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The Demise of Tech’s Boy Band Founders

The Demise of Tech’s Boy Band Founders

Photo by Mubariz Mehdizadeh on Unsplash

We also like to call them the Boys of Summer – those unicorn tech super founders, that is.

As the New York Times noted, The Boy Bosses of Silicon Valley Are on Their Way Out, dismounting their unicorns and heading for the hills, with their largesse in tow and never mind the layoffs and loss of shareholder value that they’ve left in their wake.

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Who Moved the Cheese?

Who Moved the Cheese?

How many times have we heard lately that the world will never be the same again? Time will tell, and important to see how habits have changed in the relatively short amount of time that has elapsed since the onset of the Wuhan virus panic.

People are working, eating – and cooking – more at home. Many restaurants have shuttered – some, at least, only temporarily – and we suppose that there’s just so much McDonald’s and pizza one can consume on a daily basis. Don’t have mad skills in the kitchen? As we mentioned last week, Blue Apron’s stock suddenly soared. We’ve also noticed more FreshDirect trucks on the street, and no surprise that Instacart is hiring 300,000 grocery shoppers (although, workers protest at Instacart, Amazon and Whole Foods for health protections and hazard pay, reports the Washington Post). People are presumably cooking and note to self: there will always be businesses that do well, as conditions and circumstances change and also note, re the WaPost piece: “Grocery store, delivery and warehouse workers have unprecedented leverage to demand better working conditions during the coronavirus pandemic because their labor has become essential for millions of Americans.” Read More...

The 20-Teens Were the Decade of the Unicorn. Let’s Look at the Ugly.

The 20-Teens Were the Decade of the Unicorn. Let’s Look at the Ugly.

Real unicorns were pretty ugly, too

The final few weeks of any year – what to speak of a decade – tend to give us pause to reflect on, in the words of Alexander Graham Bell, “What hath God wrought?”

We realize that, in terms of historic industries and major industrial transitions, tech is relatively new to the planet. Every major industrial shift prior to tech has done precisely what tech has done: basically, created efficiencies. But given the breadth, scope and speed at which tech has engulfed the global landscape, forgiving founders for their youthful business missteps has tended to create those efficiencies at great expense to some, and in many cases, quite a few members of the planet’s population.

Uber entered the ride-hailing space without consideration to local regulations (Ask forgiveness, not permission) and scaled quickly, following yet another tenet of technology: move fast and break things. Uber did make ride-hailing more convenient and, surge pricing aside, less expensive. However, their drivers were not all properly vetted, which led to, in several cases, criminal allegations. But Uber skated a fine line, insisting that it is an ‘app,’ and that their drivers were not employees – the same argument they made in order to avoid paying drivers employee benefits. Job creation? Uber did contribute to the swelling underclass: the money mostly went in one direction. The Next Web summed it up pretty well back in 2017: Uber: The good, the bad, and the really, really ugly. Given Uber’s (current) legal challenges around the world, it seems to be going to the lawyers. Read More...

The Myth of the Gig Economy

The Myth of the Gig Economy

Image by 1820796 from Pixabay

The so-called sharing/gig economy is under fire – in California, anyway, with State Assembly Bill 5 (AB5). “Under the new “ABC” test (which is part of the new law), an individual is presumed to be an employee, unless the company can prove all of the following: A) that the worker is free from control and direction of the hiring entity in connection with the performance of the work, both under the contract for the performance of the work and in fact; B) that the worker performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business; and C) that the worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as the work performed,” The National Law Review explains.

There’s very little genuine sharing going on in the so-called sharing economy. Sharing/gig economy unicorn DoorDash had to change its tipping model after it was discovered that tips that were meant to go to the workers were being kept by the company. Even after they promised to change that, Vox reported that DoorDash was still pocketing workers’ tips, almost a month after it promised to stop. Now it’s Instacart that’s in the crosshairs for taking that page from the Bad Behavior in Tech playbook. “’You have demonstrated a pattern of behavior as CEO of eviscerating our pay and pirating our tips,’” Instacart independent contractors wrote in an open letter to CEO Apoorva Mehta, ahead of a three-day walkout, Mashable reports.

Meanwhile, according to Forbes, California Destroys $1 Trillion Gig Economy With New Law. Read More...