The tech world is getting bitch slapped with several CEO’s taking leave and a nice chunk of change as they head to the exit doors. But in reality what service are the providing? But this is the reality that we gloss these shiny bits into billion dollar businesses that have no long range plan or actual product. The case of Peloton was the singular exception but then again the price and cost were out of range of most consumers. But then again who cares!!! This is the article discussing the great resignation among said unicorns and like Adam Neumann they will be back. WeWork for renters, sounds scary.
I have long wondered the point of Pintrest and the Peloton craze is like all crazed things that happened during the pandemic, but now even I am sick of working out in my office. That said, I doubt I will ever set foot in a Yoga studio again as I love my virtual classes from Steadfast and True Yoga in Nashville, few real studios compare and my home practice has improved dramatically as you should in Yoga do so. Now I literally double down. But again there is something oddly sanctimonious and pretentious about Yoga studios and the entire way it is done that frankly given Covid and air transmission is a reason there to go no. But I do go to the gym in my building, open windows and manage to work at times when I have less crowds and in turn less breathing out. Well for men that seems to be some type of shitting/orgasm breath that they feel compelled to do when working out. It was explained to me that they have to given the weight they are pushing. Um, no if you are feeling that kind of discomfort you need to drop the weight up the reps and change your workout there, Jack LaLane.
And with that the remote work continues and how offices are created and for what purpose will also change the skylines and the cities that they are located. I for the first time was in Manhattan where I witnessed people actually leaving an office for end of day rituals and discussing work, commutes and it was a pleasant surprise if not a relief. Sadly that is still small in number but good to see regardless. I do think that is a double edged sword for many. It is a great deal for those who work at home and can be flexible with work times and family obligations. I get that now the work day can be 24 hours broken up into times that fit into schedules for other obligations like physical exercise and meals, this editorial discusses that very issue. But again really is this what we really want and need? For many workers it is yes and particularly disabled or POC and especially Women who are shut out of workplaces they can do the job and get paid without the extra bullshit that comes with it. I tried to imagine myself in an office workplace after 30 years and realized I could not do it unless I microdosed all day and kept myself away from well anyone. Man I really hate people. But I am not alone and with that this from the NY Times shares what the results were for some who did take advantage of the bullshit myth, the Great Resignation. But then again if you think working at home gives you some form of privacy and dignity, think again. This article is about the way employers are using data analytics to monitor performance and they do so using the very computer you work on, through flash photos, key movement and types of work produced. It is fun times folks, get used to it. You will never be free. Never.
So what is the future of work? I have no clue. I truly can say it is good to be old as this has little to no affect on me what.so.ever. But change is always good just for the better, I am not sure. And with that what will the “it” cities of NY and SF be like? Well they will be just fine, that I am sure.
What Twitter’s Move to Shutter Offices Signals for Big Tech
Companies are cutting costs by embracing remote setups, but what happens to the hubs they leave behind? This article in the NY Times discusses the sudden exodus of the cowboys behind the Unicorns they created.
Twitter executives can currently travel the world by globe-trotting among the company’s 38 offices, from San Francisco, Sydney, and Seoul to New Delhi, London, and Dublin.
But not for much longer. On July 27, the company sent a memo to employees saying that one office in San Francisco would be shuttered; plans for a new office in Oakland, California, would be abandoned; and the future of seven locations was being carefully considered as part of a cost-cutting measure. Five other offices globally would definitely be downsized. It’s all part of an attempt to prepare the company for purchase by Elon Musk and tighten expenditure as much as possible.
Twitter isn’t the first to cut down its office space. In early June, Yahoo was rumored to be getting rid of its 650,000 square foot San Jose campus, which was only completed at the end of 2021. Later that month, Yelp announced it was edging closer to being fully remote, and closing 450,000 square feet of office space across the United States. It was followed a week later by Netflix, who said it plans to sublease around 180,000 square feet of property in California as part of a broader company downsizing. That echoed Salesforce, which put up half of its eponymous San Francisco tower block for sublease in mid-July.
Twitter is likely to be one of many companies making the same decision, says Daniel Ismail, senior analyst at real estate research company Green Street. “Even for technology companies, which are some of the most profitable and valuable companies in the world, the office is still an expense—and one that may not be critical in the future.”
