Month: March 2020

Victoria Stafford, a third-year student at UC Berkeley, was set to begin working at Yelp in June as a sales intern — the only internship she applied to. And then it was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“When I first read the cancellation email, I didn’t believe it. I refreshed my inbox; I rubbed my eyes as if I were waking up from a dream. It was clear that COVID-19 was becoming a mounting concern, but it never occurred to me that my internship was in jeopardy,” Stafford said.

Internship cancellations hurt more than just summer plans. The programs are often pipelines into future jobs and access to valuable work experience.

For Stafford, a business and domestic environmental major from a small town in rural Utah, there are very few business and policy-related opportunities.

“I ask that employers do everything they can to make their internship opportunities more accessible in these upcoming months, and come next year and the year after, show understanding and compassion for employment gaps,” she said.

Dozens of other students from across the country flooded my inbox, sharing stories about the impact on internship cancellations on their paths toward employment.

One student turned down offers and interviews from Google, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs to pursue a software engineering position. The offer they accepted was yanked weeks later. Another student lost their chance at a post-graduate job at their dream company because their offer was revoked. One only had an offer in their hands for three weeks before it was rescinded.

A number of companies across the country, including Google, Glassdoor, StubHub, Funding Circle, Yelp, Checkr and even the National Institutes of Health, have canceled their internship programs due to COVID-19, TechCrunch has learned. The cancellations, which will likely increase in the days and weeks to come, are unsurprising, due to the uncertainty the pandemic has caused. Still, fewer internships jeopardize the postgraduate job prospects for thousands of college students, and, beyond that, limit the talent pipeline on which tech companies so often are dependent. 

There’s even a Twitter account that tracks the status of 2020 internships.

From Denver to San Francisco

Like the concerts, conferences, universities and schools, these cancellations are because of the COVID-19 pandemic ravaging the world right now. While some companies cited health concerns, others pointed to the uncertain economic landscape. 

In a statement, job search and review platform Glassdoor said the rapid spread of COVID-19 has grown “beyond a health concern into an economic one.” As a result, it has “decided to pause hiring and reprioritize some initiatives internally to ensure we are well positioned for both the downturn and recovery.” 

A Funding Circle spokesperson confirmed that the company halted its internship program, “given the travel and relocation” for the upcoming intern cohort to San Francisco. In an email obtained by TechCrunch, the National Institute of Health canceled its prestigious internship — which has a 20% acceptance rate — to “stop community spread of Sars-Cov-2 through social distancing.”

“Therefore, hosting 1000+ early career scientists who deserve close supervision and intense mentoring is not appropriate at this time,” the email reads. “The cancellation of the NIH SIP applies to all students, whether you were planning to volunteer or were offered a fellowship position. It also applies, even if you were planning to do computational work that could be done remotely.”

In a statement to TechCrunch, NIH said its program has been reduced to “maintenance-only and mission critical (including research on COVID-19) operation due to spread of the novel coronavirus.”

“Regrettably, as part of this effort to keep people safe and limit the spread through social/physical distancing, it has been necessary to cancel the Summer Internship Program for young trainees at NIH for 2020, but those students already selected for the program will be given priority for summer internship positions in 2021.”

Checkr, based in Denver and San Francisco, put its summer internship program on hold due to “the challenges of onboarding interns while everyone is remote.”

Google has rescinded some internship offers for its UX design internship, per a LinkedIn post. Google denied this. 

“If you log on to a laptop, you can access an opportunity”

While a number of tech companies have put their internship programs on hold, others are piecing together experimental remote internship programs for their students. 

Quizlet is preparing for its annual internship program and is preparing a “contingency plan for an internship that will be virtual if necessary.” Uber has formed a dedicated team to start working on an online internship program “should the situation remain unchanged.” Lyft and Twitter, depending on the state of the pandemic, plan to onboard San Francisco interns virtually.

The pandemic has certainly put remote internship management services in high demand. That said, a handful of startups have been working on the sector for years. 

San Francisco-based Symba, which helps companies offer virtual internship programs, was founded in 2017. Co-founder Ahva Sadeghi said that last week more than 100 companies and 1,000 students reached out to Symba in regards to internship cancellations because of COVID-19.

“The companies we reached out to in the beginning who said, ‘This is great but not top of mind for us,’ are now calling us back asking us to jump on the phone today or tomorrow to get something implemented,” Sadeghi said in a phone call. “We thought we didn’t have product-market fit and now the conversation has completely changed.”

