Tag: tech

How startups can create a culture where women can win

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Silicon Valley’s bro culture is infamous. Bloomberg’s Emily Chang wrote an entire book about it aptly named Brotopia , where she called out the toxic culture women face in the tech industry. In software development, “ shift left ” refers to finding and fixing defects early in the product lifecycle. To fix bro culture, we need to shift left and start early in the company lifecycle: Startups must create a culture where women can win. I’ve heard people argue that the real problem is a lack of pipeline, that there aren’t enough girls choosing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. The truth is, the industry is unattractive to women because it’s an unfriendly place, as I’ve learned firsthand working at startups. Over half of women working in tech report experiencing gender inequality at work. Tech giants like Google (no, I never worked there) and Oracle (yes, I once worked there) have come under fire for sexual harassment and gender-based discrimination. Sidelining, mansplaining, patronizing, and pay gaps: A career in tech is still hard for women. Life in a startup is seemingly even harder. “How do you do it?” people often ask me. Like most women, I’ve had to navigate subtle and not-so-subtle biases at different points in my own career. Along the way, I’ve come to realize that terms like “imposter syndrome” unfairly place the burden to adapt squarely on women. Instead, it’s the environment that must change. The onus is on startups to create a culture where women can thrive. Start at the top, and start early Tech startups are overwhelmingly (72%) founded by men, who mostly recruit from within their own network and end up hiring more men who look just like them. The key to changing the company dynamic starts at the top. You need to bring on female leaders early—within the first five hires. Diversity and inclusion shouldn’t be an afterthought that’s addressed after your company has a dedicated HR team. It must be deeply embedded in your company culture from day one. Read More …

Remote work made digital nomads possible. The pandemic made them essential

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This story is part of  The Road Ahead , a series that examines the future of travel and how we’ll experience the world after the pandemic. In April, a radio DJ, a marine ecologist, a water polo player, and a migrant studies scholar flew to idyllic Dubrovnik, a seaside city in Croatia with a vast labyrinth of medieval architecture famed for composing the scenery of the cult fantasy TV show Game of Thrones . Hailing from Finland, Japan, and the United States, the travelers were among 10 lucky winners of a first-of-its-kind  digital nomad residency contest, for which the prize was a month-long stay in the lush “Pearl of the Adriatic” with complimentary meals and lodging. The residents ate, drank, networked, and day-tripped to the cliffs of Konavle—home of 2020’s most beautiful beach in Europe—and the island of Mljet, which is shrouded in dense forest that features exciting hazards like venomous snakes and wild mongooses. Ostensibly, they were there to brainstorm how to design Dubrovnik as a nomad-friendly city in the digital age. But for Croatia, the real goal was to market its own image away from a “holiday playground,” as program director Tanja Polegubic calls it, into a serious long-term destination for remote workers. You could think of it as striking while the iron is hot—or really, while Croatia is hot: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the country saw an influx of workers fleeing expensive cities in western Europe. “Asia wasn’t an option, so a lot of people were looking to the Balkans because the further east you go, it’s a lot cheaper,” Polegubic says. Croatia’s not alone: Countries spanning the Caribbean isle to the Arabian desert are suddenly pivoting to court digital nomads in the post-coronavirus era, dangling everything from free vaccines, to tax breaks, to the chance to live in tropical paradise. Call it a new global arms race, where the weapon in question is an arsenal of highly skilled remote workers—ones that were trapped in their homes during the pandemic, but could now be untethered by it from their offices forever. With a new class of human capital up for grabs, countries are looking to stockpile talent, and digital nomads are living a new reality: They’ve become a hot commodity. COVID-19 was an existential crisis: For the first time, a community built around having no fixed address was forced to shelter in place.” Digital nomads, ironically, are easy to locate. By nature of their lifestyle, many have built careers on the internet: sharing snapshots of dreamy landscapes spun from coconut palm trees and rainbow-colored villas, hosting blogs that detail the ins and outs of life perpetually on the road Read More …

Remote work made digital nomads possible. The pandemic made them essential

Posted onAuthoradmin

This story is part of  The Road Ahead , a series that examines the future of travel and how we’ll experience the world after the pandemic. In April, a radio DJ, a marine ecologist, a water polo player, and a migrant studies scholar flew to idyllic Dubrovnik, a seaside city in Croatia with a vast labyrinth of medieval architecture famed for composing the scenery of the cult fantasy TV show Game of Thrones . Hailing from Finland, Japan, and the United States, the travelers were among 10 lucky winners of a first-of-its-kind  digital nomad residency contest, for which the prize was a month-long stay in the lush “Pearl of the Adriatic” with complimentary meals and lodging. The residents ate, drank, networked, and day-tripped to the cliffs of Konavle—home of 2020’s most beautiful beach in Europe—and the island of Mljet, which is shrouded in dense forest that features exciting hazards like venomous snakes and wild mongooses. Ostensibly, they were there to brainstorm how to design Dubrovnik as a nomad-friendly city in the digital age. But for Croatia, the real goal was to market its own image away from a “holiday playground,” as program director Tanja Polegubic calls it, into a serious long-term destination for remote workers. You could think of it as striking while the iron is hot—or really, while Croatia is hot: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the country saw an influx of workers fleeing expensive cities in western Europe. “Asia wasn’t an option, so a lot of people were looking to the Balkans because the further east you go, it’s a lot cheaper,” Polegubic says. Croatia’s not alone: Countries spanning the Caribbean isle to the Arabian desert are suddenly pivoting to court digital nomads in the post-coronavirus era, dangling everything from free vaccines, to tax breaks, to the chance to live in tropical paradise. Call it a new global arms race, where the weapon in question is an arsenal of highly skilled remote workers—ones that were trapped in their homes during the pandemic, but could now be untethered by it from their offices forever. With a new class of human capital up for grabs, countries are looking to stockpile talent, and digital nomads are living a new reality: They’ve become a hot commodity. COVID-19 was an existential crisis: For the first time, a community built around having no fixed address was forced to shelter in place.” Digital nomads, ironically, are easy to locate. By nature of their lifestyle, many have built careers on the internet: sharing snapshots of dreamy landscapes spun from coconut palm trees and rainbow-colored villas, hosting blogs that detail the ins and outs of life perpetually on the road. Read More …

