Daily Archives: April 18, 2022

Prior to the pandemic, Textio CEO Kieran Snyder believed in the power of the office. A centralized place for people to connect, where ideas blossomed and culture flowed.

Nearly all of the staff at the augmented writing platform worked in the 8-year-old companys shiny new downtown Seattle headquarters, a space so crisp and clean that it was chosen as a Geekiest Office Space finalist in the 2019 GeekWire Awards.

And then in early March of 2020, as COVID-19 just started to ravage the Seattle region, things abruptly changed.

Snyder closed the offices and asked employees to work remotely, doing so a few days before tech giants like Microsoft and Amazon.

While some companies struggled with return-to-office plans over the next two years shifting time frames and policies as COVIDs unpredictability caused havoc Textio and its 120 employees settled into a new reality. There would be no centralized headquarters, and moving forward as Snyder told GeekWire last summer Textio would become a fully distributed company.

More of our employees want flexibility than not, she said. The move to remote also allowed Textio to hire top-notch executives outside of the Seattle region, such as the companys newly-appointed vice president of talent acquisition and diversity, equity and inclusion, Jackye Clayton, who lives in Waco, Texas.

The 180-degree turn from full-blown, centralized headquarters to a fully remote workforce created new challenges and opportunities. Snyder discussed how her team navigated the workplace change, and whats ahead in the most recent episode of the GeekWire Podcast. Listen to the full episode here, including a discussion on how business communications are evolving and why the pandemic drove changes in diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

Below are edited excerpts from the portion of the conversation about the shift to remote work.

On the decision to close the Seattle office in March 2020: We were really nervous about it, because (Textio co-founder) Jensen (Harris) and I had both really believed in colocation as an important aspect of the culture that we were creating.

On what they learned in the first year: First, we saw our productivity was actually better than it had ever been before We saw a bunch of employees looking to relocate for various reasons: wanted to get out of the city, wanted to be near family, revisiting whats important right now. A lot of soul searching for people over 2020. So a bunch of people relocated and Textio supported them. And so as a result, we opened several new states.

The geographic makeup of the workforce: Today, about 50% of our employee base is in the Seattle area, and about 50% is outside, mostly outside Washington. And we have nine states today where people live and work. And yes, it absolutely has shifted the representation at Textio.

Diversifying the team through geography: Chicago has been a huge market for us, and nearly all of our Chicago employees are people of color. The demographics in the region are different than they are in Seattle. And so absolutely we are seeing positive impact there Increasingly, the leaders are also not based in Seattle, which is kind of by design for me, because Im trying to build some equitability across how we lead.

On how the company dealt with salaries for employees living in different geographies: We are paying Seattle market rates everywhere. So we have chosen to keep salaries consistent regionally everywhere, which means weve had a lot of hiring advantages in some other regions that we are hiring in that we werent hiring in before because Seattle is a pretty spendy market. Its a pretty privileged market from a tech job perspective.

On how to keep the culture together when people are distributed: This is the question of the hour. I think everybodys trying to solve this. Theres a bunch of stuff that we have done. Some of which probably mirrors playbooks from other companies, at least one of which is probably really different.

On employees drowning in Slack and what they did about it: We found in the first couple of months after going remote, that Slack was a problem Weve always been a Slack company. We were one of their early customers But we found people drowning in channels and asynchronous communication, 24/7 was really, really hard.

And one of the things that we built over the course of 2020 and 2021, which we use today, it may become a product for others soon. We have a few other companies using it. Weve built a different tool. We still use Slack mostly for (direct messages), but we built a different tool for time-boxed conversations, that is much more participatory. Its much more human in nature. Its really easy for people to participate in lightweight ways. We think its about how you do inclusive collaboration inside companies. And I will say the use of it, which we really built for our own purposes, transformed the way that we collaborate, absolutely transformed it It has been pretty magical for us.

On embracing shared days off: In the 24/7-everybodys-working-from-their-home environment, its very hard to unplug. When I disconnect from this podcast in a few minutes, Im still just in my house. Right? I could shut my laptop and I could go to the kitchen and get a snack and I could do the same thing on Saturday, and I could easily pop open my laptop again and check in on my work. So theres just no lines anymore between work and home. And so one way that weve mitigated that is we introduced more shared time off. Actually, Monday is a shared day off at Textio. So we have a long weekend, this weekend where the whole company takes more days off together. Thats been pretty powerful.

On sparking more in-person regional connections: We are going to have an all-company event this fall, which is going to be our traditional Explorathon, which is kind of like our hackathon, but the whole company participates This year we are doing an all-company volunteer day, we have a super volunteer-oriented culture. Weve always had benefits around this. And so everyone in Chicago will get together and do some activities together. Everybody in the Bay Area will get together and do some volunteer activities together. So I think one of the things about the culture is that its not team-specific anymore. Theres sort of a regional element where its cross-functional and you really get together.

On whether you can successfully operate a hybrid workforce: Okay, controversy alert. I dont think you can (do hybrid) I am fully for colocated cultures or distributed cultures. The hybrid thing sets up this dynamic where you have some set of people who are always in the room and some set of people who are always remote. I actually really deeply believe this is the next wave of equity work for companies.

On why its important to pick a lane on centralized HQ or fully remote: I think picking a lane is well said, and that sort of represents my philosophy on it. I can absolutely see why somebody would pick the colocation lane. I definitely see things that it gives you. I can see why people would pick the remote lane. I think weve all been in those situations where you have some people in the room, some people remote, the video call ends, and then its like, Hey Todd, I just thought of another idea. Now were going to go get lunch together and were going to have the real meeting. And half an hour later well report back to everybody what we really decided. And then John is out there in Bozeman, like, Hey, wait, I thought we already had a plan. I think this is human. I dont think there is a good way to litigate around that or legislate around that. And so if you care about equitability you need everyone on the same playing field, whichever the field is. And I think again, theres advantages to both the collocation and the remote.

More:

What this Seattle tech CEO learned after moving to a fully remote workforce early in the pandemic - GeekWire

Construction on Googles expanding campus in Kirkland (Google photo)

The pandemic may have disrupted hiring patterns in tech, and pushed some workers out of coastal metro areas.

But Google still is growing fast in Washington state, according to a new economic analysis released by the search giant today.

According to the report, Google now employs more than 7,200 full time workers in Washington state, most of whom are based in engineering centers in Seattle and Kirkland.

