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Stop setting reopening dates

Good morning! This Friday, Microsoft postponed its office reopening and others should, too, Facebook is ready for its own "glasshole" backlash, and a new Texas censorship bill is awfully similar to the one that was struck down in Florida.
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(Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here to get Source Code every day.)Microsoft dealt the final blow yesterday to the hot-vax-summer hope that October would see a widespread return to the office. Just six weeks after shifting reopening dates from September to October, Big Tech now admits it won't make its employees go back to campus until at least early next year.
But unlike Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Uber, Lyft and others — which have all at least mentioned January or February 2022 as an office reopening date — Microsoft said that it doesn't know when its headquarters will fully reopen.
Predicting when to bring workers back is nearly impossible. Clearly, whatever methods Big Tech has been using so far don't work in an ever-changing pandemic.
So embracing uncertainty may be a good idea. Microsoft isn't alone: Intel, Twitter and Hewlett Packard Enterprise are also holding off on announcing a return-to-office date. But many others continue to set (and move) tentative return dates.
One smaller company that doesn't know when it will reopen is Workhuman. The nearly 800-person software maker had planned to reopen in September, but decided in recent weeks to postpone its full reopening indefinitely.
Of course, many Big Tech offices are open now. Campuses are by no means closed, but these delayed reopenings mean that most workers will have the option to stay home until next year.
In the meantime, tech companies, do your workers a favor and do like Microsoft, Twitter and Intel: Take a breath and think hard before you announce a new return date.
Singapore is fast becoming a global hotbed of tech innovation. It's easy to see why. Nearly 80 of the world's top 100 tech firms have set up outposts there, including Google, Facebook, Stripe, Salesforce and homegrown unicorns like the super-app Grab.
Google Health may have dissolved, but Karen DeSalvo said the company's interest in health care hasn't gone away:
Elon Musk is pushing Tesla employees to rally before the end of the quarter:
On Protocol | Workplace: Social impact will eventually become part of a company's makeup, Twilio's Erin Reilly said:
Box's Aaron Levie isn't going anywhere. The company's shareholders struck down a proposal that would have removed him and two other board members.
Apple fired Ashley Gjøvik, a senior engineering program manager, for allegedly leaking confidential information. She's been tweeting for months about her issues with the company, and has been on leave since August.
Kevin Lynch is taking on Apple's self-driving car project following Doug Field's move to Ford. Lynch first started working on the car project earlier this year.
Ximalaya ditched its U.S. IPO plans. A few months ago, China was pressing the online audio platform to move its IPO from the U.S. to Hong Kong.
Mastercard bought CipherTrace, a blockchain analytics company, as the company tries to get more involved in digital currencies.
JPMorgan Chase is acquiring The Infatuation, which owns websites and apps that help people find places to eat. It'll run as a separate brand within JPMorgan.
Brian Shroder is the new president of Binance.US. Shroder previously served as an exec at Ant Group and Uber.
John Branscome is heading to Facebook to work on federal policy. Branscome is currently the top Democratic staffer on the Senate Commerce Committee.
Jennifer Taylor Hodges will join Mozilla as its new head of U.S. policy in D.C. Hodges was previously the VP of U.S. government affairs at BT in the District.
Some days, it might feel like you spent more time talking to people about getting stuff done than, you know, actually getting the stuff done. But Google Calendar now has a tool that can help you figure out where you spend your time.
The new feature shows you how many working hours you spend in meetings each day, and breaks the stats down into meetings with just one other person and meetings with multiple people, offering insights into how you spend your days. And don't worry: The information isn't available to anyone but you, so your boss won't know if you skip a couple meetings to run some "errands."
Business leaders say they choose Singapore for its modern tech infrastructure, strong government support, robust pipeline of talent and pro-business regulations (the World Bank ranks it No. 2 in the world for ease of doing business). Plus, its location in the heart of Southeast Asia serves as a launchpad into the bustling Asian-Pacific market.
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