Sadeghi noted how internships assume a certain level of privilege in applicants, prioritizing those who can afford to move to a highly populated city with little to no pay. A remote internship, even in a time of health and prosperity, is important, she said.

“If you can log on to a laptop, you can access an opportunity,” she said. Another program, Chicago-based Sage Corps, founded in 2013, is pushing companies to sponsor the students impacted by internship cancellations. If sponsored, students can still participate in career growth development workshops virtually from Sage Corps, at $1,250 per student. 

Thomas Brunskill, the founder of InsideSherpa, which helps companies host virtual internships, said he’s seen nearly 1,000 students a day sign up for the platform, from Northern Italy, to South-East Asia, to the United States. He started the company, which went through Y Combinator last year, to give students courses and online simulations of jobs through the comfort of their own homes.

He said his customers are mainly larger companies that employ upwards of 1,000 students, like JPMorgan Chase, Deloitte, Citi, BCG and GE.

On one end, Brunskill said the interest makes sense, as larger companies have to meet significant hiring demands. Per the National Association of Colleges and Employers, 70.4% of interns get return offers from the company where they intern. 

On the other end, this concentration further showcases how smaller businesses will be impacted disproportionately from this pandemic. Many will freeze hiring altogether.

“Obviously [this] matters for students, but it also matters for companies who are now going to have this blackhole of talent,” Brunskill said. “Nobody wins in that situation — companies end up with less work-ready students who don’t really know what they’re getting into and students end up in full-time jobs that might not be aligned to their interest or skills because they never had an opportunity to test it out first.”

While layoffs are devastating, and obviously well upon us in the tech world, internship cancellations offer a harsh window into how COVID-19 doesn’t just impact our current workforce, but our future one as well.

Source: Tech Crunch

By way of a working from home Twitter message, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced that the company has sourced and will be donating 10 million face masks. The number is sizable increase over the two million reported last week and a hefty bump over the nine million figure Vice President Mike Pence announced during last night’s White House Press Conference.

“Apple has sourced, procured and is donating 10 million masks to the medical community in the United States,” Cook says in the video. “These people deserve our debt of gratitude for all of the work they’re doing on the front lines.”

Apple is joining fellow tech companies in donating masks amid a national shortage as COVID-19 takes an increasing toll on the U.S. population. Many of the donated masks have been stockpiled, in order to adhere to California Occupational Safety and Health Standards put into action following last year’s devastating wildfires. 

Other companies, like Ford, have transformed production facilities to create additional masks.

Source: Tech Crunch

San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors is pushing a number of legislative bodies to offer more protections and benefits for gig workers during COVID-19 pandemic. As gig workers are still out delivering food to people and providing rides, supervisors are asking the SF Office of Labor Standards Enforcement to establish enforcement procedures in compliance with Assembly Bill 5, which outlines what types of workers can be legally classified as independent contractors.

This resolution, which Gig Workers Rising and We Drive Progress advocated for the board of supervisors to adopt, comes after Gig Workers Rising urged California lawmakers to enforce AB 5. Earlier this month, Gig Workers Rising sent a letter to California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other state officials asking them to step in and protect workers during this pandemic.

“These companies have been putting drivers and passengers at risk during the coronavirus era and long before,” rideshare driver and Gig Workers Rising member Edan Alva said on a press call today. “These large corporations are preying on the most vulnerable populations.”

He added that drivers often work paycheck to paycheck and therefore have no ability to save money.

“Without health insurance and sick days, we are left with the impossible choice when we get sick,” Alva said. “Drive sick and put ourselves and passengers at risk or stay at home and lose the roof over our heads, our car and our livelihood.”

The supervisors are also asking for both SF City Attorney Dennis Herrera and California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to seek injunctive relief to prevent misclassification of workers as they seek paid sick leave and unemployment insurance.

Additionally, the board of supervisors wants the Department of Public Health to implement minimum health and safety guidelines for ride-hail drivers and delivery workers. Lastly, they want California Labor Secretary Julie Su to offer guidance around accessing benefits for gig workers during this time.

The supervisors outline how, without help, gig workers “face many uncertainties, including housing and food insecurity, no access to health care, exposure to COVID-19 without safety training, sanitation and protective equipment…” Meanwhile, gig economy companies “continue to flout our state and city laws, leaving their misclassified employees without access to unemployment insurance, paid sick leave, medical benefits, workers’ compensation, and other crucial benefits…,” the resolution states.

