The latest tech controversy? The return of the five-day face-to-face work week

Welcome to Startups Weekly, a nuanced look at this week’s startup news and trends from senior reporter and Equity co-host Natasha Mascarenhas. Sign up here to receive it in your inbox.

Let the fervents among us stand up: techies, it’s forecasting season. It’s my favorite time of year, not because I’m a string eater or because I’m so concerned that the worst of the DTC is yet to come – a shot ringing loudly for the third year in a row, mind you – but because it my favorite time of the year funny. see us all sitting and thinking.

Before I get to what I’m thinking, some of my favorite predictions and topics come true Lolita Taub of Ganas VCNigel Morris from QED Investors and us.

Okay, so here’s what I think will happen in the next year: the return to the five-day in-person work week for tech workers. Before I go into all the exceptions and asterisks, let me first explain why I think this is going to happen.

Throughout 2021, we’ve talked about the shift of the pendulum from power to workers led by the Great Layoff. Then this year’s Great Quit became the Great Reset as employers laid off a large percentage of their workers due to changing macroeconomic conditions. At the start of 2023, many predicted that the wave of layoffs could get worse before it gets better, a prediction that has already come true in the latest rounds of pre-holiday cuts, including Airtable, Plaid, and Komodo Health.

In many cases, power returns to employers, meaning those who have wanted to put people to work since the start of the lockdown finally have the power to do so. I’m not saying that all founders and executives are secretly in cahoots, but I also think the domino effect is important here. When your biggest competitor starts working in the office to increase productivity, you may be tempted to do the same. At the same time, if you’re a young startup and lucky enough to hire, you can get a head start in recruiting by telling employees they can work from anywhere.

My perspective is not just a conjecture; I hear from the founders. Several employers, some citing Elon Musk’s decision to allow Twitter employees to work face-to-face again, say they plan to introduce a mandatory face-to-face work culture in the new year due to issues arising from working at distance. Work (be it productivity or collaboration). It’s a little bit of manifestation, a little bit of reality. A founder told me over a drink and a snack that he’s not afraid of losing talent, because those who leave just because there’s a personal mandate weren’t mission-driven to begin with.

Hmm.

There are many things that further complicate this feeling, especially when you consider how personal work affects the immunocompromised and those with family and care responsibilities. While I don’t think companies that are 100% distributed from day one will buy offices, I do think we will see more companies than you think start with a hybrid approach and more hybrid companies will put more emphasis on in – person work instead of remote.

I know you’re thinking about it since you didn’t get scared tell me this on twitter. Let’s end with some of my favorite tweets:

Let’s interrupt all that work talk and talk about another work talk. As always you can find me on subpila and on Instagram where I post more of my writing and work. In the rest of this newsletter, we’ll talk about persistent AI and open source, as well as employee gift guides.

AI art apps are having a moment thanks to Lensa AI

Artificial intelligence is having (another) moment, giving seminal innovations some well-deserved, if not hysterical, attention. This week, TC’s Sarah Perez saw the rise of AI art apps on the App Store, apparently building on the success of Lensa AI’s viral avatar generators.

So this is important: we will see a lot of sudden stars and real power in this space in the coming months. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, helped create ChatGPT (responsible for all the hilarious requests and responses you’ve seen all over Tech Twitter). made a great point in describing the technology, but which I think can be scaled across the industry:

“ChatGPT is incredibly limited, but good enough in some things to give a misleading impression of its size. it is a mistake to entrust him with something important now. it’s a taste of progress; We have a lot to do in terms of soundness and truthfulness.” Altman tweeted.

How open source is shaping the future of Twitter

TC’s Paul Sawers is one of the most thoughtful writers I know, and you’ll understand what I’m talking about if you read his latest article, Decentralized Discourse: How Open Source Is Shaping the Future of Twitter. He explains how algorithmic transparency, encrypted instant messaging, and yes, even content moderation are hot topics on Twitter these days and will undoubtedly shape the next chapter.

Here’s a key excerpt:

What would happen if Twitter decided to go open source? Not just a recommendation algorithm or protocol, but the whole shooter: code base, clients and all? It would certainly be a huge effort, especially if everything is happening on Twitter right now.

It would also be an almost unprecedented move for a $44 billion private company to open its entire codebase to the masses of the world. That’s not to say it could never happen, as Musk has a way of executing long range moves. Eight years ago, Musk tore up the patent book when he promised Tesla would not sue any company for “good faith” infringement of any of its patents. At the time, Musk said it was about accelerating adoption of electric cars and the necessary infrastructure (e.g. charging stations), an ethos largely focused on open source.

Gift guide corner

Here are some of the fun and creative gift guides the TC team put together this week:

some notes

Discovered on TechCrunch

Is ChatGPT a “virus eliminated”?

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has been arrested in the Bahamas

Komodo Health, which once hinted at an imminent IPO, laid off staff as CFO left

The FTC wants to prevent Microsoft from acquiring Activision

What are investors looking for in 2023 as AI permeates biotechnology?

Discovered on TechCrunch+

Why the SPAC route makes sense for Getaround

good now Now we will see more startups adopting other startups

There are many reasons to be excited about the Canadian development market.

How to respond when a VC asks for your initial review

How much money do you need to raise for your startup?

Which brings us to the end of our last conversation about this wild New Year’s Eve. I’m not going to lie: the past 12 months haven’t gone by that fast. Instead, at the pace of tech news, every day felt important, complex, if not exhausting, and also confusing in a way that really shaped my view of this world. It’s still a work in progress, but I will say that 2022 was the year I finally had the right supply, confidence, and connection to realize that technology isn’t all rainbows and butterflies.

Just to brag, there were some career highlights this year, from Interview with Kevin Hart even argued with many millionaires on Twitter. I wrote about the difficulties of rebuilding a startup and opened a window on a community business that is failing its community. I laughed at how complete the technology was and realized that my predictions age horribly every time. We’ve turned Equity Wednesday into a thoughtful program that tries to answer one big question at a time, rather than all the questions at once.

Startups Weekly is now read by tens of thousands of people and it’s never been hotter!

I have never been more fascinated by how power and capital work in this world. That’s thanks to all of you, from those who read and expand on our stories, to those who help us hit the rocks, who wait for the tip, to those who tell us what angle we’re looking for (and how to do it ). better luck next time). . 🇧🇷 It’s also thanks to my incredible team here at TechCrunch, who I can never thank enough for.

I won’t be in the office until New Year’s, probably drinking chocolate, eating Skyline chili, and enjoying my mom’s chana masala. I wish you a safe and happy holiday, and when we get back, let’s talk about New Year’s resolutions, okay?

In the meantime, I’d appreciate it if you could follow me elsewhere than on Twitter. I’m on subpila, mastodon and instagram as @/natashatheporter.

Okay, say hello first. Not serious. Okay bye

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