Just prior to the pandemic when Googleopened its South Lake Union cloud engineering building, the company employed more than 4,500 people in the Seattle area. And last year in a similar report the company indicated it had 6,300 full-time workers in the state.

Last month, Google implemented a new hybrid work model for most its Seattle and Kirkland employees to report to the offices three days a week.

The numbers are part of a larger U.S. economic impact analysis released by Google in which the company said it has invested $37 billion in offices and data centers in the past five years across 26 states. It has added 40,000 full-time workers during that span, and announced plans to create at least 12,000 new jobs this year.

Google was one of the first Silicon Valley tech giants to set up an engineering hub in the Seattle area, mining the rich technical talent from nearby companies such as Expedia, Microsoft and Amazon. It established its tech hub in the region in Kirkland in 2004, and now there are more than 100 engineering centers in the Seattle area operated by tech giants such as Apple, Facebook, Twitter and Salesforce.

Google said in its report that its presence helps provide $32.88 billion in economic activity in Washington state. Googles Seattle area campus is the companys second largest engineering center outside of the San Francisco Vay Area.

The company employed 156,500 employees at the end of 2021.

UPDATE: Google plans to officially open the first phase of its Kirkland Urban Campus project Thursday with remarks from Gov. Jay Inslee and Rep. Suzan DelBene. The new campus will add 760,000 square feet of additional space to the companys footprint in the Seattle region.

Here is the original post:

Google now employs more than 7,200 in Washington state up from 4,500 workers just prior to the pandemic - GeekWire

A pedestrian walks in front of an AT&T location in New York.

Scott Mlyn | CNBC

Check out the companies making headlines in midday trading Monday:

AT&T Shares of AT&T jumped 7.5% after the telecom giant announced that it closed its transaction with Discovery to spin off its WarnerMedia business. The combined company is called Warner Bros. Discovery. It began trading on the Nasdaq on Monday under the new ticker symbol WBD. JPMorgan also assigned an overweight rating to AT&T.

Nvidia Nvidia's stock fell 5.2% after Baird downgraded the chipmaker to neutral from outperform, citing concerns about order cancellations driven in part by a slowdown in consumer demand for PCs.

SailPoint Technologies The cybersecurity company saw shares soar 29.2% after announcing Monday it will be acquired by private-equity firm Thoma Bravo for $6.9 billion, or $65.25 per share. The all-cash deal is expected to close in the second half of 2022.

Occidental Petroleum Energy stocks were among the top decliners in the S&P 500, as oil prices dropped amid fears Covid lockdowns in China would depress global demand. Occidental Petroleum and Diamondback Energy fell 6.3% and 4.9%, respectively, while APA slid 4.5%. ConocoPhillips lost 4.9%.

Microsoft, Apple Shares of tech giants were lower Monday as the 10-year Treasury yield climbed to its highest level since January 2019. Microsoft lost 3.9%, while Alphabet dipped 3.4%. Apple and Meta Platforms declined 2.6% and 2.6%, respectively.

Coinbase Shares of the cryptocurrency services company fell 4.4% as the price of bitcoin dropped to its lowest level since March amid a broader sell-off in risk assets. Coinbase's stock price is tied closely to the price of bitcoin since so much of its revenue being derived from trading fees.

KeyCorp Regional bank stocks advanced as rates climbed. Regions Financial rose 1.9%, and Zions Bancorporation added 0.5%. KeyCorp, which was also upgraded by Wells Fargo, gained about 0.4%.

JetBlue Shares of the airline gained 1.1% after the company said it'scutting back its summer schedulein an effort to avoid flight disruptions, as it works to ramp up hiring this summer to meet a surge in travel demand.

CNBC's Yun Li, Jesse Pound, Samantha Subin and Hannah Miao contributed reporting.

See the original post:

Stocks making the biggest moves midday: AT&T, Nvidia, SailPoint Technologies and more - CNBC

Metas announcement in late March that it was putting down roots in Toronto with plans to hire 2,500 new workers in the city and across Canada was largely met with fanfare from politicians.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who announced the jobs himself at a press conference, touted the move as a boon for homegrown Canadian tech talent.

Our tech talent no longer has to look elsewhere to pursue their careers, he said at Metas announcement.

Fords economic development minister, Vic Fedeli, said in a statement the move will strengthen the provinces innovation sector.

But for the heads of Canadian companies watching the news of another U.S. tech giant putting more high-paying jobs into the pipeline, dreams of scaling up their own firms just became that much dimmer.

Story continues below advertisement

Canada's tight tech talent pool

Hiring and retaining talent in Canadas highly competitive market is a regular pain for Erin Bury, CEO of Willful, a 15-person startup founded in Toronto that makes software to streamline estate law.

Though Willful has made strides with early venture capital funding and a deal on CBCs Dragons Den, Bury tells Global News shes already had staff poached from tech giants hunting for Canadian talent.

I know that my team is getting approached every single day by recruiters who represent these big firms or by these firms directly, she tells Global News.

Meta, which already has a modest shop in Toronto, Montreal and a few other markets in Canada, is just the latest major firm to eye the Canadian talent pool over the past few years.

Microsoft, Google, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit and Netflix all announced some level of Canadian hiring plans, largely for engineering roles, over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Story continues below advertisement

Toronto has emerged as a hotbed for engineering talent in the wake of a head-turning New York Times piece that positioned the city as a top-three tech hub in North America, behind only Miami and Austin, Texas. That story cited a 2021 report from commercial real estate firm CBRE, which tracks top tech talent.

Those companies are adding to the pressure on a historically tight national job market Statistics Canada said the countrys unemployment rate fell to 5.3 per cent in March, the lowest level on record.

Employment growth in the tech sector has been undeterred over the course of the pandemic.

There were 855,000 people employed in the information and communications technology (ICT) sector last month, according to data provided to Global News from StatCan. Thats up from 780,000 jobs in the industry a year before that and 743,000 workers in March 2020.

Story continues below advertisement

Over that same time, hourly wages in ICT have risen to $40.98, up from $38.23 at the start of the pandemic.

Its become very competitive, and weve already seen Willful team members who have left to go to larger U.S. firms. We just cannot compete with the base salaries, says Bury.