How 9-year-old YouTube millionaire Ryan Kaji is building a kids’ media empire

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In 2015, when Ryan Kaji was three years old, he asked his parents why he wasn’t on YouTube like the other kids he was watching. Ryan’s mom, Loann, and dad, Shion, created the channel Ryan ToysReview that same year, uploading videos of Ryan opening and playing with toys and conducting at-home science experiments. Initially, they thought YouTube would be just another hobby for Ryan, like swimming or gymnastics. At the very least, it was a fun way to keep their extended families in Vietnam and Japan up-to-date on Ryan’s life in Texas. But in less than a year, Ryan ToysReview, which they later renamed Ryan’s World , was one of YouTube’s top kids’ channels. [Photo: courtesy of Ryan’s World] “We saw a tipping point of the channel very early on,” says Shion, whose family’s surname is Guan—Kaji is their stage name. “We were very confused because we were uploading the videos as a hobby, and the production value wasn’t that great either. So at first my wife and I thought maybe somebody was hacking our channel.” Today, at just nine years old, Ryan is YouTube’s highest earner (child or otherwise) for three years running, according to Forbes , pulling in an estimated $29.5 million in revenue in 202o. Ryan’s World has more than 45 million subscribers across nine channels and has generated more than 62 billion lifetime views. “It’s exciting seeing people enjoying my content and what we make,” Ryan says. Children’s content is the most viewed on YouTube and has certainly made some very young people very rich. But the platform’s evolving policies around permissible content and what can be monetized has created something of an unstable environment for creators, especially for kid-centric channels such as Ryan’s World. In 2019, Google was fined $170 million because YouTube violated the FTC’s Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which requires websites to have certain guidelines for collecting personal data from children under 13. That fine led to YouTube creating new privacy rules around videos targeted toward kids, including limiting advertising, a key revenue stream for creators. “It hit us tremendously,” Shion says. “More than half our revenue from YouTube decreased since the new regulation.” Keeping kids safe online is paramount, but critics of YouTube’s response felt it put creators on the hook for an issue the platform created in the first place. According to the complaint , YouTube touted itself as the premier destination for kids’ content but never bothered complying with COPPA. So when the FTC finally cracked down, YouTube’s efforts seemed more reactive and sweeping, impacting creators far more than a $170 million fine flicked at a company worth billions. Kidfluencer content on YouTube is also under the eye of watchdog organizations monitoring the disclosure of advertising products and services in videos aimed at kids. The group Truth in Advertising filed a complaint with the FTC against Ryan’s World in 2019 accusing the Kajis of not properly flagging branded videos Read More …

How Apple designed AirTags to be privacy-first and stalker-proof

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Apple’s “Spring Loaded” event on Tuesday offered a bonanza of new hardware announcements, including some unexpected ones. But while Apple went big and loud with the new iMacs and powerful with the new M1 iPad Pros, the company also launched a tiny and discreet new product: the AirTag. AirTag is Apple’s long-rumored tracking gadget, designed to be attached to an item to track its location in your house—or across the city. The product has been long in development and will take on the likes of other trackers already on the market, such as Tile . However, as with many things Apple, the company says AirTag has one massive advantage over its competitors: It was built from the ground up around privacy. “When it came to designing our own product, we thought carefully about how to get this right in a way that no one else in the industry’s ever done before,” says Kaiann Drance, Apple’s VP of worldwide iPhone product marketing. I spoke to her and Ron Huang, the company’s senior director of sensing and connectivity, about Apple’s newest, tiniest gadget. “You’ll see that we designed for the privacy of AirTag owners and nonowners, as well as making these benefits opened up to third-party products as well .” [Photo: courtesy of Apple] And from a privacy standpoint, that’s what’s really remarkable about the AirTag: Apple isn’t just thinking about the privacy of AirTag owners themselves, or even solely about users in Apple’s ecosystem. The company designed the AirTag with the privacy of everyone in mind—yes, even Android users and people who have never owned an Apple product. So just what are Apple’s AirTag privacy protections that keep it in the realm of a truly useful tool instead of a gadget for stalkers? Privacy for AirTag owners Each AirTag is about the size of a coat button and is designed to let you track whatever item you’ve attached it to, all from the Find My app on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, or iCloud.com. You set up a new AirTag by pairing the diminutive gadget with your iPhone. Read More …