Company / division: Industry
Uber is not the only tech company that mishandles sexual harassment claims – TechCrunch (Feb 21, 2017)
Though I focused in yesterday’s bit on the Uber harassment claims on that company’s toxic corporate culture, it’s far from the only tech company with a culture that’s often unfriendly to women at best and which tolerates harassment and misogyny at worst. This TechCrunch article does a good job highlighting some other cases which were reported anonymously after the Uber news broke. If the tech industry is to become more diverse, this kind of thing has to go away, although of course until it does become more diverse, that’s a lot less likely – there’s definitely something of a catch-22 here.
via TechCrunch
Being black in tech can cost you $10k a year – USA Today (Feb 9, 2017)
This report from Hired this article is based on has lots of interesting data about salaries for software developers in lots of cities in the US and beyond, but the focus of the article is what the report says about bias. Specifically, the report finds that African Americans are 49% more likely to get hired than white candidates, while Latino and Asian candidates are each less likely to be hired, but it also finds that African American candidates ask for and receive lower salaries than Latino, Asian, or white applicants. The report doesn’t draw many conclusions from the data – increased likelihood of being hired for African Americans may be tied to that lower asking price, to diversity initiatives, or something else, and it’s also unclear whether these candidates ask for lower salaries because experience tells them to expect them, because they’re less well informed about going rates than their white counterparts, or again for some other reason. But the results are the results – yet another indication of systemic issues in the tech industry when it comes to race, whatever the underlying causes.
via USA Today (Hired report here)
Trump’s Next Move on Immigration to Hit Closer to Home for Tech – Bloomberg (Jan 30, 2017)
The executive orders on immigration blew up over the weekend, with most major tech companies finding their voices in opposing some of the policies of the new administration. But this article argues that the next set of changes to immigration policy might actually hit big tech companies even harder, putting the administration back on a collision course with the industry. As noted in my comment from Saturday, the responses from tech companies have ranged from moral condemnations to mere declarations that the policies would be disruptive to their businesses – any change to work visas would sit in that second bucket for many big companies, and they’d be likely to push back.
via Bloomberg
I was a VR skeptic (and then my 7-year-old son gave it a try) – GeekWire (Jan 21, 2017)
This is a fun little piece, and strongly mirrors my experiences with my own kids. To some extent, every new gadget or screen-based experience is appealing to them, but VR does have a certain extra something – I think the immersiveness is a big party of that. The reality is that VR is one of those things that’s really hard to take seriously until you try it, but once you do try it, you immediately see potential there. The problem right now is that lots of people are probably having these Day 1 / Day 2 experiences with VR, but there really isn’t enough content out there right now for Day 3 onwards – the novelty wears off fast. Hopefully, it’ll come in time, but a lot of the challenge for VR is that many people will never get the first experience with it this 7-year-old had, and even those that do will quickly run out of things to watch.
via I was a VR skeptic (and then my 7-year-old son gave it a try) – GeekWire
Proposed state law would require emissions-free autonomous vehicles, and tax them by the mile – The Boston Globe (Jan 20, 2017)
As regulators and governments seek to provide a legal framework for autonomous driving, we’ll see something of a dichotomy between those who try to be as welcoming as possible to experiments and development of the technology, and those who see this as yet another opportunity to drive tax revenue or other separate goals. These lawmakers in Massachusetts seem to be taking the second approach, proposing that autonomous cars pay a per-mile road tax and produce zero emissions. Contrast this with Arizona’s governor, who has been very open to testing of autonomous vehicles and famously invited Uber’s self-driving cars to his state when they were banned from San Francisco. San Francisco, of course, is somewhere in the middle, largely open to testing of the technology, but with reasonable limits. Just as there will be fierce competition between tech companies around autonomous driving, there will be competition between states and cities around the technology too. Policies such as those being advocated in Massachusetts are likely to do little to endear the state to would-be autonomous driving companies.