Though Willful still has a small office in Toronto, the company took the pandemic as an opportunity to go almost fully remote and expand its hiring pool outside Ontario to add employees everywhere from Vancouver to Halifax.

On the face of it, the move gave Bury access to a wider hiring pool. But on a relative basis, looking outside Toronto didnt materially change the talent crunch.

Trending Stories

While weve widened our talent pool, so has everybody else. And youve seen a lot of companies who may have been more focused around the office in, say, San Francisco, open up their hiring to folks in Canada, folks all over.

Were now not only competing with other startups, were competing with the large companies we already were, like Shopify, and now were going to be competing with some of the new entrants, like Netflix and Pinterest and Meta.

Story continues below advertisement

Will Meta create new jobs? Or reshuffle them?

Ben Bergen, the president of the Council of Canadian Innovators, says despite Toronto and other Canadian markets having strong tech talent, there was already a national labour shortage in the industry before Meta announced its hiring plans.

CCI estimates put the current number of open vacancies in Canadian tech at 200,000 positions.

When you have a company like Meta or some of the other companies come to Ontario and say that theyre going to be creating jobs, that actually isnt the case. Its going to be actually a shuffling or a reshuffling of jobs, Bergen tells Global News.

All this does is apply additional pressure on the labour market, which is already extremely tight.

Story continues below advertisement

While competition was previously tightest in Toronto and Vancouver, Bergen says companies in smaller markets such as Winnipeg and Saskatoon are now facing talent crunches in the remote-first era.

Meta, however, does not see its presence as a drag on Canadas talent pool the tech giant believes its presence will bolster Canadian talent.

Rachel Curran, Metas public policy manager in Canada, told Global News in an interview that the companys hiring ambitions might put some short-term pressures on the labour market but disputed the framing that it will just end up as a talent siphon.

I think thats a pretty short-term and zero-sum view of things. We view this investment as helping build the ecosystem overall, we are expanding the total size of the sector, she said.

Healthy tech sectors include companies of all sizes, Curran said, where todays engineers can learn to be tomorrows startup founders.

She also distinguishes Meta specifically from other tech giants that have announced hiring plans in Canada, arguing that the companys grand ambitions for the Metaverse will create new economic opportunities for global tech firms.

We have a long-term vision for this sector, which is really going to expand the size of it, she said.

Story continues below advertisement

'Purpose' as a hiring pitch

Whether Canadas overall tech talent pool grows or contracts in the wake of Metas expansion, startups are already waking up to the need to reinvent their hiring and retention strategies.

Shawn Hewat is the CEO of Vancouver-based Wavy, a 20-person startup that helps other companies track their workplace culture. Hewat says Wavy has tripled its headcount in the past year by shifting its hiring approach in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic and the talent crunch.

First, the company immediately went remote when the pandemic began, looking to the United Kingdom and India to fill positions.

Though Wavy has expanded rapidly, Hewat says its also scaled-down hiring plans to stretch the companys payroll as far as it can go.

Companies often have to do more with less, Hewat says, by paying a core team of workers more to meet the surging market rates for talent.

Story continues below advertisement

But the biggest recruitment tool Wavy has is its own specialty: workplace culture.

Making sure employees feel valued and excited to come into work requires careful attention from managers from the get-go, both to attract and retain talent.

Hewat says shes received messages from new hires that Wavy has given the most warm welcome any of her staff have received at a remote-first company.

You cant compete compensation-wise and perks-wise the same way you can with a Netflix or Meta or Shopify, even, she says. It really does come down to finding people who are vision and values aligned, who want to come in at an early stage and make that big impact.

Meta, too, makes the value argument in their hiring pitch, calling on prospective employees to help them build the metaverse. Curran says the companys virtual realm ambitions could see new hires play a hand in crafting a whole new economy for internet creators.

But Bury says startups can sell themselves as the anti-Big Tech to stand out from the crowd. Employees who care about more than just the number on the paycheck can be wooed into joining early-stage companies if theyre looking to get in on the ground level of something they believe in, she says.

Story continues below advertisement

They dont necessarily want to go work at the Fortune 500 brands because they feel like they can make more of a difference (at a startup), Bury says.

Theres more purpose.

2022 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

See more here:

Metas plans to hire in Canada have the tech sector worried. Heres why - Global News

Shipium co-founders Mac Brown and Jason Murray. (Shipium Photo)

Delivery speed is a top priority for online shoppers. But it can be difficult for retailers not named Amazon to ship products to your door in a matter of days or hours.

Shipium has a solution and investors like what they see.

The Seattle logistics startup just raised $27 million to help fuel growth of its software that helps e-commerce shops manage fulfillment. The Series A round, led by Insight Partners, follows a $8 million seed round raised in June.

Shipium wants to solve the Prime problem, a phrase it uses to describe the struggle to keep up with consumer expectations set by Amazons fast shipping capabilities.

The companys founders know something about that.

CEO Jason Murray spent nearly two decades at Amazon, running supply chain teams and overseeing thousands of employees as a vice president. Co-founder Mac Brown was also an early Amazon employee; he and Murray started three days apart from each other in 1999. Brown later joined Zulily, where he was vice president of supply chain and fulfillment software for the Seattle online retailer.

Shipiums services work with existing systems and help companies make fulfillment decisions, such a deciding which shipping option is fastest or cheapest, or which box size is most optimal.

You have to find a way to offer a compelling delivery experience to keep Amazon from eating your market share, Murray said.

The startup targets mid-sized retailers that have their own infrastructure but cant afford to build out the type of software that giants such as Amazon and Walmart use to coordinate and optimize e-commerce operations.

Were essentially giving them the technology that lets them compete with Amazon, Murray said.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy addressed the companys shipping prowess in his annual shareholders letter published Thursday. Delivering a substantial amount of shipments in one day is hard (especially across the millions of items that we offer) and initially expensive as we build out the infrastructure to scale this efficiently, Jassy wrote. But, we believe our over 200 million Prime customers, who will tell you very clearly that faster is almost always better, will love this.

Since launching in late 2019, Shipium has processed around 10 million shipments and is on track to process more than 50 million by the end of this year.

Murray said the 30-person company is thinking about expanding its software to physical infrastructure such as trucking and warehouse space.

He added that the recent supply chain chaos has been a net-positive for Shipiums business. The way to combat [supply chain problems] is with diversity of your carriers and systems that dynamically adjust over static rules, Murray said.

