For the Office, the Future Is Now

Throughout the past year, countless conversations have been prompted by the question “What will the post-COVID-19 office look like?” Understandably so, as the pandemic has rapidly changed the built environment in unparalleled ways.

But at ThinkLab, we’ve been wondering whether that’s even the right question to ask. The “future” of the workplace makes it sound as though we’re headed toward a fixed, monolithic destination. In reality, aren’t we all on the metaphorical job site together, hammers in hand, building and defining our individual realities in real time? With this in mind, our team is challenging the concept of “normal,” but probably not in the way you might think. Here’s how—and why. READ MORE

Who’s Raking Off All Your Awful Office Meetings?

This year’s Labor Day finds millions of Americans — those who labor in offices — almost bubbling about the prospects for an epic transformation of their workspaces. Within Corporate America, working remotely may soon become a permanent standard operating practice.

Imagine that. No more horrific daily commutes. No more stressing in cramped cubicles. And, maybe most of all, no more hours spent trapped in corporate meeting rooms that deaden the soul. READ MORE

Raising wages isn’t enough to attract and keep workers, experts say

Hiring has perhaps never been harder for employers.

As pandemic restrictions eased amid the accessibility of Covid vaccines and businesses started bouncing back, many employers faced workforce shortages. Workers who may have lost their jobs during the peak of the pandemic were now highly desired.

In June, there were more than 10 million job openings in the U.S., the most ever recorded by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In comparison, only 8.7 million people were still unemployed in July, according to the BLS. READ MORE

College graduate starting salaries are at an all-time high—and these 10 majors earn the most

Despite a global pandemic that caused massive unemployment and slashed earnings among working-class Americans, starting salaries for recent college graduates continue to rise. 

According to a recent report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers, the average starting salary for the college Class of 2020 was $55,260 — 2.5% higher than that of the Class of 2019 ($53,889 ) and 8.5% higher than the Class of ’18 ($50,944).  READ MORE

Wells Fargo's long road to repair extends with prospect of more penalties

It has been nearly five years since Wells Fargo & Co (WFC.N) began addressing widespread customer abuses that led to regulatory penalties, lawsuits, reputational damage, business overhauls and management changes, but the fourth-largest U.S. bank apparently still has a lot of work to do, analysts say.

Regulators at two key agencies – the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) – are considering additional sanctions against Wells Fargo because it has been too slow to compensate victims and address underlying weaknesses in business practices, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. READ MORE

Google pushes its return to the office back to 2022

Google has yet again postponed a full return to the office, announcing that its employees can continue to work remotely until next year. The decision follows similar ones already made by the company's tech industry peers like Facebook and Amazon.

Google (GOOGL) workers around the world will not be required to return to their offices until at least Jan. 10, 2022, CEO Sundar Pichai said in a note to employees on Tuesday. (The policy only applies to Google and not its parent company Alphabet, a company spokesperson said). READ MORE

White House COVID-19 czar urges businesses require employees to be vaccinated

The White House COVID-19 response team on Tuesday urged businesses in the country to require employees to be vaccinated.

COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients presented a White House briefing alongside the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Dr. Rochelle Walensky and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci. READ MORE

The Investors Trying to Fix the Most Toxic Company in Video Games

In July, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing sued video-game giant Activision Blizzard, alleging, more or less, that the company has a workplace environment from hell. Regulators said a two-year investigation into the company revealed an alcohol-drenched “frat boy” culture that included inappropriate conduct by executives, men openly joking about rape, and a general “breeding ground for harassment and discrimination against women.” The company called the lawsuit “truly meritless and irresponsible” (though it seemed to have some trouble figuring out how to respond), and more than 2,000 current and former employees responded by putting their names on an open letter that said, “We no longer trust that our leaders will place employee safety above their own interests.” In early August, employees shared their salaries en masse, Bloomberg reported, to pressure the company into confronting pay inequities. One executive, Blizzard head J. Allen Brack, resigned. California has since expanded its suit against the gamemaker, alleging the company shredded documents “related to investigations and complaints.” Activision Blizzard denied these allegations, and the fate of the legal and organizing efforts is uncertain. READ MORE

Big Tech wants to build the ‘metaverse.’ What on Earth does that mean?

The 2018 sci-fi film “Ready Player One” offers a glimpse of what many tech companies prophesize is the Internet’s next big thing.

Inspired by a 2011 Ernest Cline novel, the film’s orphaned teenage hero flees his bleak real-world existence by immersing in a dazzling virtual reality fantasy. The boy straps on his headset, reminiscent of a pair of VR goggles, and escapes into a trippy virtual universe, dubbed “OASIS.” READ MORE

What’s In The Water At Zillow? An Inside Look At Its Track Record Of Alumni-Spawned Startups

Former Zillow engineer Jason Tan now calls striking out in his interviews for Microsoft, Amazon and Google the best thing to ever happen to him. It’s what led him to become employee No. 63 or so at Zillow, where he would develop a love for startups and eventually go on to become the founder of fraud detection company Sift.

“Because I was able to witness at Zillow firsthand how much impact I could have and how quickly you could move and how decisions could be made collaboratively … I just really admired that type of environment and I realized that was one of the big benefits that you get by working at a startup,” Tan said. “More impact, more opportunities for growth, and more connectivity to the organization.” READ MORE

Big Four accounting firms rush to join the ESG bandwagon

The sustainability boom has transferred trillions of dollars to environmental, social and governance funds, bringing new stakeholder-led agendas to corporate executive offices.

Today, the Big Four accounting firms are on the cusp of offering two fascinating opportunities. It’s an opportunity to expand what companies have to explain and rebrand their scandal-stricken professions as experts on climate change, diversity and consumer confidence. READ MORE

Department of Energy, Hewlett Packard Enterprises unveil Polaris supercomputer

A delay in the delivery of Intel Corporation's exascale supercomputer to the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory has created a new opportunity for chipmaker rivals NVIDIA Corporation and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).

On Wednesday, Argonne unveiled Polaris, a testbed supercomputer made up of 280 of Hewlett Packard Enterprise's Apollo Gen10 Plus systems and powered by 2,240 of NVIDIA's A100 Tensor Core graphics processing units and 560 of AMD's second- and third-generation EPYC processors. READ MORE

'Unicorn' startup CEO faked sales figures, deals to trick investors, prosecutors claim

The US Department of Justice and the SEC on Wednesday charged the former CEO and co-founder of mobile development testing biz HeadSpin with defrauding investors.

The government's complaint [PDF], filed in a federal district court in San Jose, California, contends that Manish Lachwani, who helped found HeadSpin in nearby Palo Alto in 2015 and served as its CEO until May 2020, raised money by overstating the company's financial performance. READ MORE