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🗞️Diversity and inclusion news🗞️
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👂🏽What do employees think about Diversity and Inclusion👂🏽
Lenovo and Intel combined forces to work on a Global Diversity and Inclusion insight report. Over 5000 respondents across the US, UK, Germany, Brazil, and China were surveyed and we highlight some of the interesting points
- In the US, 57% of respondents think D&I in the workplace is getting better.🧐
- In the US (75%), China (89%), and Brazil (88%) Consider a company’s D&I policies are “extremely” or “very” important when deciding where to apply for a job and whether to accept an offer🥰.
- A consistent worry across respondents was that AI could be harmful to people from marginalized or underrepresented communities: US (57%), UK (45%), Germany (41%), Brazil (54%), China (64%).🤖
Read more here
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🏡Sorting out your own ship🏡
Earlier in June Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel was reported to say "he doesn't release diversity numbers because it would reinforce the perception that Silicon Valley isn't diverse". Well the cynic in us, also thinks the reason he might not want to, its because the numbers at Snap are just as bad as everyone else (and probably a tad worse in reality)👀.
Well, Evan's stance didn't last long because, in bowing to the pressure Snap, released their data, and guess what... It's bad😒. The team at Launch Ticker pointed out that
- Women account for 32.9 percent of the company’s global workforce, up 0.9 percent since 2018;
- Women are 16 percent of Snapchat’s tech teams, the leadership of which is 7 percent female;
- Black employees account for 4.1 percent of the firm’s workforce, while Hispanic staff are 6.8 percent;
- Snap’s leadership is 70.4 percent White, 16.5 Asian, 2.6 percent Black, 2.6 Hispanic, 0.9 percent Native American/Pacific Islander, 7 percent multiracial
We thought the above stance echos the idea that if I ignore the problem it will go away. To some credit, Snap says it will hire twice as many women in tech roles and double the number of employees from underrepresented racial and ethnic minority groups by 2023. If you can't beat em join(copy👀) them (appears to be what the snap product team is doing) so maybe that tactic inspired their diversity pledges
A round-up of the report
If there is any light at the end of the tunnel, is not as bad at HSBC where they appear to have no sense of how many Black Directors they have. Yes you read that right, they don't know, but they want to double that figure 🤔 Link here
Now if this data and these stories aren't enough to show folks why change is needed, let's not waste our time making the business case as this article from Sifted points out.
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🧠Things that make you go hmmm🧠
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👩🏽⚖️Testify👩🏽⚖️
Last week the CEO's of Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple all testified in front of congress. Topics covered included competition and data. Whilst there are extensive write up on it as you can see, here, here and here, we picked our some of the highlights 🤭
- 🍎Apple considers its 30 percent fee of digital transactions on the App Store fair (when they compare them to brick and mortar) even if users have no choice but to go through their store if they want apps on their iPhone
- 📦Jeff Bezos noted - That despite Amazon having a policy against using seller-specific data to aid his "private label business,” He couldn't guarantee the "policy has never been violated"
- 🤳🏾Mark Zuckerberg believes there is "intense competition" citing "The most popular messaging service in the US is iMessage. The fastest-growing app is TikTok. The most popular app for video is YouTube. The fastest-growing ads platform is Amazon. The largest ads platform is Google. And for every dollar spent on advertising in the US, less than 10 cents is spent with us" - The Australians think Facebook can do more to help competition though, leading with a world's first forcing them and Google to pay media publishers
- 🔎Sundar Pinchai at Google denied that "more user data [Google collects] means more money [for Google]" - That wasn't the only line of attack though as they were accused of building a "walled garden" in the week this report came out
You can read more in this rather good wrap up by Crunchbase
And they used Cisco webex (much to the internet's amusement) especially at the point where Jeff Bezos was on mute 😅
Given Tencent's recent rally leading it to take Facebook's crown as the most valuable social media holding company, the existential threat to drummed up by the CEOs of China to America's tech supremacy is likely to strike a chord with the regulators. Remember Huawei anyone (yep they just became the worlds biggest Smartshopne shipper)🇨🇳
So what?: It was a bit of an anti-climax but the general appeal to American patriotism and the very technical nature of these orgs left many with the sense that if any regulation is on the way, it probably won't start in the USA 👀
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⏰The clock is Tiking⏰
This week has been a bumper week for all news TikTok.
First, the social platform came under fire from Donald Trump who threatened to ban the platform in the USA (impacting 100m) of its users by mid-September. Whilst there were a few debates about how legal this is, it then enabled the next big story to emerge which was a move from Microsoft who are eyeing up buying the Social Media app in the USA (and few other markets) to put it in US Ownership. That didn't stop the self-proclaimed dealmaker for arguing for a stake in the potential acquisition💸. We found this article which has some suggestions on why TikTok irks Donald Trump
The rationale for Microsoft is a bit mixed but probably resolves around, gaining a huge Azure (its cloud product) customer, not losing all of its touchpoints with the B2C market (queue Advertising pressure on the Social media giants), and well as appeasing the US administration🇺🇸.
Decoupling TikTok from its Chinese parent at Bytedance could be very problematic, after all, how do you get the tech stack out of China? How do you hire up and build a team to run it in the USA at speed? And how do you manage a highly vibrant platform during that process? A start would be to Look under the hood, so, to its credit, and there are some notable Diversity and inclusion benefits, TikTok is opening up its algorithms and leading the race for transparency, and we hope more follow suit👀
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🚗The End of Silicon Roundabout🚗
This week we had some interesting news from the London tech scene
- Legacy accelerator TechHub closed its doors for good after COVID-19 induced financial difficulties. It's a sad demise but probably sums up what's happening (probably to a lot of We works in the area, let alone the startups who have long left)😔
In this long read, Wired postured some of the reasons that that may be Cough ... (Policy change, High rents, oh and Brexit)🤭. Read more here
If nothing else the new roundabout looks good
So what?: It's hard to build a tech hub, but with rising rents and global pandemic and the rise of remote working, it may be a lot easier to oversee its decline
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🎋Why watching Netflix will annoy Gretta🎋
Digital activities globally make up about 4% of carbon emissions, and that footprint is set to double by 2025 according to the French government 😧. Interestingly of that 4%, streaming makes up about 25% of that or 1% in total which is the equivalent of what the entire country of Spain generated in 2018🤯. Given there is a global shortage of bikes it might not be so easy to hop on and do something dfferent, but it does make us think🚲.
You can read more here in sifted
So what?: Pretty much all of the tech companies have made pledges to hit net 0 carbon pledges by 2040 and that may be increasingly important for the world if Big Tech continues to rally as it did this last week.
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📈 The tools behind tech📉
📦Product📦
📏Design📏
👩🏿💻Code👩🏿💻
🏢The business behind the tech🏢
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🌐Events and opportunities 🌐
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🛍️Get your business on Google🛍️
We were encouraged to see Google making moves to help users find woman-led and Black-led businesses💅🏿. For those who live under a rock, Google is the worlds biggest search engine, so its likely being on it will help your business thrive, or at least that's what Sundar told Congress (see above)😅
Link here
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💼Sorting out your Resume💼
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🙌🏾The latest from the Colorintech team🙌🏾
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😎And that's the bottom line😎
👊🏾Let us know what you think if you have any feedback on the newsletter here👊🏾
📩If you think someone else would enjoy it, they can sign up here📩, you can forward it or you can share
  
🤗In these challenging times, we hope you and your loved ones stay safe.🤗
❤️Love, peace and happiness from the Colorintech Team!❤️
05/08/20
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