Contrary Research Rundown #35
Unpacking the impact of remote work on workplace, and new memos on Glossier, Descript and more
Research Rundown
During the COVID-19 pandemic, employers implemented major changes to the workplace without waiting for research on their impact. 50 million Americans, mostly in white-collar professions, suddenly began working remotely in some capacity. Working parents value this newfound freedom and have since resisted when large companies asked them to return to the office.
Economists Natalia Emanuel, Emma Harrington, and Amanda Pallais conducted research on software engineers at a Fortune 500 technology company. They discovered that remote work improved senior engineers’ productivity, but feedback for junior engineers decreased. The repercussions of remote work, especially with decreased feedback, were more noticeable for female engineers. The study’s preliminary findings are limited to one form of interaction among one company’s knowledge workers. However, they indicate that in-office work contributes to early-career development and that mentoring and in-person training is difficult to replicate through Slack or Zoom.
Before the pandemic, engineering teams were housed within the same building, holding face-to-face meetings and interacting in the cafeteria, or were spread among multiple buildings, communicating virtually to bypass lengthy walks across the company campus. Economists measured feedback by analyzing the amount of comments engineers made on each other’s code. Before the pandemic, engineers within the same building received 21% more feedback than those in different buildings. Once the pandemic caused everyone to work remotely, the feedback gap was eliminated, suggesting that physical proximity, rather than other differences, was the cause of higher feedback levels.
According to the researchers, younger engineers, particularly those under age 30, received more feedback when they worked in the same building as more experienced colleagues. They refer to this phenomenon as the “power of proximity.” That being said, remote work is here to stay. 60% of women and 52% of men reported they’d look for a different job if remote work were no longer an option, according to a survey by FlexJobs. Going forward, companies will need to weigh their policies around in-person versus remote work against the need to maximize the development of young talent and future leaders.
Glossier is a direct-to-consumer beauty and skincare brand that leverages content and community to power a superior shopping experience. To learn more, read our full memo here.
ClickUp is an all-in-one productivity platform that brings teams, tasks, and tools together in one place. To learn more, read our full memo here.
Descript offers tools to record, edit, transcribe, collaborate, and share videos and podcasts. To learn more, read our full memo here.
Skydio manufactures drones used by consumers, enterprises, and government customers. It designs, assembles, and supports its products in the US. To learn more, read our full memo here.
Headway has created a platform that connects patients, therapists, and insurance companies in the mental health ecosystem. To learn more, read our full memo here.
EU regulators approved Microsoft’s $69B Activision Blizzard acquisition after Microsoft made concessions to keep rivals’ access to Call of Duty and other games.
SpaceX hired a key NASA human spaceflight head ahead of the next Starship launch. You can read our memo on SpaceX here.
Kevin Systrom explained why Artifact wants to treat writers like the creators they are.
Amazon is building an AI-powered ‘conversational experience’ for search.
Apple rolled out new concert discovery features in Apple Maps and Apple Music, including Guides to local venues in select cities and Set Lists for select artists.
Apple also unveiled new cognitive, vision, and speech accessibility features for iOS, iPad, and macOS.
WhatsApp debuted Chat Lock, letting users put chats in a password- or biometrics-protected folder and removing sender and message contents from notifications.
TikTok launched Effect Creator Rewards, a new fund that pays creators for popular effects.
Meta spun out CRM company Kustomer, which the company acquired for ~$1B in a deal that closed in 2022.
Zoom plans to add Anthropic’s AI chatbot Claude to its products, starting with Contact Center.
A recap of the testimony from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, IBM VP Christina Montgomery, and professor Gary Marcus at a US Senate subcommittee hearing.
In an interview, Elon Musk discussed acquiring Twitter, defended his inflammatory tweets, and called tech workers the “laptop class living in la-la-land”.
Apple touted $2B+ in App Store fraud stopped in 2022, 3.9M stolen credit cards blocked, 147M+ ratings/reviews removed, and 428K developer accounts closed.
Stability AI released StableStudio, an open-source version of DreamStudio, its commercial interface for the text-to-image Stable Diffusion model.
Instagram added support for GIFs in comments on posts and Reels, plans to launch a lyrics feature for Reels, and will roll out Instagram Gifts in India.
YouTube unveiled 30-second unskippable ads on top-performing videos on TVs.
Snowflake is in advanced talks to acquire Neeva. Check out our deep dive on Snowflake.
Private equity firms Francisco Partners and TPG plan a $5B+ bid to acquire observability software company New Relic.
OpenAI launched a ChatGPT app for iOS in the US, with the same functionality as the web version but with speech input support using OpenAI’s Whisper.
Instacart had ad revenue of about $740M in 2022, up 30% from 2021; nearly 30% of Instacart's 2022 revenue came from selling ads.
Meta bets big on AI with custom chips and a supercomputer.