Shipium is the latest software startup to ride tailwinds from the e-commerce boom amid the pandemic, as more retailers look for back-end solutions to support online demand. Others from the Seattle region that have raised funding over the past few years include Flexe, Logixboard, Stackline, Fabric, FlavorCloud, Pipe17, Pandion, and SoundCommerce. Several of those companies are led by former Amazon employees.

The pandemic has accelerated e-commerce growth to unprecedented heights, but major retailers continue to grow in both revenue and market share, largely due to their superior shipping experience, Brad Fiedler, vice president of Insight Partners, said in a statement. Jason, Mac, and the teams background positions them as the foremost experts on how to help the rest of the retail industry compete for customer growth and loyalty.

Existing backers including Trilogy, Good Friends, and PSL Ventures participated in the latest round. Total funding for Shipium is $38.7 million to date.

Link:

Solving the Prime problem: Shipium lands $27M to help online retailers compete with Amazon - GeekWire

(Illustration by Vreni Stollberger)

The first Model T hit the market more than 100 years ago, in 1908.

For American consumers, mass access to the automobile was a miraclea game changer that enabled vast opportunities for commerce, travel, and social mobility. But the prevalence of this new technology also presented a novel set of previously unforeseen challenges.

Cars jolted off the road, killing pedestriansand even children playing in the street. They competed for space on unmarked lanes with horse-drawn carriages and cable cars. Without a clear consensus on who owned the roads, there was no way to regulate them and ensure the common safety of all. And eventually, pollution and exhaust proved global problems, spilling into the atmosphere and skyrocketing carbon emissions.

That is, until automotive executives, legislators at the local, state, and federal levels, civil society organizations, and consumers realized inaction was dangerous and unsustainable. Together, they built the physical infrastructure to create safer roads with speed limits and stop signsand the regulatory infrastructure to govern behavior on those roads. Over a century of multisector collaboration, weve adopted seatbelts, insurers, safety and emissions checks, even innovated to develop electric cars and charging stations, all to fortify this automotive-related infrastructure to advance the public good. Some of these challenges have been mitigated, someare managed. Some are still emerging. Working together, we have built collective and connective muscles to evolve and adapt to new challenges with new solutions.

Today, we are living through a new industrial revolution. Each passing year, hundredsif not thousandsof Model T-like innovations are introduced into our digital lives in the form of new websites, apps, currencies, algorithmic tools, automations, and more.

And once again, our societys infrastructure is not keeping pace.

In the past 30 years, digital communications technologies have transformed how we connect and engage with the world around us, creating opportunities in every area of contemporary life. But as often as these technologies foster learning and promote justice, they have also been used in ways that amplify inequality. Too many peopleparticularly those who have historically been excluded or marginalizedarent able to access, benefit from, or influence digital platforms. The governance and use of technology are implicated in nearly all the drivers of inequality, underscoring the extent of this problem.

Policy makers are struggling to regulate everything from AI-operated phones to advertising models. Consumers jump to use new apps and services, often without understanding the adverse consequences they entail. And as a result, their privacyand sometimes, their safetyand even their attention and ability to distinguish truth from fictionare casualties in the race to create new tech.

Whats clear is that the solution to these challenges lies not only in an approach focused on developing tech for good, but also asking, good for who?

A pioneering yet still emerging field, public interest technology (PIT), is both asking that critical question and finding answers. Public interest technology is a cross-disciplinary approach that demands technology be designed, deployed, and regulated in a responsible and equitable wayin other words, in service of the public interest.

It operates on the understanding that technology is not, and has never been, neutral. Thats why public interest technologistsengineers, scientists, community organizers, activistscenter the experiences of historically marginalized groups, those who have been both targeted and neglected by technology.

This field, and indeed this in-depth series, cuts across sectors and calls for those in academia, civil society, private and public sectors to individually and collectively build a society that can fully benefit from technologyand limit its adverse consequences.

The examples that follow animate the critical contributions public interest technologists are making across each sector. Together they create a road map of multisector solutions and advance a holistic understanding of a connected future guided by public interest technology insights.

Academic and training institutions lay the knowledge foundations for technology experts, present and future. Lessons taught in these institutions play an outsized role in shaping the technologies we use in our everyday lives. To that end, ensuring that our academic and workforce training institutions are adequately prepared to build a diverse, equitable, and cross-disciplinary public interest technology ecosystem is essential. Institutions of higher education codify knowledge and best practice while also nurturing the next generation of wisdom and service. Yet, too often, university curriculums for computer science, data science, and engineering departments emphasize technical skills in disciplinary silos at the expense of transdisciplinary skill sets.

As a result, many talented designers, engineers, and technologists who are building the next generation of technology have not been trained to anticipate relevant insights from fields like public policy or sociologyinsights that drive the way people interact with digital goods, services, and platforms.

At best, this lack of training will keep us from avoiding harms or developing necessary solutions; at worst, it will replicate and reinforce existing inequities, invisibly encoding them in the digital world. Consider the criminal justice system, where more than 20 states use algorithmic modeling to calculate the recidivism risk of criminal defendantsdespite the fact that the algorithms exist in a black box, without transparency into the ways they calculate their recommendations. When tested by experts, some of these algorithms have been proven to be biased and 77 percent more likely to erroneously predict Black defendants will commit a violent offense than a white defendant. This is, in part, a reflection of biases in the data that has been used to train the predictive technologies. When a person is stopped by police or arrested, that data is fed into predictive algorithms. Because predictive algorithms are easily skewed by arrest rates, and because bias in policing leads to Black people being more than twice as likely to be arrested than white people and more than five times as likely to be stopped by police without just cause, the data used to assess criminal defendants is inherently stacked against Black people. And these types of black-box algorithms are unaccountably making decisions in every sector where we live and workfrom schools to stores to hospitals.

To meet the urgent need for experts who understand both technology and its ethical and societal implications, academic institutions must make this pipeline a priority. Universities can begin by developing, expanding, and investing in PIT programs so that technologists of the future graduate with both the technical expertise and the interdisciplinary wisdom necessary to build technology that anticipates harms and materially improves peoples lives. Fortunately, universities dont have to build without a blueprint. We already have exemplary models of PIT programs, many led by student activists and thinkers. For example, the Public Interest Technology University Network includes 49 member colleges and universities and eight international affiliates committed to promoting experiential learning opportunities, increasing faculty support, and building PIT initiatives and research.

