Tech:NYC Digest: July 5

Tech:NYC Digest: July 5

July 05, 2022 • Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes

Tuesday, July 5, 2022 

Welcome back! In today’s digest, BA.5 threatens a summer spike, a borough-by-borough vibes check, and why job-seekers still like their chances despite a looming downturn.

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By the numbers:  

  • New positive cases statewide: 4,038 

    • New positive cases, NYC: 2,376

  • NYC Positivity Rate: 9.0 percent (no change)

In today’s latest: 

  • The newest COVID wave, fueled by more transmissible subvariants of the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 strains, continues to grow across the US. (New York Magazine)

    • Federal estimates show that the BA.5 variant, which is particularly adept at evading immune protections from vaccines or previous infections, has become the dominant strain among all new coronavirus cases in the US. (Wall Street Journal)

    • Despite the possibility of a summer COVID-19 resurgence, there are fewer options for free PCR tests in NYC. The number of NYC Health + Hospitals testing sites were cut in half citywide from mid-February to mid-April — from 270 to 144 locations — leading to fewer hours of testing availability. 

  • A pandemic-era record of 2.5 million people passed through US airport security checkpoints at the start of the Fourth of July weekend, the most since February 2020. (Axios)

  • One tip to city drivers: After two years of pandemic-era rollbacks, alternate side parking rules have been reinstated in full beginning today. Street cleaning will resume regular schedules twice a week, instead of just once. (NBC New York)

  • And lastly: Sandra Lindsay, the Queens critical care nurse who received the first COVID vaccine, has been named a Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient! (Gothamist)

In other reading:

  • N.Y. Beaches Step Up Shark Patrols, Adding Drones, Trackers and Tourniquets (New York Times)

  • The Health Risks of Getting Covid-19 A Second (or Third) Time (Wall Street Journal)

  • Five Days, Five Boroughs: What’s the Vibe in New York City Right Now? (New York Times)

We’ve written at length about how the job market in tech has remained really hot through the pandemic. But, according to new research, concerns about the economy have many people wondering if their jobs are secure enough to survive.

  • More than a quarter of US employees would "urgently" look for a new job if the country falls into a recession and more than half would do so within six months of a downturn, according to a study of 1,500 US workers from the hiring software firm Greenhouse. 

But candidate sentiment, especially in tech, isn’t all doom and gloom: Despite broad concern about the overall state of the economy, most workers are optimistic about the state of hiring.

  • 70 percent of job-seekers surveyed in the Greenhouse report said they remain optimistic about the job market.

  • 66 percent said they felt confident they could find another job if their pay in a current role was reduced during an economic downturn.

HR tech company Indeed, which has offices in NYC and dozens of other cities, is one hoping to take advantage of the volume of activity in the labor market to accelerate its talent efforts. (Protocol)

  • Priscilla Koranteng, the company’s chief people officer, has ambitious goals to hire 4,000 new people in 2022: “I've been in a transformation environment, so I know that sometimes you have to scale up, sometimes you have to scale down. What happens is also that it kind of opens up the talent pool on the outside a little bit. It opens up the talent pool somewhere else.” 

In other reading:

  • Is That Remote Job Opening Really Remote? Check the Fine Print (Wall Street Journal)

  • Tech experts weigh in: The wrong way to think about productivity (Protocol)

  • Reimagining a NYC Landmark for the Future of Work (TIME)

  • Bloomberg Beta, a NYC and San Francisco-based early-stage VC firm focused on the future of work, raised $75 million for its Fund IV and $75 million for a new opportunity fund. (The Information)

  • Deno, a NYC-based secure runtime for JavaScript and TypeScript, raised $21 million in Series A funding. Sequoia led the round and was joined by Four Rivers Ventures, Rauch Capital, Long Journey Ventures, the Mozilla Corporation and Shasta Ventures. (TechCrunch)

  • Echo3D, a NYC-based cloud platform for 3D, AR, and VR content, raised $5.5 million in new venture funding. Qualcomm Ventures led the round and was joined by Reimagine Ventures, Konvoy Ventures, and Space Capital. (VentureBeat)

  • July 7: Virtual: How I Raised My Seed, with Toki founder and CEO Elise DeCamp and Overalls co-founder and CEO Jon Cooper. Hosted by Brooklyn Bridge Ventures. Register here.

  • July 14: Virtual: How VCs Can Help Founders During a Downturn, with H/L Ventures managing partner Oliver Libby, 8VC executive in residence Lauren DeMeuse, and Build Talent cofounder Jose Guardado. Hosted by Getro. Register here.

  • July 14: In-person: Under, Over, Through, a showcase with artists from NEW INC’s Creative Science Track. Hosted by Newlab. Register here.

  • July 19: In-person: Bloomberg Crypto Summit, with FTX founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, Uniswap Labs COO Mary-Catherine Lader, Grayscale chief legal officer Craig Salm, and others. Hosted by Bloomberg. Register here.

  • July 20: In-person: The City’s Path to Becoming the World’s Crypto Capital, with New York State Dept. of Financial Services Superintendent Adrienne A. Harris, eToro US CEO Lule Demmissie, Genesis CEO Michael Moro, and others. Hosted by Crain’s New York Business. Register here.

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