Tech:NYC Digest: March 29

Tech:NYC Digest: March 29

March 29, 2022 • Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes

Tuesday, March 29, 2022 

In today’s digest, second boosters approved for 50+, One World Trade at near full occupancy, and how employers and employees can cope with changing skills needs.

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By the numbers:  

  • New positive cases statewide: 2,400 

    • New positive cases, NYC: 960  

  • NYC Positivity Rate: 1.8 percent (+0.1 percent)

  • NYC Hospitalizations: 268 (+15)

  • Statewide Vaccine Progress: 

    • New Yorkers with at least one dose: 89.5 percent 

    • New Yorkers who are fully vaccinated: 76.1 percent

In today’s latest:

  • The FDA and CDC approved second COVID-19 booster shots for adults 50 and older, a move meant to protect older Americans from a potential surge. Second boosters are expected to eventually roll out for those under 50 as well. (Wall Street Journal)

  • Statewide COVID-19 cases increased nearly 26 percent last week due to the new BA.2 variant, but coronavirus-related hospitalizations remained low, about 95 percent down from the January peak. (The Journal News)

  • Fewer than 800 coronavirus deaths are being reported each day in the US, the lowest daily average since before the Omicron variant took hold late last fall. Moreover, the seven-day average of new cases has also dropped significantly from the height of the Omicron surge. (The Hill)

  • The city’s firefighters union is revamping its efforts against the revised workplace vaccine policy, hoping to get a similar exemption to the one given to pro athletes and performers. Mayor Adams said he is open to meeting with them. (NBC New York)

  • In a sign the office market continues to recover, software company Celonis expanded its space at One World Trade Center, making the tower now 95 percent leased, two percentage points higher than just before the pandemic. (Bloomberg)

In other reading:

  • Fighting Seasonal Allergies With That COVID Mask (Wall Street Journal)

  • A brand-new ferry could connect Manhattan to LaGuardia Airport (Time Out New York)

  • The first hamburger vending machine has arrived in Jersey City (Axios)

Jobs are changing, even if you’re not changing jobs. That’s made upskilling and reskilling programs — especially ones tech companies designed to respond to their own internal skill needs — all the more important.

It’s also a strategy to get ahead in the talent wars. According to a new report out today from LinkedIn, employers who filter by skills data to fill open roles are more likely to find a successful hire.

  • Skill sets required for jobs have changed about 25 percent since 2015, a trend expected to double by 2027. 

  • Linkedin users added 286 million skills to their profiles in 2021, up 22 percent from the year before.

  • 40 percent of hiring managers on LinkedIn are referencing skills data to fill open roles, and 60 percent said doing so found better matches.

One of those key skills: data literacy. That seems obvious for tech employers, but a separate survey of tech workers found it’s actually one of the largest skill gaps in the industry. (Protocol)

  • 82 percent of leaders expect their employees to have basic data literacy skills, but only about 40 percent of them say they’re provided the data training needed for the job.

  • Without the right training, employees are more likely to get frustrated and look elsewhere for work, contributing to the Great Resignation.

Tableau CEO Mark Nelson said, “Some people do think this is a technology problem — [you can] roll out the tech and it's all good — and that's not the case. It really is about the human aspect of building a data culture inside of your organization where the organization really expects to use data and is using data.”

  • In the last year alone, investors have poured more than $2.1 billion in skilling companies and workplace training platforms, including NYC-based Articulate. 

The tools are important, but having teams who can effectively use them is even more so. And in the current talent market, investing in internal development programs may help close the gap faster and prevent more attrition.

In other reading:

  • How live learning, AI, and web3 are coming for corporate learning and development (Protocol)

  • What the Anti-work Discourse Gets Wrong (The Atlantic)

  • The changes coming to interview questions in 2022 (Fast Company)

  • David Energy, a Brooklyn-based electricity provider, raised $20m in Series A funding. Union Square Ventures and Keyframe Capital co-led the round. (Axios)

  • Electric, a NYC-based IT solutions provider, raised $20 million in Series D-1 funding. Investors include Harmonic Growth Partners, GGV Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Greenspring Associates, and others. (FinSMEs)

  • Kaiyo, a NYC-based used furniture marketplace, raised $36m in Series B equity and debt funding. Edison Partners led the round and was joined by insiders Moderne Ventures, Lerer Hippeau, and Max Ventures. (TechCrunch)

  • Starry Internet, a NYC and Boston-based wireless technology developer and internet service provider, made its IPO debut on the NYSE under the symbol $STRY. It went public via a merger with Firstmark Horizon Acquisition Corp., a SPAC, valuing the company at $1.76 billion. (Businesswire)

  • March 30: In-person: Real Estate Innovation Done Right, with Upward Labs CEO Shana Schlossberg, ClearAir.ai co-founder Michael Petgrave, Saya founder Sanjay Poojraym and others. Hosted by the Williamsburg Hotel. Register here.

  • March 31: Virtual: The Future of NYC: Charting an Equitable Recovery for All, with Federal Reserve Bank of New York president and CEO John C. Williams, BlocPower founder and CEO Donnel Baird, Regional Plan Association president and CEO Tom Wright, and more. Hosted by the New York Fed. Register here.

  • April 5: Virtual: What’s Next Summit 2022, with Bolt CEO Ryan Breslow, Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield, Accenture CEO Julie Sweet, and others. Hosted by Axios. Register here.

  • April 6: Virtual: Data Science Day 2022, with White House Director of Science and Technology Policy Alondra Nelson and IBM Research AI vice president Sriram Raghavan. Hosted by the Data Science Institute at Columbia University. Register here.

  • April 7: In-person: New York Product Conference, with Squarespace VP of product Natalie Gibralter, 1stdibs chief product officer Xiaodi Zhang, Noom VP of product Raj Krishnan, and others. Hosted by Product Collective. Use code TechNYC to save 20 percent off any pass by registering here.

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