Tech:NYC Digest: March 31

Tech:NYC Digest: March 31

March 31, 2022 • Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes

Thursday, March 31, 2022 

In today’s digest, NYC begins offering second booster shots to eligible residents, White House launches COVID resources website, and how to maximize asynchronous work schedules while preventing burnout.

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By the numbers:  

  • New positive cases statewide: 4,493   

    • New positive cases, NYC: 1,923

  • NYC Positivity Rate: 1.9 percent (+0.1 percent)

  • NYC Hospitalizations: 252 (+2)

  • Statewide Vaccine Progress: 

    • New Yorkers with at least one dose: 89.6 percent

    • New Yorkers who are fully vaccinated: 76.2 percent

In today’s latest:

  • Beginning today, NYC will offer a second free COVID-19 booster shot for immunocompromised residents and/or those 50 and older. The expanded eligibility comes after regulators made the authorization on Tuesday. (CBS News)

  • The White House yesterday launched covid.gov, a website meant to be a one-stop-shop for everything from free high-quality masks to antiviral pills. (NPR)

  • The antiparasitic drug ivermectin, touted by some as an alternative treatment for COVID-19 despite a lack of supporting research, showed no sign of alleviating the disease according to results of a large clinical trial published yesterday. (New York Times)

  • After more than two years, NYC is on the verge of a much-needed tourism boom. Tourism spending dropped by more than half during the pandemic, but according to a new study by the city's tourism agency, New York is likely to see a 70 percent increase in tourism this year. (ABC New York)

In other reading:

  • New and returning things to do in New York City this spring (Newsday)

  • Changing rules: What to know now about NYC school COVID protocols (Gothamist)

  • Should You Get Another COVID Booster? (New York Times)

After you’re done with work, do you … get back to work? If so, you’re not alone.

New research from Microsoft has identified a trend it’s calling the “triple peak day.” According to the research, knowledge workers typically have two productivity peaks in a work day: before and after lunch. Now, people are experiencing a third peak in the hours before bedtime.  

  • This pattern was spotted early in the pandemic, when researchers noticed Teams chats outside the typical workday — particularly between 6pm and 8pm — increased more than during any time segment within the typical workday.

  • The average Teams user now sends 42 percent more chats per person after hours.

The reasons behind the trend are less clear: For parents, tending to children in the afternoon could push them to catch up on work in the evening. Others may be optimizing their work-from-anywhere schedules by varying their hours or aligning their day with colleagues in other time zones.

What it means: It’s yet another indication that hybrid and asynchronous work have overtaken the 9-to-5 workday. And while more flexibility in an employees’ hours has been a positive development during the pandemic, it can quickly encroach on personal hours.

  • “The third peak should be an available option for people who need it, but the challenge moving forward is, ‘How can we make sure people are not working 24/7?’” said Microsoft Research’s Shamsi Iqbal. “If people are working all three peaks, that’s a recipe for early burnout.”

It can also encroach on the schedules of team members who don’t have triple peak days, and there are strategies you can use to set expectations and make boundaries clear:

  • Use scheduling options for emails and messaging platforms so people don’t feel pressured to reply during their non-work hours.

  • If you have a third peak period, use it for autonomous work, rather than tasks that require more team communication and feedback.

  • Focus less on when you and your team work, and more on how to work better. If everyone is clear about when they’re online, it’s a lot easier to respect the time when they’re not.

In other reading:

  • Loom’s on a mission to fix your company culture one video at a time (Protocol)

  • Everyone Is Not OK, but Back at Work Anyway (New York Times)

  • Reverse gender pay gap? Young men are earning less than women in big cities (CBS News)

  • Apploi, a NYC-based recruiting and onboarding management software company, raised $25 million in Series B funding. m]x[v Capital led the round and was joined by Defy.vc, Underscore.vc, and others. (TechCrunch)

  • Archie, a NYC-based fintech company focused on freelancers, raised $4.5 million in venture funding. Participating investors include B Capital Group, Mac Ventures, Worklife Ventures, Day One Ventures, Hof VC, and Dash Fund. (TechCrunch)

  • Black Crow AI, a NYC-based machine learning infrastructure company, raised $25 million in Series A funding. Imaginary Ventures led the round and was joined by Left Lane, Good Friends, Interplay, Red Antler, and angel investors. (TechCrunch)

  • Chief, a NYC-based social network for professional women in senior leadership positions, raised $100m in Series B funding at a $1.1 billion valuation. CapitalG led the round and was joined by insiders GGV Capital, Inspired Capital, Primary Venture Partners, Flybridge Capital Partners, and BoxGroup. (Crunchbase News)

  • January, a NYC-based debt resolution platform, raised $10 million in Series A funding. Brewer Lane Ventures led the round and was joined by IA Ventures, Third Prime Capital, Tribe Capital, and Reciprocal Ventures. (TechCrunch)

  • 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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