to Build a Smart City, with Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners CEO Jonathan Winer, Microsoft director of critical infrastructure Jeremy Goldberg, and others. Hosted by Protocol. Register here.

  • July 13: Virtual: Redefining Industries with the Power of 5G, with Newlab 5G Studio Cohort 2 companies Easy Aerial, EVPassport, and others. Hosted by Newlab. Register here.

  • July 15: Virtual: How to Reach Hypergrowth, with UiPath founder and CEO Daniel Dines and Limitless Technologies co-founder and COO Megan Neale. Hosted by Work-Bench. Register here.

  • July 19: Virtual: The Empowered Employee Era, with Zoom chief people officer Lynne Oldham, Earthseed founder Ifeoma Ozoma, Hodgestar Scientific Computing founder Jack Poulson, and others. Hosted by Protocol. Register here.

  • July 22: Virtual: How AI Technology Affects Hiring, with RippleMatch chief of staff Troy LeClaire, Fetcher CEO Andres Banks, and Ordergroove SVP of People Karen Weeks. Hosted by NYCETC and Hot Bread Kitchen. Register here.

Pour one out for the Astor Place Kmart-in-a-subway-station, which

after 25 years. We hope you’ll take solace in the

by New Yorkers at this difficult time. RIP.

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