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By the numbers: How COVID-19 transformed tech this week

Revenue is down, workers are worried, and everybody wants to know how to break up while in quarantine.

An empty office

Three-quarters of CFOs said in a recent survey they expect to permanently shift some of their workers to remote status in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Photo: Moment/Getty Images

As dire numbers — and occasionally hopeful ones — continue to define the coronavirus crisis, here are 12 that jumped out at us this week as the pandemic reshapes the tech landscape:

72%

Share of 7,000 tech employees surveyed by Blind this month who reported being concerned about job security — a 33% increase from March, according to Business Insider. Expedia employees were the most worried, Facebook workers the least.

28%, 74%

Increase in remote job postings on LinkedIn during March, and the share of CFOs who in a recent Gartner survey said they expected to shift at least 5% of jobs to remote status. The question is whether coronavirus-driven changes will last beyond the crisis.

22%

Year-to-year decline in U.S. venture capital deals in March, according to PwC and CB Insights' first-quarter MoneyTree report, which said some of the drop likely owes to the coronavirus crisis. The next quarter will be the one to watch: In Q1, nearly half of U.S. funding came from megarounds; 58 companies raised rounds worth $100 million or more.

$60 million to $80 million

Drop in Uber's expected revenue in the second quarter as a result of the company's financial aid program for drivers and deliverers, up from $17 million to $22 million in the first quarter. Uber is expected to report Q1 earnings May 7.

27,200 and 99,500

Jobs lost in March in the Bay Area and California, respectively, according to state figures. The Bay Area loss was the worst monthly loss in 11 years, The Mercury News reported. Joint Venture Silicon Valley predicted that Silicon Valley's 3.1% unemployment rate in March will rise significantly in April.

160%

The percentage increase in searches for "breaking up during quarantine" over the past week in the U.S. and Canada, per Google Trends. A Google search using that phrase Friday yielded news articles and essays galore, with intriguing titles like: "A text message is the best way to break up with someone (even when there's not a pandemic)" and "The boomerang exes of quarantine."

Less than $500 million

Price Verizon is set to pay for Blue Jeans, a San Jose maker of videoconferencing software, The Wall Street Journal reported. While BlueJeans competes with Zoom, which has surged with coronavirus-related demand, it isn't available for free and is aimed at business users, not consumers.

$100

Price per COVID-19 test envisioned by biotech firm DxTerity, which hopes to supply tests to businesses reopening offices and factories. High-volume customers may negotiate discounts.

20,000

Hires Google parent Alphabet had planned to make in 2020, before the coronavirus outbreak. CEO Sundar Pichai told employees in a memo obtained by Bloomberg, "We believe now is the time to significantly slow down the pace of hiring."

270,000+

Times Bill Gates' Twitter handle was mentioned in the 24 hours after he criticized the Trump administration's decision to stop funding the World Health Organization, The Wall Street Journal reported. Online mobs are targeting the Microsoft co-founder over his work fighting COVID-19, The New York Times wrote, falsely portraying him on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter "as the creator of COVID-19, as a profiteer from a virus vaccine, and as part of a dastardly plot to use the illness to cull or surveil the global population."

Levi Sumagaysay

Levi Sumagaysay (@levisu) is a former Silicon Valley reporter at Protocol. Previously, she was a tech reporter at The San Jose Mercury News, where she covered everything from artificial intelligence to IPOs, tech culture, news about big tech, and more. Levi has edited or written technology news since the first dot-com boom, and was for a time the writer of Good Morning Silicon Valley, one of the earliest tech blogs/newsletters.

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