Big Tech companies have been at the forefront of some of the bigger issues that are throwing the future of the world of work in flux. From the ability to work remotely from anywhere, which Meta has embraced, to simply spending less time in the office and more time at home, Big Tech companies—by dint of the fact that they’re often developing the infrastructure and products that enable remote work—have been more willing to trial the concept ahead of traditional businesses. US Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows that 27 percent of American workers in “computer and mathematical occupations” worked remotely at some point in the last four weeks. “The pandemic showed that remote working was not only quite viable for many companies, but also something many employees really like, and could be productive doing,” says Ismail. It’s having an impact not just on rank-and-file workers, but stretching all the way up to the upper echelons of management. On August 2, the Financial Times reported that Instagram boss Adam Mosseri would be moving to London, away from Meta’s headquarters in California. Mosseri follows colleagues like Javier Olivan, who is spending more time in Spain since replacing Sheryl Sandberg as chief operating officer, and Guy Rosen, vice president of integrity, who had planned to move to Israel.
Phil Ryan, director of city futures and global insight at real estate advisors JLL, says that although many Big Tech companies are drawing down their workspace portfolio, others are continuing to buy, making it a mixed market. Those purchases are often coming outside the traditional homes for Big Tech on the coasts, moving inland to places like the suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona. However, Ryan does acknowledge that there has been what he terms a “rationalization” of office space among some larger companies. “There are a lot of companies, particularly in the Bay Area, with multiple locations in a specific metro area that will consolidate that space,” he says.
Consolidation has been particularly prevalent in San Francisco, where Mayor London Breed estimates one in three workers who used to be in the city have now gone remote. According to JLL, the office vacancy rate in San Francisco stood at 22 percent at the end of the first quarter of 2022. In Dallas, where other tech companies have created outposts, more than one in four office spaces are vacant.
That has huge ramifications for the broader real estate market in the US and abroad. Tech companies account for between one fifth and one quarter of all activity in the office sector space, according to both Ismail and Ryan. Their departure leaves huge amounts of office space unoccupied, with knock-on effects on the broader city and services set up to support those workspaces. “If you think about the jobs themselves, it has a big impact on the local economy,” says Ismail. “Tech jobs tend to create more office jobs around them—so it’s quite important for many office markets to have a robust tech sector.” As businesses disappear, so does the vibrancy of a city, with knock-on impacts on everything from tourism to food, drink, and entertainment.
The tech industry contributes $516 billion to California’s economy alone, according to one analysis by the Computing Technology Industry Association, with 3.4 million people employed in the tech sector across the US to support the tech professionals who work on developing software and architecting networks.
And while Twitter says that its office shifts have “no impact” on jobs, that’s only true to a point. All those who support office workers, from cleaners to security staff to caterers, lose out. “It worries me that smart people can’t come up with a way to make hybrid working work, because other places seem to be doing it,” says one Twitter employee, who asked not to be named because they are not authorized to speak to the press. “It’s people who staff the perks that bring people to the office who are going to be hurt the most.”
Big Tech’s impact looms large over the rest of the world. “Over the span of at least a decade, tech has been the leading single driver of leasing activity throughout the US,” says Ryan. But that’s changing. While he’s still analyzing the data, Ryan suggests the second quarter data indicates that may be changing. “Tech and finance were basically tied,” he says, “which is a little unusual, and speaks to the fragility of the market that we’re still in right now.”
Ryan believes that Big Tech will continue to lease office space at significant levels, and will remain one of the major contributors to real estate activity for years to come. But it’ll be in markets that perhaps aren’t traditionally equated with the industry. “We’re going to continue to see this focus on places like River North in Denver, East Austin, Wynwood in Miami—not really traditionally corporate or even active areas at all that are becoming the biggest bright spots in the office market, and that’s almost entirely a result of tech-led investment,” he says.
That comes at the expense of the more traditional areas in and around Silicon Valley, which have historically relied on the tech sector. But rather than a one-and-done overhaul, Ismail equates the change in how we work to a “slow bleed.” “It won’t happen all at once,” he says. “It’ll happen over time—and that’s what we’re seeing as time goes on.”
Off the Rack Publishing 
When your aspirations are so disconnected from reality that even unicorns don’t do it for you anymore, this is a clear sign that you’ve been drinking the Kool Aid.
The company Theranos has been the darling of Silicon Valley for years because it promises to “disrupt” healthcare testing, with disruption defined as the classic trifecta: that it will be cheaper, faster and better than the traditional ways. Theranos’s breakthrough technology claims to use just pinpricks of blood to get the results you used to need whole vials for. Also the tests get results incredibly fast, and would be rolled out at chain pharmacies across America, changing the shape of medical testing forever.
Did I mention that the tests would als be incredibly cheap?
