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👋🏾 Hey From Colorintech - #035

<<First Name>>, Happy new year!

New year but same us😅. Every week to make your hump day just that bit better. This week we're back at it with a range of news from Google, Amazon, Alibaba and some juicy predictions for 2021

Oh and if you missed an edition from last year, you can find it here 😜
 
🗞️Diversity and inclusion news🗞️
✊🏿The return of the Union✊🏿
 

The big D&I news over the festive break was a group of disgruntled Alphabet (The company that Owns, Google, Deepmind, Waymo, etc) employees set up a Union.😲

Yep as a blast from the past although small (only a few hundred at time of writing) the union is open to all US and Canadian workers (Full time, contractors, or otherwise) at, Alphabet.👀

The announcement comes after years of worker activism, protests, and leaks. It's not the first time Googlers have been impassioned, having regularly pushed the giant to do more on climate change, not to work with the US or Chinese government, and to take racial justice more seriously✊🏿

You can read what the chairs of the union said


👀Progress on the Pledges👀

The Guardian did some good work on digging into the progress the big tech companies have made on their pledges around Racial Justice👀

Take a look at them and see what you think, but we do think the coverage is skewed in terms of the level of detail and investigate journalism into some of the pledges and their impact🕵🏽‍♀️

The following companies were looked at (which is interesting in itself given the likes of Apple, Microsoft, And Netflix, and many more were omitted)😲

💬Facebook
🐤Twitter
📦Amazon
🎥Youtube
🔎Google

Article is here
 
🧠Things that make you go hmmm🧠
📱Google's next attempt at social media📱

Possibly one of Google's biggest strategic opportunities missed was social media. Now some may argue it was good for them to avoid the trials and tribulations (and lawsuits) that would have come with a platform of its own, but it tried anyway (Remember Google+😅) and a few other things you can see on this website (which captures pretty much every Google product that has been scrapped).

Well "if you can't beat em, aggregate them" appears to be Google's latest move with a pilot of a feature that looks to aid the discovery of short-form video content (on Google of course)

To be honest, we don't expect it to last. Should it take off, we imagine Instagram and TikTok would find a way to stifle Google's ability to foster discovery (unless the increase in traffic was worth it)🤔
 
So what?: If you've spent ages trying to wean yourself off social media after the holiday season, Google will make it just that bit harder.
 
🌳Somethings growing in the forest🌳
 
Amazon has had a busy couple of months with much of the world forced to shop online. Nonetheless, there were about 3 different stories we could have covered so we put them all here🤣

The podcast wars
Harry and Megan launched their much-awaited podcast on Spotify but not to be left out, Amazon acquired Podcast network Wondery (we assume for integration into Amazon music) 🎙 Oh and Twitter got in on it too🤣

Maps
With such a huge logistics network, Amazon has been working on its own maps. Well, it's taking on Google but enabling access to its maps API. We could see Amazon showing where you could pick up a click and collect for consumers, or even physical shop locations, but perhaps far bigger, build these maps not it's autonomous driving tech🗺

Customers
One of the world's most volumed sites Twitter is moving to AWS and off its own infrastructure. Why, well its probably cheaper (They don't have stump up the costs of innovation) and more flexible (if someone gets better at it, you can move). It's a huge customer for the AWS juggernaut and likey to be a huge bonus for whoever in sales managed to land that one😅
 
So what?: The everything store has some more wind in its sails, and who would bet against it in 2021
 
🕵🏼‍♂️Where is Jack Ma🕵🏽‍♀️
 
So news broke over the break that the Chinese competition authorities were investigating the likes of Alibaba for their competitive practices. News on this saw share prices tumble 8% and the rumored largest IPO ever (Ant Financial (Alibaba's financial arm) halted😲.

But the story got stranger because Business insider India (which let's just say given the geopolitics is an interesting one to break the story), then pointed out that since this has happened Jack Ma (Alibaba Founder and formerly until this all knocked about $10bn of his net worth, China's richest person)
has gone Radio silent since October during some of the busiest trading times of the org👀

It's the equivalent of Jeff Bezos not being seen in over two months after criticizing Trump🤨

Ma had been told by the Chinese Authorities to "restructure" his Fintech empire after seemingly courting attention for a critique of how regulation by the Chinese government was influencing the banking sector🕵🏼‍♂️

So what?: The story is ongoing but it does make you think there are consequences in China for all if you become too outspoken no matter who you are
😞Support for women fell😞

We saw some report from Crunchbase that shows 800 female-founded startups globally have received a total of $4.9 billion in venture funding in 2020. Sounds big, but the sad thing is through mid-December, representing a 27 percent decrease over the same period last year⬇️. 

Covid-19 has had a significant impact on the lives of women for a number of societal reasons, (which industry and government probably haven't gone far enough to support) leading to reports from the likes of McKinsey in September on women in the workplace finding that “as much as 30% of working mothers are considering leaving the workforce🚶🏽‍♀️ 

Not a great situation and unfortunately as per our predictions below, we don't see improvement significantly (relative to 2019)😞 

So what?: It could be a pretty tough time in 2021
👩🏿‍💻For the creators👩🏿‍💻
📈 The tools behind the tech📉
 
📦Product📦
📏Design📏
🌐Events and opportunities 🌐
👨🏽‍💻Founders Forum are hiring💰
 
A cool role with a former colleague of one of our Founders 

They're looking for an exceptional entry-level analyst to join their team in West London, working to support the planning and delivery of growth initiatives launched out of the Founders Forum Family. This is a fantastic opportunity for a bright, ambitious and emotionally intelligent individual to dive straight into the broader Founders Forum ecosystem, helping to design and build the next ventures to come out of the group. For more info email max@ff.co.

Or check it out here
👨🏽‍💻A personal mentor💰
 
The Blix team are making great strides and are looking to example the network of support they're offering to people

If you want a personal mentoring session with folks who have worked for Amazon, Google, Intel and more
Check it out here
📣Partner Corner📣
 
🛍Arm still have roles available🛍
  • Including positions for first years
  • 2nd 3rd and penultimate years 
  • and Graduates
🔎New Year new Mentor🔎
 
Get yourself a free Google mentor - Link here 
 
🙌🏾The latest from the Colorintech team🙌🏾

🔮Our predictions for 2021🧙🏾‍♀️

We were having some discussions about what we thought would happen in 2021 (in order to take a look in a year's time to see if we were correct😅. Here were some of the big failures of 2020

Predictions
  • We think D&I progress will stagnate at best or regress at worse😞
    • Whilst we are bullish that there will be more capital💸, goodwill, and initiatives than ever, we think there will be a regression back to old habits. Primarily we think as companies are spoilt for choice with lots of talent, their measures to recruit more diversity will regress back to type👀
    • As layoffs happen, as we saw with the likes of Uber it will be minorities who are often in the most precarious roles bear the brunt🤨
    • As minorities and women work from home for longer, we think companies will find it harder to ensure equitable opportunities for those with healthcare and child responsibilities🧑🏾‍🍼
  • We think we'll still be working from home all year
    • Lots of companies said the summer, and some have said the autumn, we think there will be pushes to experiment with flexible working, but as winter 20201 approaches, a lot of people will opt to stay at home a lot longer👩🏽‍💻
  • We're pretty certain there will be a new iPhone
    • Some things never change, as just as Jeff Bezos said, build around things that don't change, so the equivalent of a dead cert, is there will be a new iPhone model😅
P.s We're still hiring here
 

😎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!❤️

06/01/21 
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