Tech:NYC Digest: November 12

Tech:NYC Digest: November 12

November 12, 2021 • Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes

Friday, November 12, 2021

In today’s digest, over 50,000 NYC kids vaxxed in a week, Eric Adams the nightlife mayor, and how top CEOs are thinking about RTO. Have a good weekend!

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  • More than 51,000 NYC children ages five to 11 have been vaccinated about one week after becoming eligible, 17,000 of which were conducted at temporary school sites launched this week. However, that is still less than 10 percent of eligible children in the city. (amNY) 

  • Gov. Kathy Hochul today applied for nearly $1 billion from Washington for New York’s rent relief program. The program is set to shutdown Sunday unless more funds are received. (City Limits)

  • New York is getting shadier … literally. The Nature Conservancy used 3-D imaging to map the city’s “natural infrastructure” — tree canopy — for the first time and found New York added 3,253 acres of canopy over the past decade, or 1.68 percent, despite significant storms and environmental budget cut threats. (THE CITY)

  • The FDA has recalled about two million at-home COVID-19 test kits made by biotech company Ellume following a manufacturing defect resulting in higher rates of “false positive” results. (NPR)

  • After dining on mushroom and other veggies at the opening of the new Midtown restaurant Osteria La Baia, mayor-elect Eric Adams said he wants to do whatever he can to support the city’s nightlife and the workers employed by the industry, saying “We’re going to patronize nightlife, every night finding a new place to eat at throughout the city. … Exposing all the people to the great nightlife because it’s jobs.” (New York Post) 

In other reading:

  • What We Know So Far About Waning Vaccine Effectiveness (New York Times)

  • “He’s Hanging Out With The Stars Of The Gossip Column”: The Eric Adams Era Has The Makings Of A Tabloid Gold Mine (Vanity Fair)

  • It’s Autumn in New York. You Can Smell It. (Wall Street Journal)

With encouraging vaccination and low positivity rates in NYC, it appears increasingly possible that tech companies will feel ready to stick to their latest office reopening targets for early 2022.

Of course, whether companies are ready and whether their workers want to return to the office are two separate things. And everyone has strong opinions about both — including the CEO.

  • Many CEOs are eager for employees to return, but are anxious about alienating those who have grown accustomed to WFH.

New York Times’ Corner Office columnist David Gelles spoke with several CEOs about how they’re thinking about returning to the office. Among them:

  • PwC chairman Tim Ryan announced last month that employees would have an option to work remotely forever, but that those who make that choice or move to other cities may have their responsibilities shifted to fit those preferences. “CEOs are now just beginning to realize that if you’re employing thousands and thousands and thousands of people, you need to have multiple options. I believe what we announced will be commonplace for the mass employers in a matter of months. It’s just catching up with how fast the world is moving.”

  • IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said he’s grown to not care whether office workers showed up at 5 am or 11 am, or whether their workday ended at 3 pm or 9 pm. “Why should I, as an employer, care as long as you can get the work done and you’re highly productive? I should not try to be overly dictatorial about that.”

  • Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai said working remotely with limited in-person interactions was getting old, and the company is transforming its office spaces for a fuller return. “We are working on some borrowed time, in terms of working on memories of the relationships you have and the connections you have. It’s taking a toll.”

In the coming months, CEOs will have to confront the rapidly shifting expectations of their workforces — and balance that with their own impulse to make workplace decisions solely at the executive level.

In other reading:

  • I Spent 24 Hours in the Metaverse. I Made Friends, Did Work and Panicked About the Future. (Wall Street Journal)

  • Why Are People Really Quitting Their Jobs? Burnout Tops the List, New Research Shows (Inc.)

  • 6 important questions to ask yourself before quitting a corporate job for a startup, according to HR experts (Insider)

  • Blink, a New York City-productivity app for frontline workers, raised $20 million in Series A funding. Next47 led the round and was joined by existing investors Partech and Techstars. (TechCrunch)

  • Collibra, a New York City-based data intelligence provider, raised $250 million in Series G funding. Sequoia Capital Global Equities and Sofina co-led the round and were joined by Tiger Global Management, as well as existing investors Battery Ventures, CapitalG, Dawn Capital, Durable Capital Partners LP, ICONIQ Capital, and Index Ventures. (TechCrunch) 

  • CoreWeave, a New York City-based cloud infrastructure services provider, raised $50 million from Magnetar Capital. (VentureBeat)

  • Density, a New York City-based developer of AI sensors to track building occupancy, raised $125 million in Series D funding at a $1 billion valuation. Kleiner Perkins led the round and was joined by 01 Advisors, Upfront Ventures, Founders Fund, and Altimeter Capital. (VentureBeat)

  • Lusha, a New York City-based intelligence platform for B2B sales, raised $205 million in Series B funding at a $1.5 billion valuation. PSG led the round and was joined by ION Crossover Partners. (TechCrunch)

  • November 16: Virtual: The Electrified Future, with Verizon senior vice president Elise Neel, Fermata Energy co-founder John Wheeler, and others. Hosted by Newlab. Register here.

  • November 18: Virtual: The Hunt for Talent Post-COVID, with Schmidt Futures head of talent Tony Woods, Eden Health chief people officer Chloe Drew, and The RealReal chief people officer Zaina Orbai. Hosted by Savills. Register here.

  • November 18: Virtual: AI Tools for Media & News, with Lede AI co-founder Jay Allred, McClatchy managing editor Cynthia DuBose, and Sophi.io vice president Gordon Edall. Hosted by NYC Media Lab. Register here.

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