On a press call today, Supervisor Gordon Mar said denying workers their rights during a public health crisis is “immoral.” Fellow Supervisor Matt Haney added that it’s critical every measure is taken to protect public health.

“Many of us are being told to have your food delivered, have your food dropped off,” Haney said on the press call. “Having workers at these companies is actually becoming essential for us to operate during this time, but at the same time we are not treating these folks fairly…we are putting them in even more marginalized and vulnerable positions economically.”

In many ways, Haney said, gig workers are performing emergency response jobs during this crisis — delivering food to people who can’t go out to the store or driving people from point A to point B.

It’s not that companies like Uber, DoorDash and Instacart have done nothing. Some have offered up to two weeks’ worth of sick leave, for example. But it’s that they’re not doing enough.

Source: Tech Crunch

They’re doing construction in my apartment building right now. I live on the first floor and can hear the distinct sound of jackhammering on concrete coming from the basement below. There’s also the sound of a generator and a far higher-pitched drilling noise. It’s all happening with the perfect combination of frequency and randomness completely designed to drive this work-from-homer completely nuts.

Honestly, I’m generally not a headphones-at-home guy, unless it’s a meeting or a podcast. But being under house arrest with heavy machinery is really wearing on me, and providing an unexpectedly ideal scenario for trying out Sennheiser’s latest fully wireless earbuds.

The landscape has changed considerably since the audio company announced the original Momentum True Wireless models in summer of 2018. Honestly, the speed with which the category has taken off in recent years seems pretty remarkable, both in terms of quality and user adoption.

One key thing that hasn’t changed with the arrival of the True Wireless 2 is Sennheiser’s pricing. For many or most, the earbuds are still prohibitively expensive at $300 a pair (compared to the $230 Sony 1000XM3 or the $240 AirPods Pro). For the majority of folks, the pricing is already going to be a deal breaker. It’s a shame, honestly, because there’s a lot to like.

The presentation is great. I mean, look at that fabric-covered case. It’s certainly on the bulky side, compared to a number of cases, but it’s quite handsome. The earbuds themselves are nothing to sneeze at. They’re also surprisingly comfortable. They don’t have added support like the Powerbeats Pro, but unlike the Sony models, they’re not heavy enough to cause ear strain. As for how they stay in place while exercising — I’m going to have to get back to you on that.

Like the Sony headphones, the sound is really excellent on the True Wireless 2. In fact, it’s among the best and most balanced audio I’ve experienced on a pair of fully wireless earbuds — as one would expect from Sennheiser. Thankfully, the active noise canceling is also quite excellent, accessible with a triple tap on the right ear bud, while a double will toggle Transparent mode, for added ambient sound.

The tapping controls feel a bit convoluted on first use, but you’ll get the hang of it fairly quickly. The biggest complaint I have thus far (beyond pricing) is the spottiness of the wireless connectivity. The Momentums start to lose signal when I walk from my living room to my kitchen. That’s about 30 feet — a distance a majority of other headphones I’ve tried out have had little to no issue with. Not the end of the world for most users, but I’d hope for a more consistent experience at that lofty price point. 

Source: Tech Crunch

Amazon never tires of explaining how great it is to work at one of its warehouses, but as usual the actual employees tell a different story. This particular group of Chicago workers was fed up with the company failing to provide paid time off or vacation it promised to part-time workers. They organized; Amazon resisted — and at last, the coronavirus acted as tiebreaker.

It’s an interesting first-hand story from workers being exploited by a business and working to change that —  I say exploited not because the work is hard and the pay low, though that’s true too, but because they had to fight to get basic considerations and resources from a company claiming to value their health and welfare.

The group is not a union, but it’s the seed from which unions sprang long ago: workers with a common grievance acting in unison to force management to come to the table. Originally the group formed to make a petition for access to clean water to drink. You read that right! After complaining individually to no effect, they got 150 people to sign the petition, presented it and soon there were pallets of bottled water available and new water stations being installed.

From this we learned that we get the changes we need by getting organized and taking action together. Since there was still plenty of bullshit to address, we met up again and after some brainstorming decided to name ourselves DCH1 Amazonians United. There’s no union or nonprofit backing us up, it’s just us workers, full of dignity, trying to make ends meet. When we found out that Amazon was denying us the PTO we were supposed to have, we were ready to do something about it.