Most engineers are white — and so are the faces they use to train software – Recode (Jan 18, 2017)
A lot of the coverage of the lack of diversity in the tech industry focuses on employment and the lack of opportunities and barriers to entry for minorities and women. In other words, the focus is on the negative impact on those who would like to work in the industry. But this article highlights one of what I’d argue are many practical reasons why this lack of diversity is also bad from a product perspective – less diverse teams produce products which are poorer at meeting the needs of a diverse base of users. In this case, the specific issue is face recognition software and its inability to effectively recognize darker faces, in part because it tends to be trained on data sets of largely white faces and tested by mostly white engineers.
via Most engineers are white — and so are the faces they use to train software – Recode
The Next Big Thing in Smartphones? The Software – WSJ (Jan 11, 2017)
The foundation of the claims made in this piece – the idea that smartphone growth is slowing driven by saturation and longer upgrade cycles – is absolutely accurate, the headline feels off. Software has always been a critical component of smartphones, so there’s nothing new there. And hardware continues to be extremely important too – see the iPhone 7’s dual cameras and the functionality they’ll support today and tomorrow, or conversely the Note7 recall. So the headline and thrust of the article is overblown, but there’s still some truth here, in that the focus of software innovation in smartphones is changing, and hardware is mature enough that the innovation is happening at the edges, not in huge leaps forward in basic hardware performance.
via The Next Big Thing in Smartphones? The Software – WSJ
Europe proposes expanding telco data privacy rules to WhatsApp, Facebook et al | TechCrunch (Jan 10, 2017)
Europe continues to take a harder line on privacy for online services, and is also finally caving to long-term pressure from telecoms operators to force online communications providers to comply with a more consistent regulatory framework. Both individual European countries and the EU have come down on Facebook recently for its attempted integration with WhatsApp following the merger, and the region is likely to continue to be more challenging for online providers operating there. This, in turn, may provide a small advantage for those providers that collect less user data and offer more protections by default.
via Europe proposes expanding telco data privacy rules to WhatsApp, Facebook et al | TechCrunch
Chinese smartphones soar to 51% of India market – Tech in Asia (Jan 4, 2017)
The Indian smartphone market has been characterized by unusually high loyalty to local brands, but that seems to be changing now as Chinese companies start to overcome the resistance to foreign vendors. For now, most of the action is still in the mid tier and below, but this helps erode the idea that one of the reasons Apple hasn’t done well in India is resistance to non-Indian suppliers. Chinese vendors, of course, have already done very well in other emerging markets, but it appears we can now add India to that list too.
via Chinese smartphones soar to 51% of India market – Tech in Asia
Join Our Board: Companies Hotly Pursue New Wave of Women in Tech – The New York Times (Dec 30, 2016)
Board positions are one of the most visible aspects of a company’s commitment to diversity (or lack thereof), and this means competition for women to sit on boards is at an all-time high. That’s a good thing, but it’s still far less common at lower levels in companies to have this kind of commitment to hiring women or other underrepresented groups in tech.
via Join Our Board: Companies Hotly Pursue New Wave of Women in Tech – The New York Times
Big Growth in Tiny Businesses – WSJ (Dec 28, 2016)
Online retail is creating opportunities for new kinds of businesses – very small ones, often with a single employee who’s also the owner, across all kinds of fields, including food, manufacturing, and chemicals (including soap and perfume).
via Big Growth in Tiny Businesses – WSJ
Counterpoints to The Hardware Apocalypse – Steven Sinofsky on Twitter (Dec 28, 2016)
This is a tweet storm in 13 parts, and a response to Farhad Manjoo’s gadget apocalypse piece from early December. Sinofsky makes several cogent arguments about the proper role of gadgets (though I suspect he may be using the term a little differently from Farhad). As I said in linking to Farhad’s original piece, there’s some truth there but it’s not all quite right.
via Steven Sinofsky ॐ on Twitter
Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and the Economy | whitehouse.gov (Dec 20, 2016)
A report from the White House on artificial intelligence and how it will affect the economy in years to come. The impact of AI on the economy and people’s lives is certainly an emerging narrative, but one where there’s very little consensus so far.
via Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and the Economy | whitehouse.gov
Car-Free Living in the United States: What the Data Says – Medium (Dec 13, 2016)
This is interesting for a couple of different reasons: first off, it suggests something about the impact of Uber, Lyft, and other ride-sharing services on car ownership, something that’s been predicted and which now seems to be coming to pass. Secondly, it may suggest something about changing demographics and priorities with regard to ownership – in at least some of these states, falling percentages of car ownership are actually about new households exhibiting different behavior, not existing households changing behavior.
via Car-Free Living in the United States: What the Data Says – Medium
The Gadget Apocalypse Is Upon Us – The New York Times (Dec 7, 2016)
I don’t agree with all of Farhad’s conclusions here – the nature of the columnist beast is that you have to make strong statements, sometimes stronger than you really believe. But there’s truth here, and some of my own thoughts too. Hardware is both easier than ever and harder than ever – easier to manufacture cheaply and at scale, and harder to build a large sustainable business at, especially in categories where the big players are dominant.
via The Gadget Apocalypse Is Upon Us – The New York Times