It’s claims like this, and support from venture capital firms, that have driven Theranos to a $9bn valuation. It’s not intuitive that all this talk of valuation is simply calculated based on how much venture capital firms have invested. In other words, we say a company is “valued” at $9bn, and then act as though this is actual real money, but that number is based on nothing except what a VC firm felt the company was worth in a bet on the future.
The 15 October Wall Street Journal exposé of Theranos explodes the mythology of the company. Insiders who spoke to the Journal allege that out of the 240 kinds of tests it currently performs, the “pinprick” technology lauded as the linchpin of their strategy was only used for a tiny fraction of its testing. Worse yet, there have been complaints to regulators from inside the company that their revolutionary tests aren’t giving results that agree with traditional testing, and that Theranos has been burying those unwanted results.
What has been blown open, again, is how little we truly know. Even though Theranos received regulatory approval, it’s not clear at all if anyone truly knows how accurate their tests are. The company responded to the story by stating: “Theranos’ technology is reviewed by regulators, proven in the field, and praised by leaders in the industry and doctors and individuals that we serve”.
Despite all these well-worn warning signs, the allegations against Theranos still shocked its many defenders. A lot of the hype about Theranos is driven by its narrative: it has the young brilliant founder, Elizabeth Holmes, a Stanford dropout who founded the company at 19 and has a penchant for black turtlenecks. It has the cute origin story, too. You see, Holmes is afraid of needles, and it’s that fear drove her to develop the pin-prick technology. And of course, the special technology that runs the special tests is called Edison, because when you’re making a mythology, a dollop of American exceptionalism never hurts.
Ms Holmes has been on the cover of Fortune, profiled in the New Yorker, and covered in all the right places. The fact that on paper she’s worth billions causes her to be taken very seriously, because that’s how this culture functions: authority is created by money. From Ted talks to tech salons, she has been a prominent presence, and some have believed that her company could become the Google of healthcare testing.
And she fulfills all our personal checkmarks for the mythological quirks of genius. She doesn’t date, is a vegan, sleeps very little, quotes Jane Austen by heart, works nonstop, dresses like Steve Jobs and as the New Yorker helpfully informs us: “several times a day she drinks a pulverized concoction of cucumber, parsley, kale, spinach, romaine lettuce and celery.”
She sounds like someone who is tremendously fun to have at Scrabble night, and absolutely otherworldly … in fact, she sounds like a unicorn.
But unlike mythical creatures, the allegations against her company are very real, and very ugly. Healthcare is not a new iPhone; people’s lives are on the line. Employees allege in the Journal piece that some of the potassium levels seen in Theranos’s tests are so high that the person would have to be dead to give those results.
All this attention even caused Jean-Louis Gassee, a former Apple executive, to do a comparison test of his own with a blood test he’s required to take monthly. Over two days having his blood tested traditionally and by Theranos yielded wildly different readings.
Gassee’s results are anecdotal, but it bears noting that this isn’t a beta program. He could check it out because Theranos is in use at pharmacies right now, and people use it every day to get real test results. The company’s response has been to deny the allegations and to call the Wall Street Journal a tabloid. When that didn’t work, they published a rebuttal, but critics argue that they should publish their data in peer-reviewed journals if they want to address the questions raised by the Journal.
This is the standard model of rapacious capitalism, fueled and developed in the tech sector. If medical testing were treated differently, it would damage its ability to “disrupt”. How can Theranos be a decacorn if it doesn’t deliver world-changing tests immediately at incredibly low cost? There has to be unbearable pressure for the tests to work and work well, and if they don’t perform perfectly, bury any dissent.
In retrospect, so much about Theranos seems suspect – the secretiveness of the company, the choice to have a majority of men like Henry Kissinger and George Schultz on the board of directors instead of health professionals, and the idea that a college dropout could found a company that could be the fountainhead from which a new way of doing all our medical testing springs forth.
Also, it is never wise to trust people who drink kale several times a day.
The marketplace is as irrational as we are. It wants to believe the story that it wants to hear. And we all want unicorns to exist. That is why they are so lovely to us – because they exist only in the mind’s eye, in our dreams. We all want the world to be as simple as a coding an app. We want to believe it’s possible to codify all the variables, then address them one by one and then solve the equation.
Theranos is a perfect tech company name – it sounds mysterious, Greek and portentous. In Greek mythology Thanatos is Death. Could it be Death’s little-known brother, a minor Greek deity responsible for prescriptions and blood tests?
The reality is more prosaic. It has no larger mythology at all. It’s simply an amalgam of the words “therapy” and “diagnosis”. That’s it.
It sounds like it means a lot more than it actually does.