In our own work, we have seen their efforts pay off manyfold. For instance, at the Public Interest Tech Lab at Harvard University (a program co-led by Sweeney), students were challenged to implement scientific experiments of their own design that document unexpected and unforeseen adverse consequences of technology on society. The best experiments would earn students the chance to present their ideas to regulators in Washington, DC.

Leaders at the Public Interest Tech Lab expected to bring one, maybe two students to Washington. But in the end, we took 26, who presented projects ranging from price discrimination for online tutoring services to racial bias in online services. And the work from these and subsequent students have helped ignite new public protections, modified regulations, and changed business practices at big tech companies. These real changes lay the foundation for a more just digital reality.

The harms wrought by technology infiltrate every area of life, and we will need to update our understanding of how technologys presence and influence can undermine or advance our goals, including for democracy itself. One initiative pioneered by the Public Interest Tech Lab at Harvard, VoteFlare, alerts voters to changes in their registration status and mail-in ballot acceptance so they can assure the information is accurate and monitor against tampering or changes that might keep them from casting their vote.

These are proof points of the doorways and beginnings academia can offer technologists to lead purposeful, successful careers, and to forge a more just technological future for us all.

Private sector companies are rapidly innovating new technologies that change the fabric of our day-to-day livesfrom apps and websites to currencies and virtual realities. Many of these innovations are privately owned by a select few tech giants. Such private sector companies spend millions to recruit top technical talent, but they often fail to invest in cross-disciplinary experts trained to anticipate the unintended consequences of certain design choicesand protect users and companies from potentially egregious errors.

Today, because that perspective remains underdeveloped, companies are often reactionary when faced with their oversights, playing catch up after the damage is doneall while enabling misinformation, privacy violations, biased artificial intelligence, and spurring record low public trust in the tech industry. For example, companies that embrace data-heavy marketing strategies without adequate oversight may be implicitly embracing bias. Fair housing and fair employment advocates revealed how digital advertisers were able to target Facebook ads using data proxies for race, age, and gender in order to allow customers to illegally block certain demographics from applying for jobs or housing.

Though such behaviors proliferate in big tech, a few key outliers in the private sector are leading the way when it comes to partnering with cross-disciplinary public interest technology experts to understand and mitigate the adverse consequences of their technologies. Consider Airbnb: Following documentation that hosts of Asian origin were making up to 20 percent less than their white counterparts in some locations, Airbnb reinvented its booking procedure in the name of objectivity and updated its nondiscrimination policy. The company also partnered with civil rights organizations to create Project Lighthouse, a US-based initiative to help Airbnb collect and understand data on racial discrimination on its platform and inform future policies and features to overcome it. By working with public interest technologists and institutionalizing their findings, companies can follow Airbnbs model and ensure that they are considering impact and equity from the start.

As technology companies become increasingly powerful, todays civil society organizations are striving to hold monumental institutionsgovernments and tech giants alikeaccountable. They are being asked to reach new, and larger, communitiesonline and in-person. And they are doing so in an increasingly technological world, in which Americans spend more than 10 hours a day online, and data is arguably the worlds most valuable commodity.

Yet, many of these organizations lack the technological expertise to scale their effortsand to articulate how technology is related to, and entrenched in, civil and human rights concerns.

Without interdisciplinary experts working collaboratively with civil society leaders to illuminate the relationships between equity, technology, and community engagement, digital practices that marginalize vulnerable groups will continue unabated.

To address this gap, funders must empower civil society organizations with the resources and expertise necessary to adopt a public interest technology lens. Not only will such an approach help them serve their communities, it will also help diminish the silos within and between those working in the public interest and private sector, between civil rights and digital rights.

Already, weve seen what happens when these sectors advance solutions together. In 2011, the Ford Foundation invested in civil and internet rights organizations who established a Civil Rights Privacy and Technology Table, a 10-year coalition of more than 30 organizations. The Table leverages relationships among leading experts in civil rights and technology to address concerns like voter suppression, digital surveillance of immigrant communities, and hate speech.

Through their collaborations, this coalition has successfully advocated for Google to ban advertisements for payday loans, predatory loans that target communities of color. And it has persuaded the Federal Communications Commission to limit the exorbitant cost of phone calls made from prison, as well as expand subsidized phone plans for lower-income Americans to include broadband internet access. The coalition has collaborated on hundreds of issues and while weve seen progress, so much more is needed.

These successes reveal how, with investment in public interest technology, civil society can play an important role as both an accountability agent and as an active participant in improving our tech ecosystem.

Our technological future demands thoughtful government involvementboth to protect the public interest and to create the robust competitive markets innovation demands. Yet, without technological expertise, including a broad understanding of technologys potential harms, the government is toothless in its attempts to properly regulate big tech.

And the government isnt just falling short of regulating technologyits failing to harness technology in its own operations. Less than four years ago, the US Department of Defense was still using floppy disks on some legacy systems. And over the past year, the government has come under fire for shaky website rollouts and complex online systems that ensured that wealthy Americans accessed vaccines and COVID-19 testing before their lower-income neighbors.

Solving these astounding dual failuresa lack of regulation and a lack of implementationshould be a major policy priority. But instead, the federal government continues to underfund its technology and cybersecurity operations, effectively holding back our technology infrastructure. Just last year, the United States invested less than $2 billion in technology and cybersecurity in the American Rescue Plan, rather than the $10 billion originally proposed.

In 2021, 27 percent of all federal IT job announcements were never filled. That represents a total of 1,443 IT jobs unfilled in FY2021, and thats just counting the places where the government has both the clarity and budget to try to recruit this talent.

From the local to the federal level, by welcoming public interest technologists into the policymaking process, governments can more adequately regulate technologyand set a new global standard.

In fact, the Biden administration has already taken a welcome first step. In 2021, the White House hired public interest technologist Alondra Nelson, a racial justice advocate and professor at the Institute for Advanced Studys School of Social Science, to serve as deputy director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Promising signs are popping up at the state level, as well. Throughout the pandemic, a PIT network of 6,000 pro bono scientists and researchersnamed the U.S. Digital Responsehas helped state governments develop COVID-19 responses, including establishing online data dashboards to track hospital resources and restoring the Department of Labors website service. These efforts saved lives, and with additional funding, this and other initiatives can be expanded and formalized at the federal level, to create a more robust, transparent PIT infrastructure.