Amazon promised in writing that workers putting in more than 20 hours would accrue PTO and vacation time, but that simply wasn’t happening. Somehow, the people at the warehouse were a special class of employee that worked more than 20 hours and didn’t accrue PTO and vacation. One way or another something had to change.

After pulling together 251 signatures to a petition demanding PTO and a meeting with their regional manager, they presented it on three separate occasions so each shift could hear management’s response. One manager accepted the petition, another refused to take it. The site lead started isolating workers, telling them they could meet one on one but not as a group with the regional manager. This is labor organization shutdown 101, by the way.

The group heard that a similar group to theirs in Sacramento had walked out, and clearly management did too, as they began acting nervous about collective action. There was an international meeting of Amazon workers to compare notes and techniques.

Then the coronavirus hit, and across multiple Amazon labor groups petitions were passed demanding protective measures against infection, increased hazard pay and childcare subsidies, and that the company cease withholding sick leave.

In the middle of these growing efforts, Amazon decided to grant PTO to all workers above 20 hours.

Image Credits: DHC1 Amazonians United

In a statement to TechCrunch, the company said that it “has implemented a broad suite of new benefits changes for employees in our operations and logistics network throughout this unprecedented pandemic event,” and that this decision was not due to the agitations of Amazonians United or any other single group. Indeed, it sounds like groups all over the world had to combine and protest these policies together in order for Amazon to take notice. I asked why the PTO was not being given in the first place and have yet to hear back.

The Chicago group was far from alone in its plight, but it took organization and communication for them to find the courage and means to make the changes necessary. Here’s hoping the 100,000 workers Amazon plans to hire benefit from the work of their peers.

Source: Tech Crunch

Last week, popular music platform Bandcamp announced that it would be waiving its revenue shares from all sales for 24 hours, starting Friday morning. The move was an effort to help boost income for the innumerable artists who have been struggling to make ends meet as live performances have been canceled for the foreseeable future for artists all over the world.

Things went well.

Friday turned out to be the biggest day for sales in the platform’s 11-year history. Artists raised $4.3 million in music and merchandise sales over the 24-hour period. That comes out to more than 15x Bandcamp’s normal numbers on a Friday — or, as the site puts, it 11 items per second over the course of the day. In all, some 800,000 items were sold, versus the standard 47,000.

In addition to Bandcamp waiving its fees, dozens of labels, including Anti-, Fat Possum, Merge, Polyvinyl, Saddle Creek and Sub Pop, gave up 100% of their revenues to artists on Friday.

It’s a nice little bit of news for creatives, many of whom are already struggling to adapt to an ever-changing online economy. Still, it’s hard to say what the future looks like with so many artists stuck at home indefinitely.

Source: Tech Crunch

Amazon is going to be working with a new research initiative backed in part by the Gates Foundation that will distribute at-home coronavirus assessment kits, and then deliver the collected samples to FDA-approved test facilities. Amazon Care, the health arm formed by Amazon initially for internal employee care, will be handling the delivery of the kits, as well as transportation of collected samples to the test labs, as first reported by CNBC.

While the FDA updated its guidance just a few days ago to specifically exclude at-home testing from the Emergency Use Authorization that is in place to enable broadened private lab testing of potential COVID-19 cases, the arrangement with the Seattle Coronavirus Assessment Network (SCAN) and Amazon Care bypasses use of the traditional mail or package delivery network. The Amazon Care drivers who are doing the test kit drop-offs and deliveries are specifically trained in proper handling of sensitive medical materials, and the SCAN project is for a limited research endeavor undertaken in order to help “understand how coronavirus is spreading in the Greater Seattle area.”

Availability of kits will be limited, but will include the kind of swab testing that is being conducted at drive-through testing facilities in the U.S. Should a sample test positive for COVID-19, the person who provided the sample to SCAN will be contacted by a healthcare worker for next steps, including advice on how to seek treatment and prevent transmission.

SCAN is the result of a partnership by Seattle & King County’s Public Health department, as well as a team of hospitals and health organizations that created the Seattle Flu Study, a similar project meant to study the spread of the traditional seasonal flu within the community. The research and data modeling work done for that study have been adapted to the study of COVID-19, and the flu study has been put on hold while researchers focus on the pandemic instead.

Source: Tech Crunch