3 Big Takeaways from NYC Tech Week 2022
For a week, this city was our venue and startup spaces, bars, and rooftops were our conference rooms.
captured by Garland Quek
First, for context
As a co-host, I loved hosting our NYC Tech Week meetup in collaboration with Lenny’s NY Community of product managers and leaders in Product. That was awesome.
As an attendee, I went to 5 events:
The Brexfast Club: Future of Work brunch hosted by Jeanine (Brex) and Remote
Happy Hour hosted by Day One, Brex, Antler and Andrew Yeung
Founders, Funders, and Friends with Tracy Chou, CEO of Block Party hosted by 57 Grand and Studio Management
Future of Work Lunch & Learn hosted by Mercury, Magnify, and Verci
Sweat and Sparks hosted by Ankit and Jessica in Central Park
Here are the 3 trends I noticed:
People have leaned into being successful freelancers rather than full-time employees. I was typically the minority of every room when I shared that I was a full-time startup employee. I asked them when they decided to go on their own, I learned that the decision to pivot was often made within the last 2-3 years. They've worked hard to build their life around their skillset and have clients such as early stage startups or other entrepreneurs.
The way people think about work is changing. At the Future of Work panel on Friday, Max from General Catalyst brought up a great point that work is not going to be a 40 hour work week or a job description that you get. The future of work will be more capabilities based and project based. Career paths will become more custom to the person and defined by the individual, so more bottoms up than this top down approach which career ladders are generally formatted in to grow the business. Emma from TMV shared her take about how people will view life as a portfolio of work rather than working at specific companies.
Felt a general pessimism around the economy. I get it. We’ve seen and experienced this in the hiring freezes and mass layoffs of tech companies of all sizes. Apparently, great things can be built during a recession and should be. AirBNB, founded in 2008, and Warby Parker, founded in 2010, are two examples. At “Founders, Funders, & Friends,” Alap of Studio Management opened the panel by giving his current point of view that recession periods are good times to be building. We’re forecasting 2 years of this, best case. Lovely.
Other general things I learned and observed:
shot by Garland Quek
As a host of frequent tech events in NYC, I can tell you that the usual attendee drop off is 50% of RSVPs. During NYC Tech Week, drop off rates were like 75% or more. Everyone had the same idea to sign up, register and if required, get approved, and then make a game decision on whether to attend or not the day of or something.
Most meetups had a 50/50 split of women and men in the mix. One day, this won’t be a notable thing because it’ll be the norm. I hosted events around product meetups where it’s been <10% women sometimes but last week was rather even.
There's an opportunity for people to host more panels, workouts, and other “health-centered” meetups. Happy hours on rooftops are great and I suppose it’s an NYC staple but I believe tech people generally want to learn together (panel discussion) or gain a healthy experience in some way (workout or non-alcoholic meetup). Studio Management did an amazing job hosting, with their signature mocktails they served in-house for us. Ankit decided to host a workout class in Central Park. I know Andrew hosted a run on Thursday morning.
I wonder if there are more ways to bring New York City into this tech week. A lot of people who came out to the events were locals and while we all love it here, I think it's easy to become jaded about this city, too, especially considering all the dangerous happenings on the subways recently. I wonder if we could do one of those double deck tour bus experiences as a meetup next year. We could rent one out, slap the sponsors’ QR code on the bus and ride it all together, getting a tour of this city we call home while breaking the ice with each other. More Prince Street pizza pies instead of boring fruit platters.
Properly managing my own social battery will be something I prioritize next year. By the time Friday night rolled around, I was ready to hermit, which if you know me is so unlike me but I was soooooooo tired and talked out. I needed to just rest.