This in-depth series will highlight these and other examples of how we can build a better and more equal technological world with the public interest at its center. And much like the countrys response to the dangers of automobiles in the early 20th century, advancing public interest technology will function best with widespread participation. Social entrepreneurs, business leaders, philanthropists, technologists, civil society leaders, and academics can come together to do this work.

The stakes were describing are high, and the problems are complex. As technology expands its reach everywhere, to meet the challenges of our day, we need the vision of public interest tech everywhere as well, in every sector, and through the many lenses it takes, be it civic tech, community tech, tech for good. Now is the time.

While it may seem a steep mountain to climb, we can find solace in the fact that weve been here before. From its inception, the field of public interest law faced similarly long odds; but philanthropy, advocates, and communities came together to build a field that is such an integrated part of the social justice and legal landscape we can barely remember when it didnt exist.

From COVID-19 to criminal justice, digital advertising to defending democracy, and every other area that technology touches, public interest technologists need to be there, ensuring that technology works for good, for all, for now, and into the future. Its time to invest in this movement.

Read more stories by Jenny Toomey & Latanya Sweeney.

The rest is here:

Building the Public Interest Technology Infrastructure of the Future - Stanford Social Innovation Review

The use of sanctions by the US and its allies against Russia as a possible deterrence mechanism was expected ever since the country unilaterally decided to engage in a large-scale military operation in Ukraine. It has been 49 days since the invasion started and as of now, there are very few signs of the conflict ending.

One interesting aspect of the conflict has been the use of tech sanctions by the West, its allies and even private technology companies to deny Russia access to critical technology components needed for the running its critical sectors, like space and telecommunications. This is the first time that specific technology sanctions have been levied against a single country.

The impact of these sanctions can be absolutely devastating to the government and its strategic sectors, and even create inaccessibility to domestic consumers.

The US started with the tech sanctions by targeting specific products like semiconductor chips, telecommunication equipment and other high-tech products that they felt might adversely affect the Russian economy. This was followed by several tech companies unilaterally pulling out of the country and stopping all further tech supplies to Russia.

A caveat with the US sanctions was that any other country using American intellectual property (IP) and home-grown tech to produce specific products had to take licenses from the US government if they wanted to continue tech exports to Russia. This left Russia with few options on how to bypass or overcome the regulations imposed on it. Even its primary import ally, China, is under threat of secondary sanctions as Chinese companies utilise American IP to manufacture tech components.

Also read: Sanctions on Russia Are a Tool That Must Be Calibrated Like Any Other

This raises the issue of how tech sanctions can be used to cripple ones economy in the current Information Age. India, as a technologically advanced country, is also a large consumer of tech products itself; ranging from consumer electronics to specific tech components used in higher-end systems and manufacturing plants.

It must be noted that Indias economy is highly tech driven and any sanctions on it in the future have the potential to completely shut down critical economic sectors in the country. There is also the possibility of India coming suffering secondary sanctions from the US due to its stance on the current conflict.

Also read: Russias Invasion of Ukraine and Indias Diminishing Global Role

India, as a technically competent state, must ensure that there are contingency plans in place if and when something goes haywire and tech sanctions are imposed on it. It is the responsibility of the government, as well as the private sector, to keep in place specific shock absorbers to deal with these potential tech sanctions.

There are two main aspects for India to consider when it comes to nullifying, or at least reducing the impact of potential tech sanctions:

Diversification of tech imports

The COVID-19 pandemic has showcased the fragilities of critical technology supply chains and how easily the global supply of technology components or devices can be affected. The ongoing semiconductor chip shortage is a perfect example of the complexities in these technology supply chains.

India must realise that it is near impossible to achieve self-sufficiency in critical technologies and plurilateral cooperation remains a necessity. Currently, the country relies on a wide variety of tech imports to meet domestic demand. This can range from finished products to building blocks of tech systems. But imports in the tech domain will remain regardless of how much India progresses technologically.

The most important aspect is that the country must ensure a diversified basket of tech imports. Over-reliance on specific countries can significantly affect supply in case of specific sanctions.

In the case of Russia, over 70% of its semiconductor chipsets are imported from China. With Chinese companies also under threat of secondary sanctions, both countries are in a problematic situation. India, to its credit, has diverse sources of imports in critical goods like oil and natural gas. This must be extended to the field of technology as well.

Watch: Sanctions Are Economic Weapons of Mass Destruction, We Must Consider Their Consequences

Recently, India has relied heavily on Chinese imports for solar hardware (used for the construction of large-scale panels) and other renewable energy technologies. With respect to critical tech components, like semiconductor chips, India, again, is heavily reliant on China. This dependency needs to be reduced and a more nuanced approach to importing technology goods needs to be taken. Once multiple import sources are in place, the effect of sanctions can be greatly reduced due to the options generated for ensuring consistent levels of tech imports.

Creating dependencies on tech giants

India has been a revenue generating market for most tech companies around the world. The relatively cheap labour costs, the abundance of talent and human resources at their disposal, and an up and coming tech-driven society are just some of the reasons why multinational tech corporations are inclined towards outsourcing work to India.

The Russia-Ukraine war resulted in many of these tech companies citing humanitarian reasons to completely stop all business with Russia. While some companies, like the semiconductor giants Intel, AMD and NVIDIA were required to comply with the imposed sanctions (as semiconductor chips were covered under the imposed sanctions), some took the decision without any hesitation. The streaming giant, Netflix pulled out of Russia and suspended all services in the country. Similarly, Apple and Samsung have stopped all product sales and other services that the companies offer.

Companies ranged from consumer electronics (such as Dell and HP) and telecommunication equipment manufacturers (such as Nokia and Ericsson) to software service providers (such as SAP and Oracle). Each imposed their own restrictions and the stoppage of all exports to the country. This places the question of how tech companies can unilaterally bring down a countrys economy itself. Hence, it is in Indias interest that these tech companies operations in India remain integral to their global supply chain and pulling out of the country should not be a viable option for the firm itself.

A dependency in the form of a large market in India has already been created for most firms. In the light of potential sanctions in the future , companies may decide to forego business (on whatever scale) while remaining true to their ideals. It is this case that India must ensure that the companies cannot completely disassociate itself with the country. Bringing in critical operations that are part of the firms value chain to Indian soil is a first step. For example, most major international semiconductor firms have their design centers in India. The majority of its design services are provided by the Indian workforce.

