Tech:NYC Digest: July 15

Tech:NYC Digest: July 15

July 15, 2021 • Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes

Thursday, July 15, 2021

In today’s digest, NYC marks one month of being fully reopened with caution, Gen Z tech workers are ready to head back to the office, and we share a few tools to help organize your calendar of virtual meetings and phone calls.

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One month ago today, New York celebrated its milestone 70 percent vaccination rate and lifted virtually all remaining COVID-19 restrictions in the state. And in the month that’s followed, life has been coming back to the streets, giving us our first — if early — indications on a question a lot of New Yorkers still have: are we ready?

The number of COVID-19 cases is creeping back up in NYC after months of sustained decrease. The city’s positivity rate has been back above one percent for eight consecutive days, today rising to 1.43 percent, according to city data.

  • The primary culprit continues to be the Delta variant, with new data today showing they make up 69 percent of all new COVID-19 cases in NYC, up from 44 percent the week prior.

  • On Tuesday, one percent of all COVID-19 tests came back positive, which is double the daily rate compared to the same time a month ago. For every 100,000 New Yorkers, there were 4.8 new cases, up from 2.5 in mid-June.

Those jumps aren't evenly distributed — the most new cases are popping up in areas with the lowest vaccination rates, with Staten Island, south Brooklyn, and parts of Queens being current areas of concern. (THE CITY) The spread of the Delta variant, in particular, will have very different impacts for the vaccinated and unvaccinated. (New York Times)

  • Travel and holiday gatherings during the Fourth of July weekend may also be playing a role.

Here’s the good news: A new Yale University study has shown that the city’s vaccine rollout has saved more than 8,300 lives, prevented 44,000 hospitalizations, and 250,000 new cases of COVID-19. (CBS New York)

There’s more to be done, and the solution seems pretty straight forward: NYC has to raise vaccination rates in the neighborhoods where participation has been low. Mobile and in-home vaccine appointments are now available to every New Yorker, but experts worry without more successful outreach to hard-hit communities, NYC will see another spike in cases this summer. (Wall Street Journal)

In other news:

  • The pandemic and related hiring freezes have left a shortage of train operators, conductors, and workers, which has in turn caused thousands of subway cancellations and delays. Nearly 11,000 trips were eliminated last month alone. (New York Times)

  • IDNYC offices across the city are reopening to help New Yorkers obtain municipal ID cards, a step that is particularly important for those who don’t have another form of valid identification to be able to apply for pandemic aid and relief programs. The ID also comes with several other benefits for every New Yorker, including free admission to museums and other cultural institutions, access to library materials and services, and even as a $20 Costco gift card. (PIX 11)

  • Non-citizens may soon be eligible to vote in New York City. A bill extending the right to vote to non-citizens has a supermajority in the City Council. The legislation, while limited to permanent residents and those with work authorizations, would enfranchise some 900,000 New Yorkers. (The Intercept)

  • The New York City Marriage Bureau will reopen on Monday, July 19 for appointments, licenses, and in-person ceremonies after closing in March last year. (Gothamist)

The post-pandemic workplace is rapidly changing for everyone, most of all for Gen Z.

While study after study shows that most workers prefer a remote-first, hybrid model moving forward, Gen Z looks to be most wary of the change. (Axios)

  • For tech workers who have been at their companies for a while and got to experience its pre-pandemic culture — much less just generally been in the workforce for longer — the transition to remote work without losing the connections is a lot easier. New members of the workforce, though, stand to miss out on the valuable skills and opportunities they took the job for in the first place.

By the numbers: A new poll by Generation Lab found that 40 percent of college students and recent graduates prefer fully in-person work, while 39 percent want a hybrid workplace. Studies in Canada and the United Kingdom found similar findings.

  • That's starkly different from the numbers across the rest of the workforce. Just 12 percent of all office workers want to go back full time, per a recent Slack survey. The rest are looking for a remote or hybrid workplace.

Younger workers are also likelier than their older colleagues to live in close quarters with roommates or with parents. Some worry about having access to distraction-free workplaces if that workplace is mostly their home.The bottom line: The experience of remote or hybrid work isn’t necessarily universal, and won’t always scale with seniority. The biggest gaps in worker preferences may break along job level — which makes sense. Junior staffers, managers, and C-suite executives are likely to have very different personal life circumstances to inform their professional lives, and it’ll be important to find a strategy that gives newer talent the sense of community and mentorship they want.

  • Aidoc, a New York-based provider of radiology analysis software, raised $67 million in Series C funding. General Catalyst led the round. (TechCrunch)

  • CARMERA, a provider of real-time HD mapping technologies, has been acquired by Woven Planet, a subsidiary of Toyota created to bring future of transportation technologies like automated driving to market. (TechCrunch)

  • Evvy, a New York City-based maker of an at-home test kit for the vaginal microbiome, raised $5 million in seed funding. General Catalyst led the round and was joined by investors including BoxGroup, BBG Ventures, and Human Ventures. (TechCrunch)

  • Lightyear, a New York City-based enterprise infrastructure management software maker, raised $13.1 million in Series A funding. Ridge Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including Zigg Capital, Barry Sternlicht, Gokul Rajaram, Michael Rapino, Marcus Ridgway, and Stephen Klenert. (TechCrunch)

  • Outbrain, a New York-based online content marketing platform, set IPO terms to eight million shares at $24-$26. It would have a $1.5 billion fully diluted value, were it to price in the middle, and plans to list on the Nasdaq (OB). The company has raised from firms like Viola Ventures, Lightspeed, Gemini Israel Ventures, and Gruner & Jahr. (GlobeNewswire)

  • July 16: Virtual: 5G and America’s Digital Future, with Acting FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, Qualcomm president and CEO Cristiano Amon, and others. Hosted by Axios. 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.

Here’s a hot tip, courtesy of our friends at Protocol. If you’ve found it frustrating or confusing having to bounce between Zooms, Teams meetings, Meets, BlueJeans, and even the regular old phone call, there are some tools to help.

integrates with most meeting systems and puts a “Join” button on our calendar events so you aren’t constantly searching for dial-in links. The

Chrome extension does the same thing, and so does

from your Mac’s menu bar.

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