Tech:NYC Digest: July 25

Tech:NYC Digest: July 25

July 25, 2022 • Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes

Monday, July 25, 2022 

Welcome back! Hope you’re staying cool. In today’s digest, New York is in triple public health emergency territory, preparing for a second Primary Day, and battle waging between hybrid work and remote summer.

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By the numbers:  

  • New positive cases statewide: 5,018

    • New positive cases, NYC: 2,754

  • NYC Positivity Rate (Daily): 9.9%

    • NYC Positivity Rate (7-Day Average): 8.8% 

In today’s latest: 

  • The WHO over the weekend declared monkeypox “public health emergency of international concern,” a designation the WHO currently uses for only two other diseases, COVID-19 and polio. (Washington Post)

    • Speaking of polio: The first US case in nearly a decade was confirmed in Rockland County, New York, prompting officials to set up pop-up polio vaccination centers. (NPR)

    • In NYC, 10,040 monkeypox cases have now been confirmed as of today, up from 618 a week ago. More info.

  • The Biden administration is trying to accelerate a fall vaccination campaign that uses reformulated vaccines that better target the Omicron subvariants and, as a result, has recommended people under the age of 50 pause on getting a second booster for now. (Washington Post)

  • A bill aimed at opening more public bathrooms has enough support to pass the City Council by the end of September, according to Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine. (Bloomberg)

    • The legislation would require relevant city agencies to propose at least one public bathroom location in each of the city’s approximately 168 ZIP codes.

  • And one reminder: we’re officially less than a month away from the second New York primary election in NYC. Here’s what to know.

In other reading:

When hybrid work is the new normal, what makes summer Fridays so special anymore? In an effort to offer yet another perk to workers, many companies are carving out guaranteed remote work benefits. (Wall Street Journal)

  • Conductor, the NYC-based marketing software startup, requires its employees to be in office three days a week, but for four weeks in the spring and another four in August, everyone gets to work from wherever they want, a two-month time allotment CEO Seth Besmertnik calls their “YOLO months.”

  • Amazon and Apple are other major employers offering remote work allowances, each offering four weeks employees can work from anywhere.

“If we can have a world where we can be together for a lot of the year and also give people the opportunity to live a life in a more adventurous way, I think that’s a good outcome,” said Besmertnik.

The future of the workplace may be the “buffet model” of work: Ok, we completely made that phrase up, but more workplaces are opting for a solution that includes a little taste of everything — part in-office minimums, part hybrid flexibility, part dedicated remote benefits.

  • A new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research following 1,600 engineers and other tech workers found higher productivity, better retention rates, and happier employees among those working from home at least part of the week.

  • The study found employees who worked from home had higher rates of usage of messaging and video platforms, even while in the office.

  • Interestingly, it also found that among hybrid workers, lines of code written increased by 8%, and employees’ self-assessment of their productivity increased, as well.

The takeaway: Trying to find some kind of in-and-all-between could become more common. As PwC joint global leader Bhushan Sethi told the Journal, “This is part of the levers firms can pull. How do we give people back something they value?”

In other reading:

  • The future of remote work, according to 6 experts (Vox)

  • Your boss might be reading your work messages. Here’s how to prevent that. (Washington Post)

  • Luxury Rental Buildings Take ‘Working From Home’ to the Next Level (New York Times)

  • allwhere, a NYC-based remote work software company, raised $9.5 million in seed funding. DESCOvery led the round. (TechCrunch)

  • Cleerly, a NYC-based heart disease treatment and analytics company, raised $188 million in Series C funding. T. Rowe Price and Fidelity co-led the round and were joined by Sands Capital, Piper Sandler’s Merchant Banking, Heartland Healthcare Capital funds, Mirae Asset Capital, Peter Thiel, Breyer Capital, Vensana Capital, LRVHealth, New Leaf Ventures, Cigna Ventures, and DigiTx Partners. (Axios)

  • Summer Health, an NYC-based platform providing home health care services via text message, raised $7.5 million in seed funding. Sequoia Capital and Lux Capital co-led the round and were joined by Box Group, Metrodora Ventures, Shrug Capital, Springbank Collective, Coalition Operators, Moving Ventures, and a group of angels. (Fortune)

  • July 26: Virtual: Mock Term Sheet Negotiation, with Dollaride founder and CEO Su Sanni, Spotify head of innovation and market intelligence Mauhan Zonoozy, Goodwin partner Peter Fusco, and others. Hosted by NYU Data Future Lab. Register here.

  • July 28: In-person: The Applied Urban Science Conference, with Numina co-founder and CEO Tara Pham, The GovLab co-founder Stefaan Verhulst, and others. Hosted by NYU Tandon’s Center for Urban Science + Progress. Register here.

  • July 28: Virtual: How employers are adapting to a post-Roe America, with Maven founder and CEO Kate Ryder and chief medical officer Dr. Neel Shah. Hosted by Maven. Register here.

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