Tech:NYC Digest: September 22

Tech:NYC Digest: September 22

September 22, 2022 • Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes

Thursday, September 22, 2022

In today’s digest, you’ll have to wait a bit longer to see your new City Council district, the new COVID strain capturing scientists’ attention, and why Carta says it pays, literally, to work in New York tech.

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  • The commission in charge of redistricting in NYC rejected the proposed City Council maps, delaying the hearing process once again. (City & State)

    • The city’s population has grown by roughly 630,000 people since the 2010 census, requiring each of the 51 City Council districts to grow accordingly.

    • A final plan on the new district lines must be submitted by Dec. 7, ahead of next year’s City Council elections.

  • NYC is opening “Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers” to support the hundreds of asylum seekers arriving in NYC every day from Texas and other border states. (NY1)

    • Nine buses of migrants arrived on Monday, the most in one days since southern states began sending them to NYC and the surrounding area. (ABC New York)

  • New York health officials launched a website with audio resources to aid people struggling with the lingering side effects of a COVID-19 infection, including new resources for how New Yorkers can seek treatment from health care providers. (Spectrum News)

  • A new COVID strain started to create waves among virus trackers this week, outpacing nearly all other variants of interest scientists are tracking in the US this autumn. The Omicron spawn, which scientists have named BF.7—short for BA.5.2.1.7—comprised 1.7% of sequenced infections last week in the U.S., per the CDC. (Fortune)

In other reading:

  • Why Omicron Might Stick Around (New York Times)

  • These are the subway lines that New Yorkers love and hate the most (TimeOut)

  • Who Are All These People Eating on DeKalb? (Grub Street)

Tech workers in NYC (and those soon entering the tech workforce) got some good news today: salaries are on the rise.

What’s new: Data released today from Tech:NYC member Carta found that average salaries across key startup functions have continued to increase this year:

  • Analysis from more than 30,000 cap tables found that, from April 2022 to September 2022, salaries for every tracked job function in NYC increased.

  • While engineering roles still claim the highest salary levels, the largest jumps by percentage were in research (a 5.15% increase) and marketing (a 3.36% increase) functions.

We’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating: For every layoff announcement we hear about, we see another about tech companies in New York doing more hiring.

  • Tech:NYC’s own research found that since 2021, while the city was in the throes of the pandemic, New York tech accounted for 24% of the city’s entire private sector job growth.

  • Nationwide, the tech industry has added 175,700 jobs so far this year, an increase of 46 percent from a year ago, according to data from CompTIA, an information technology trade group.

“We've seen climbing salaries, aggressive hiring and layoffs — all at once. However, the hiring landscape remains competitive as companies innovate and diversify their teams through remote work," said Josh Brenner, CEO of Hired, an AI hiring marketplace that matches people looking for jobs in tech and sales with companies, in a statement to Axios.

In other reading:

  • The NYC tech legend taking a spin at real estate with a new office building (The Real Deal)

  • Columbia Business School is giving its MBA students what they want: tech and ESG classes (Fortune)

  • Success at Work Is Warped by Your Co-Workers’ Salaries (Wall Street Journal)

  • Nodal, a NYC-based "Bumble for surrogacy” matching platform, raised $4.7 million in seed funding. Amplo led the round and was joined by Great Oaks VC, Interplace VC, Kate Ryder, Scott Belsky, and Chelsea Hirschhorn, among others (Axios)

  • TULU, a NYC-based appliances, groceries, and entertainment devices provider to in-building tenants, raised $5 million in additional Series A funding. Regeneration.VC led the round. (Insider)

  • September 29: Virtual: UNGA 2022 and the climate tech forecast, with Google chief sustainability officer Kate Brandt, BlocPower founder and CEO Donnel Baird, Atlassian head of sustainability Jessica Hyman, and others. Hosted by Protocol. Register here.

  • October 3: In-person: Accelerating Equity: Universities Sparking Systems Change, with Cornell Tech dean and vice provost Greg Morrisett, Break Through Tech founder Judith Spitz, The New School provost Renée T. White, and others. Hosted by Cornell Tech. Register here.

  • October 4: Virtual: The Future of How and Where We Work, with NYC Deputy Mayor for Economic & Workforce Development Maria Torres-Springer, Daybase CEO Joel Steinhaus, and others. Hosted by Savills. Register here.

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