Tech:NYC Digest: March 8

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Tuesday, March 8, 2022 

Happy International Women’s Day! In today’s digest, office-to-apartment conversions may come to Midtown, WHO recommends booster shots for all, and how companies can best support their female employees as they head back to the office.

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By the numbers:  

• New positive cases statewide: 1,060

  • New positive cases, NYC: 393 

• NYC Positivity Rate: 1.0 percent (no change)

• NYC Hospitalizations: 514 (-4)

• Statewide Vaccine Progress: 

  • New Yorkers with at least one dose: 89.2 percent

  • New Yorkers who are fully vaccinated: 75.7 percent 

In today’s latest:

• The statewide daily positivity rate was 1.57 percent yesterday, making it the twelfth consecutive day it’s been under 2 percent. See more county-level data here.

• Gov. Hochul and Mayor Adams have both expressed new support for facilitating office-to-apartment conversions in Midtown, an area that struggled to weather the effects of work-from-home compared to mixed-use and residential neighborhoods. (THE CITY)

• The World Health Organization now says it "strongly supports urgent and broad access" to booster doses, reversing its previous stance that wealthy countries with large vaccine supplies should forgo booster shots due to a global vaccine disparity. (Axios)

• After a period of pandemic-induced lower rents, New York rent prices are now increasing at double the national rate, amplifying the city’s affordability crisis. (New York Times)

• Deaths from COVID-19 remain 10 times higher than seasonal respiratory viruses such as the flu, according to a new report. (CNBC)

• The Supreme Court rejected a case from a group of New York City school employees seeking to stop the city from firing them for not getting vaccinated against COVID-19, denying a renewed request by 15 people turned away last month by Justice Sotomayor. (Bloomberg)

In other reading:

• The Pandemic Is Over for Eric Adams (New York Magazine)

• Why Do Some People Never Get COVID? (New York Times)

• How Did This Many Deaths Become Normal? (The Atlantic)

For International Women’s Day, social media is awash with all the ways companies are committed to #BreakTheBias. 

• “Most of us tend to underestimate women's performance and are more likely to challenge women's competence — even in their area of expertise,” Rachel Thomas, co-founder & CEO of LeanIn.Org and OptionB.Org told Forbes. “The result is that women are less likely to get tapped for that first critical promotion up into manager, which means at every other level there are fewer women to promote.”

International Women’s Day just so happens to coincide with many large tech companies announcing their RTO plans, providing another opportunity for employers to take a look at how their systems can better avoid gender and racial disparities that might add strain to workers' lives. (Harvard Business Review)  

• A pre-pandemic study of Harvard Business School MBA graduates found that while 17 percent of respondents often or very often experienced burnout, a quarter of women said they did. That figure jumped to nearly 30 percent for women of color. 

Data shows that women were already looking to switch jobs at higher numbers even before the pandemic, affecting tech companies already struggling to recruit and retain talent: 

• Stress, lack of job growth, and assignment of additional responsibilities without support or compensation are all reasons cited for why women — especially women of color — are seeking new jobs.

• A McKinsey & Company survey from January found 35 percent of white women and 46 percent of women of color are planning to leave their job in the next three to six months.

Colleen Ammerman and Boris Groysberg, authors of the Harvard Business Review piece, say it's clear that reverting to the pre-pandemic status quo is impossible and unsustainable for working women. So what can be done?

• Individual managers have an outsized effect on the career trajectories of women, especially women of color. Companies should train managers on eliminating biases in how they evaluate female employees and provide specific training on how to support women in the workplace.

The takeaway: As companies prepare to reopen their offices and return to work, employers should take the specific needs of their female employees into account or risk falling behind on their DEI goals.

In other reading:

• Boo! Why job candidates keep ghosting employers (Protocol)

• Wall Street brings bankers back to offices remade for hybrid era (Crain’s New York)

• Remote-Work Experts Are in Demand as Return to Office Begins Anew (Bloomberg)

• Axonius, a NYC-based cybersecurity platform for asset and SaaS management, raised $200 million in Series E funding. Accel led the round and was joined by Silver Lake Waterman, Alta Park Capital, Owl Rock, Bessemer Venture Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Alkeon, Stripes, ICONIQ, and DTCP. (Reuters)

• Propel, a Brooklyn-based fintech startup for managing public benefits, raised $50 million in Series B funding. Nyca Partners led the round and was joined by Salesforce Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and JP Morgan Chase. (Forbes)

• March 9: Virtual: The Affordability Crisis, with White House Council of Economic Advisors member Heather Boushey and former US Dept. of Labor Secretary Robert Reich. Hosted by Axios. Register here.

• March 9: Virtual: Beyond Decentralization: Designing for Equity, Democracy, and Human Rights in Web3, with Reach Capital partner Jomayra Herrera, Metalabel founding members Austin Robey, and Polaris CTO Anjana Rajan. Hosted by Betaworks Studios. Register here.

• March 10: In-person: NYC Recovery Challenge Closing Ceremony, with the founders of the Challenge’s inaugural cohort, plus city and industry leaders. Hosted by Tech:NYC, Google for Startups, and Cornell Tech. Register here.

• March 17: Virtual: Caregiving: the new DEI lens for your family benefits strategy, with DocuSign senior director of global benefits Ellen Meza and Maven VP of People Karsten Vagner. Hosted by Maven. Register here.

• March 21: Virtual: #newtovc: Developing Your Fund Thesis, with Union Square Ventures partner Brad Burnham and Brooklyn Bridge Ventures founder Charlie O’Donnell. Hosted by Brooklyn Bridge Ventures. Register here.

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