Bringing in manufacturing processes to the country, like in the case of telecommunications equipment can ensure that firms have a critical presence in the country and sanctions cannot reduce this kind of dependency. Assembly lines for finished products, tech components manufacturing and other key processes must be in the country to dilute the effect of the sanctions.

Another way to create intrinsic dependencies is to use the model of defence joint ventures and strategic partnerships. The government should work with the domestic private sector in developing partnerships with big tech companies in the West. This would automatically ensure that the Indian domestic sector is integrated into the value chain. That would prevent withdrawals of companies due to any potential sanctions that might be imposed.

It is a hypothetical scenario that India might be at the receiving end of tech sanctions in the near future. But the recent imposition on Russia has showcased the power that tech companies have in the current Information Age. If a situation arises when India is eventually bombarded with tech sanctions, there has to be a safety net in place to keep the economy from crumbling. This can help in ensuring that the currency remains strong and also how sanctions can be toothless if a robust tech economy is in place for the country.

Arjun Gargeyas is a Research Analyst at The Takshashila Institution

Read more:

A Blueprint for India to Insulate Itself from Future Tech Sanctions - The Wire

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has hinted at the possibility of regulatory intervention to enable Indian news media to get a revenue share from tech giants like Google and Facebook. The regulator is of the view that policy interventions in other countries have played a significant role in addressing the grievances of the news publishers and bringing the parties to the negotiation table.

Digital media is a rapidly developing area. In future, new tech giants may also join the digital media. Consequently, certainty, stability and predictability in the regulatory regime is required," TRAI said in a consultation paper issued recently.

The regulators observations assumes significance in the light of the ongoing investigations being carried out by the Competition Commission of India into complaints against tech giant Google for alleged abuse of its dominant position in the online news media market. The plaint, filed by Indian Newspaper Society (INS), claims that while the news content is that of the publishers, Google gets to keep a disproportionately large share of the advertising revenue as the tech giant continues to control the whole ecosystem including both the buying and selling side of the ad network.

This tussle between tech giants and news outlets comes even as the global print industry has been affected by the unfavourable macroeconomic conditions such as the ease of access, online availability of news, and overall global economic slowdown occasioned by the outbreak of pandemic.

In India, too, the print media segment has been growing at a subdued rate for the past few years. According to industry reports, print segment shrunk by 8.3 per cent during 2019-20 with circulation revenue dwindling at the rate of 4.2 per cent. Further, Hindi and regional newspaper circulation revenue fell by 20 per cent in 2020 compared with 2019, while English dailies circulation revenues fell by 50 per cent., according to the TRAI paper.

Acknowledging the crisis being faced by the print media industry, TRAI said that even though the print industry is adopting the digital innovations, they are unable to tap the benefits of digitization due to the commanding share of tech giants like Facebook, Google, Twitter, Instagram.

According to Edelweiss Research, the Facebook-Google duopoly controls 60 per cent of all the digital spending. The publishers allege that these tech giants are making money by advertising on the strength of their news content though Facebook and Google claim that they are basically helping publishers by directing traffic to their website. In the past two years, internationally, quite-a-few state agencies have intervened in the ongoing tussle between Google-Facebook on one side and press and publishers on the other. Countries like Australia and France have come up with laws for the fair sharing of revenue between these tech giants and press publishers, TRAI said.

In a bid to keep regulators away, Google has decided to launch News Showcase and Facebook has come up with the news tab where they will pay for the news to the publishers. But, according to industry experts, there has to be a more structured way to compensate publishers.

In February, INS, an association representing around 800 publishers, approached Google asking it to compensate them for carrying their content online and share 85 per cent of the ad revenue. It said that Google is taking a giant share of advertising spends leaving publishers with a small share and that the publishers are facing a very opaque advertising system as they are unable to get the details of the Google advertising value chain.

In the light of the initiatives of Google and Facebook, there is growing opposition against the state intervention and support to the self-regulatory regime. However, one cannot deny that state interventions have played a significant role in addressing the grievances of the news publishers and bringing the parties to the negotiation table. Further, digital media is a rapidly developing area. In the future, new tech giants may also join the digital media. Consequently, certainty, stability and predictability in the regulatory regime is required, TRAI said.

Published onApril 16, 2022

Originally posted here:

TRAI hints at regulatory intervention on revenue share between Facebook, Google and print media - BusinessLine

At left: The victorious workers of the Amazon Labor Union at JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island. At right: Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos. | AP photos

Amazon, Inc. is at the core of the other autocracy threatening democracy in the U.S. and beyond. The first, of course, is the Trumpified Republican Party, supported by its followers and corporate backers, which is busily passing legislation at the state level to make voting harder or impossible, block womens reproductive rights, stop teachers from teaching African American history or discussing LGBTQ issues, privatize education and other public goods, and enact other attacks on democracy.

The tech giants, however, are at the heart of the resurgence of liberal U.S. imperialism, meaning an aggressive contest for global supremacy for dominant U.S. capitalist interests. This campaign is chiefly directed against China, which has demonstrated that Marxists can manage an effective and fast-growing market sector of their economy. The anti-China economic war began under Trump but has been vigorously advanced by Biden and headlined by Jeff Bezos flagship newspaper, theWashington Post.

Liberal capital is supporting another economic war, this time against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. Now there are two economic wars that have worked together to reverse any wage gains from the pandemic recovery, and theyre threatening a recession.

Almost the entire media universe fell in line with the new Cold War agitation against China and the sanctions against Russia. The messaging has been nearly universal, not just orchestrated, but comprehensive. This should not surprise us. The U.S. media is dominated by a dozen billionaires. And Amazons media, streaming, and cloud services, along with its massive data and physical global infrastructure, add considerable weight to the U.S. media. Bezos trip to space was almost like a flight to survey his property.

Its not just about the media, though. The tech giants, and their well-compensated friends on Wall Street and in politics, are every year replacing large chunks of the real commercial world with virtual ones which they own. They have rich profiles, exceeding those of the IRS, oneveryonewho touches the virtual world. They combined their resources to help defeat Trump, who was dear to energy and real estate interests.

