πΏ 5 Ways the Pandemic Impact on Work was Oversold
The All-Tech Revolution We Were Promised in the Early Pandemic Failed to Last Past the Lockdowns. Humans Put a Higher Value on Face-to-Face Interactions.
Pandemic restrictions made me suffer. I have almost no memories from the first year of lockdowns and mandates. It's all a blur. Honestly, this is how I see the whole covid crisis: an awful period better forgotten.
This is with this resentment that I read this week's tech headlines.
Let's look back on the early times, shall we? "Pandemic restrictions accelerated some trends!", "Digital adoption leapfrogged 10 years in 1!" Remember these hot takes from 2020? Here's the sales pitch from digital transformation consultancy McKinsey. How about that one about "digital acceleration" from KPMG? "There is no going back!", "Technology-driven strategy for the win!"
It turns out most of this was wishful thinking.
π 5. Technology Companies Almightniness Crumbled
eCommerce giant Shopify cut 10% of its workers in July, citing a slowdown in digital commerce appetite. Meta, in its 11,000 staff layoff last week, also mentioned declining interest in online activities as the main reason for the cuts. Popular project management and workplace apps such as Atlassian and Asana are also facing headwinds. Even CRM giant Salesforce expects declining revenue.
What about Zoom? Everybody jumped in on the Zoom craze, they must have conquered the market! Whoops: Zoom is more bust than boom.
Turns out the massive demand for quarantine-enabled software was temporary. As soon as restrictions were lifted, people did not keep up with their habits, and any company that bet on maintaining its growth once life started going back to normal lost.
π΄ 4. "Work from Anywhere" was Always about Supply and Demand
Based on data collected by Microsoft, a whopping 87% of workers claim to be more productive in a remote or hybrid model, while 85% of employers hold the opposite opinion about their employees. Meanwhile, in-office mandates have been linked, on a macro scale, to a 1.4% loss in productivity. More interestingly, the productivity decrease correlates with an increase in "presenteeism", defined as "pretending to be working harder by signing into video conferences or sending out more emails, but without any real productive output".
During the pandemic, not only people were forced to work from home, but due to the high demand for technology and the perceived permanence of such demand surge, many businesses were starving for talent. They enacted "hybrid policies" that were friendly to employees.
The economic downturn brings demand for labour down, therefore employers can "afford" to grant less satisfaction to workers and please their managers better, by bringing back employees in the office to "work more".
The net result is more noise.
As I wrote in The Future of Work Feels Like Home, visionary employers will be the ones who use their offices as a "home" where employees can focus on bonding, wellness, and relationships.
What about productivity? As Microsoft CEO claims: "Really make sure that youβre very clear about what the goals of the company or the team are".
My advice is to be careful with any manager that tracks arbitrary productivity metrics (number of calls, number of messages posted, time online) over actual problems solved, or people you have helped along the way. They do not see the forest for the trees.
And the pup took the tree.
π€«3. Quiet Quitting is Out
After "The Great Resignation", here comes "The Great Remorse". I've also seen the term "Boomerang hires" on LinkedIn about the same phenomenon of employees either failing to land new jobs or coming back to their former employer.
I dislike when journalists attempt to give social explanations to phenomena that seem to me as 100% economic (and vice versa!)
People "quiet quit" because in the crazy "everybody is full of newly-printed money" world of covid stimulus, driven by tech companies' perceived messianic stance, they could. Demand for talent exceeded the supply! Economics 101! Β
It's not GenZ getting into an existential crisis. It's the same slackers you've met all your life who got a kick of a favourable job market.
π©΄ 2. EdTech Flopped
Can you name a single education technology that rose during the pandemic? I sure can't. Quick research taught me the ones that do exist are also in layoff-mania. Homeschooling was a disaster for my boys. No specialized software was used. Classes were broadcast on Zoom. Assignments were handed out using a popular office suite.
The tech revolution in education never materialized.
As a matter of fact, this 2022 study hints that forced home-schooling caused mental distress to parents and caregivers (no shit, Sherlock). This other 2022 study reveals negative learning experiences for children as well, especially young ones with neurodevelopmental conditions.
What about university? This depressing Nature study reveals 65% of graduate students believe the pandemic had a negative impact on the quality of their education. Oh, and 29% think it made no difference and only 6% felt it positively impacted their learning.
That begs the question. If education software could not make a positive impact during a crisis, can technology solve education at a population scale?
π 1. Events are Back to In-Person
This is where I admit I was wrong! For much of May 2020, I could not shut up about the Travis Scott concert that happened in Fortnite. My kids loved re-watching the show on YouTube and I thought this was the future of entertainment. See, Epic could charge for virtual tickets and create scarcity out of thin air. After, they could have manufactured some exclusive skins for players, granting them social capital for attending. Then streamers on Twitch and YouTube could have benefitted from live-streaming themselves watching such virtual concerts. Everybody wins! Even the artist can have all the amazing 3D special effects they've dreamed of! Travis Scott emerged from a giant asteroid crash!
Speaking of crashes. As I write these lines, I found out Taylor Swift just crashed Ticketmaster's servers with her upcoming tour tickets.
She's not playing in Fortnite.
π₯ Quick Hits
- IBM is progressing incrementally in quantum computing. Quantum computers will be exponentially more performant than standard binary chips. They are expected to break all of the Internet's encryption in the next few years (Full Story).
- Former Meta engineers claim layoffs could have been due to numerous failed product launches where people hired for specific projects just wandered around the company after the failure. (Story)
- Amazon is also in cost-cutting mode. Alexa, its IoT flagship, seems in danger. The news comes mere months after the acquisition of robot vacuum cleaner leader iRobot. Smart homes will continue to struggle as long as you need a techie in the house to start your toilet fan. (Story)
- There was a massive clash of the titans between the world's two biggest crypto exchanges, Binance and FTX. The core of the issue lies with FTX reinvesting users' assets, causing liquidity questions. As long as crypto won't be usable to buy pizza at your corner store, it will remain a high-risk, speculative asset. Β (Full Story)
π£οΈ This Week in TikTok's World Domination
Every week brings another story on how TikTok is reshaping users' expectations of digital experiences.
π TikTok and Instagram Growing as News Sources
33% of TikTok's users now get their news stories from the video-sharing app, while Facebook seems to be tuning out of news content. TikTok's algorithm is likely to create similar "echo chambers" as we have seen on Facebook and Twitter.
This fear-mongering piece from The Atlantic titled "What Happens When Everything Becomes TikTok" looks at the phenomenon from a content-moderation point of view, which to me feels a bit like yelling at clouds. For example, the writers seem distressed that no algorithm could ever pick up a bullying message where a tumbleweed video titled "No one loves you!" gets shared, or how to label Covid misinformation. But is that really the amount of content control we really seek? Researchers found interesting avenues around "emotion recognition" to moderate video content, which is also going to be usable by every marketing firm in the world.
I feel moderating video content in TikTok is like trying to contain the wind. I would rather invest in educating people than in censorship.
π₯ TikTok Updates its Privacy Policy to Reflect China Access
TikTok will list China as a country where its employees can access European Personal Information, specifically location data. Here is how to disable your location in TikTok and delete your location data.
π‘ Signal Importing Stories
In another example of "Everything becoming TikTok", privacy-leading app Signal announced a new "Stories" feature that is similar to Instagram's. As a Signal user, I am pumped about the possibility to diversify the content I send to my friends on that encrypted medium.
π§ Quote of the Week
@frannyme Living with a hacker boyfriend οΏ½βοΏ½ #coding #hacking #nerd β¬ Che La Luna - Louis Prima