Tech:NYC Digest: March 16

Tech:NYC Digest: March 16

March 16, 2023 • Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes

Thursday, March 16, 2023

In today’s digest, assessing New York’s competing housing plans, the AI that gets you a better tax refund, and the RTO outlook three years after offices were suddenly shuttered.

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  • New York launched a new web tool to help parents check their eligibility for financial support for child care programs. The tool was launched as a new panel begins developing plans for the implementation of universal child care statewide. (Spectrum News)

  • More than 100 business and nonprofit organizations today threw their support behind the New York Housing Compact, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s plan to address the New York housing crisis by building 800,000 new homes in the next decade, but both the State Senate and Assembly are seeking to offer new proposals of their own ahead of the April 1 deadline to approve the state’s budget. (THE CITY) 

  • And here’s what to know if you’d like to participate in (or avoid) the St. Patrick’s Day Parade down Fifth Avenue tomorrow.

In other reading:

  • What If the Next Pandemic Happens Tomorrow? A Simulation. (New York Times)

  • This NYC startup wants to use AI to maximize your tax refund (Crain’s New York Business)

  • A map of NYC’s park benches could help save them, thanks to these CUNY students (Gothamist)

Three years ago today, NYC closed public schools as the city was beginning to realize the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic. Four days later, all “non-essential” businesses were shuttered too.

Since then, millions of square feet of office space in the city remain empty due to remote work’s staying power.

  • The latest office occupancy data from Kastle shows that, during the week of March 8, 47.7% of Manhattan offices saw attendance on a given weekday, a rate that’s plateaued at that level for months now.

When we talk To Tech:NYC member companies, small and large alike, remote work is still a top point of conversation, indicating that any permanent solution is still far from settled.

  • Over the last three years, many workers have reconfigured their lives. According to research last month from Slack’s Future Forum, three-quarters of executives want to work in the office three to five days a week, compared with just a third of rank-and-file employees.

What it means: The workplace norms at this three-year mark haven’t changed much since the two-year mark, even if executives had hoped otherwise. Although the hiring frenzy tech saw last year has calmed, most tech workers still think they could easily find another job — and if it comes down to keeping flexible work options, they're willing to do so. The writing on the wall, then, is without more creative incentives, the four-year mark could bring even more of the same.

In other reading:

  • Working From Home is Less Healthy Than You Think (New York Times)

  • Has Your Organization Acted on What It’s Learned in the Pandemic? (Harvard Business Review)

  • Rock-Climbing and Spas at 3 pm Thursday? Sure, It’s the Afternoon Economy. (New York Times)

  • Wingspan, a NYC-based payroll platform for managing freelance workforces, raised $14 million in Series A funding. Andreessen Horowitz led the round and was joined by Distributed Ventures, Long Journey Ventures, Ludlow Ventures, 186 Ventures, and others. (TechCrunch)

  • March 18: In-person: School of Data 2023, with State Senator Kristen Gonzalez, Council Member Jennifer Gutiérrez, EquityNYC director Sara Shoener, and others. Hosted by BetaNYC and the NYC Office of Data Analytics. Student, scholarship, and hardship tickets are available. Register here.

  • March 21: In-person: Building a Healthtech Startup: Advice for Early-Stage Founders, with Teamwork Healthcare CEO Anirudh Sathya, Care+Wear CEO Chaitenya Razdan, and ZiphyCare CEO Rada Sumavera. Hosted by Stacklist. Register here.

  • March 24 – 26: In-person: CodeFair, an immersive, 3-day, tech forward experience from Girls Who Code for the NYC tech community. Use code “TechNYC” for free tickets to the After Dark celebrations on Friday, March 24, and Saturday, March 25 here.

  • March 29: Virtual: Exchange: A New Kind of Investor Conference, with A Starting Point co-founder Chris Evans, ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood, NYU Stern School of Business professor Scott Galloway, and others. Hosted by Public. Register here.

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