Build Back Better is now in the hands of Sen. Joe Manchin, and domestic policymaking is taking a back seat to Bidens war against authoritarianism, the leading slogan of his presidency. Amazon is fully mobilized in this war, that is, a full speed ahead pursuit of U.S. corporate global hegemony. Not peaceful coexistence, not working together to solve monumental problems like global climate change, but hegemony. Call it anti-authoritarian hegemony, if you like.

What could possibly stop this emerging dictatorship of anti-authoritarianism?

Without us, there is nothing.

This succinct and eloquent statement of a Staten Island Amazon fulfillment center worker tells the rest of the story.

Amazon workers in the companys JFK8 warehouse there accomplished a historic comeback NLRB election with a convincing victory against a fierce and unrelenting campaign of intimidation. The workers countered this campaign with tactics that all union organizers would do well to employ: Talk to everyone; be personable; pay attention to family, racial, gender, ethnic, and age issues; instill disciplined leadership; and know the law but do not rely on lawyers.

Amazon employs a million workers, many of them working in over 200 U.S. fulfillment and delivery centers. Amazon is where the virtual world hits the real one with a gigantic boot print. The horrendous working conditions and barbaric abuses that were a major theme of Sen. Bernie Sanderss presidential campaigns became national news during the pandemic. A Staten Island worker explained, They gave us a raise, improved the benefits, but made the volatile shifts impossible to work.

A second NLRB campaign at the Bessemer, Alabama, fulfillment center fell short, but not by much. And they have been strengthened by veterans of the Warrior Met coal strike by the United Mine Workers joining the workforce. Organized miners have maybe the strongest union spirit of any category of workers, in my experience. Their commitment to solidarity is humbling. Bessemer is not over. The class war is setting sparks.

As for the Staten Island victory, it has some unique features. The workers insisted on an independent, Amazon employee-led strategy. They had good legal advice, raised money through crowdsourcing, and shunned direct affiliation with an established national or international union. This minimized the availability of staff to help with organization, but it also immunized the effort from the outsiders label that union-busters like to repeat endlessly. The leadership also benefited from serious study of labor history, especially the rank-and-file, often Communist-led tactics and efforts that led to the CIO victories in the late 1930s. Lastly, the campaign proved that a disciplined internal leadership can indeed obviate the lack of staff, at least during a campaign for recognition.

The Staten Island victory is a wake-up call for all of labor to unite in support of both recognition and good-faith bargaining for the entire Amazon workforce.

The Amazon workforce is the key potential force that can preserve both the innovation and massive public goods the Amazon enterprise has built, and is building, while helping block the Amazon Axis autocracy.

Calling all allies

But they cannot do it alone. They will need allies. There are many potential allies because Amazon has many actual constituencies, in addition to its employees. There are the hundreds of communities where Amazons fulfillment centers are located. The marginal incomes earned by thousands of Amazon employees contribute minimally to those communities economies, despite company claims. The giant footprint of Amazons warehouses and thousands of vehicles and trucks inflicts severe impacts on local infrastructure, the environment, schools, health care, security, and real estate. If the tax abatements agreed on between counties and Amazon fail to cover these costs, the net benefits will be negative.

Internet users, or just about every breathing human being, can also be counted among the potential allies. Amazon is the largest cloud servicemost users do not benefit from a Cold War on the internet.

There is the creative community. Amazon is the largest publishing service. Come writers and critics, across the land.

And of course, democratic society as a whole is under threat. The lack of personal privacy, and the vast political and market power of Amazon and other tech giants, are existential threats for nearly every government. Since the rise of artificial intelligence, the possession of rich user data and profiles on most of the population of the planet pretty much abolishes privacy in the past bourgeois sense. And all this data is obtained without warrants!

The ability of the Amazon Axis to decisively manipulate formal democracy toward decidedly undemocratic ends is unparalleled. No one should actually own these profiles. Information is inherently a quasi-public good. But in bourgeois society, possession is nine-tenths of the law. So once-private information is effectively owned by Amazon & Friends. In a real democracy, only accountable governments can have such unfettered power. Otherwise, the government becomes the puppet.

The upheaval needed

The cause of worker empowerment has been given a profound lift by the Staten Island and Bessemer Amazon workers. Their truth is marching on. Millions of workers are watching, especially frontline and emergency workers in the pandemic. An upheaval is coming.

A socialist restructuring mandates public supervision, including the breakup or partial nationalization of too-big-to-fail enterprises, enterprises that provide important public goods and require serious public investment and infrastructure to sustain. No doubt the billionaire class will view that as revolutionary, and perhaps it is. But it is difficult to offer any other alternative to the emerging billionaire dictatorship.

The self-organization of Amazon workers is a herald of the self-organization of working families in politicsthe arena where organized workers and their many necessary allies in the struggle against the Amazonand not just Amazonautocracy find common ground.

CPUSA.org

Read the original here:

Workers and democracy vs. the Amazon autocracy - People's World

It could have been an April Fools joke or, perhaps, even a scene from a B-grade horror flick. In a dimly-lit street on a dark night, the police stop a car for driving without its headlights on. The car has no driver, no intention behind the wheel. Is it a ghost, a joke or part of an elaborate heist, a la Oceans 11? In the age of Silicon Valley miracles, it could be all of the above or none of them.

Earlier this month, the San Francisco police stopped a self-driving car, and a video of the incident recorded by a bystander went viral. The technology, of course, has been around for some years now though not in widespread use by consumers. The offending vehicle (or is the AI that guides it, liable) is seen to be driving away from the cops.

But even if it hadnt, can it be held responsible? After all, just as tigers cannot commit murder and kangaroos have never been convicted of burglary, it is unlikely that a car without a driver can be charged with a traffic violation. Guilt, innocence and liability require a moral, sentient agent as their subject.

Apart from being the subject of a viral video, the offending car is an apt metaphor for the crimes and lack of punishment for the Silicon Valley tech giants behind such innovations. The conscience and culpability of companies are exported to the all-powerful algorithm somehow, though, the profits seem to accrue only to the billionaires, who have set their sights, and wealth, on privatising the heavens. Misinformation, effects on mental health, even political coups of sorts have been laid at the door of AI. Yet, for law enforcement local, national and international big tech is still just a driver-less car with no one to challan. A ghost, a joke and a marvel of technology.

Read the original here:

A driver-less car is stopped by the police. A metaphor for Big Tech is born - The Indian Express