Workplace

Tech CEOs were wary of vaccine mandates. That's changing.

Most large tech companies are still "encouraging, but not requiring" employees to get vaccinated. But interest in vaccine mandates has jumped since California said vaccinated workers could take off their masks.

Syringe

Recent surveys have found that a majority of professionals support vaccine mandates at the office, but that most employers aren't imposing them.

Illustration: Christopher T. Fong / Protocol

Most tech giants say they'll "encourage, but not require" employees to get vaccinated before returning to the office. But as more companies reopen their doors, four software makers now say they'll turn away unvaccinated workers.

Adobe, VMware, Twilio and Asana are all mandating vaccines for those who come in this summer, the four companies said in June. That's a departure from a norm that industry leaders like Google and Facebook set earlier this year.

"A few months ago, it was very much like, 'We don't want to do that. We don't want to require vaccinations,'" said Sheeva Ghassemi-Vanni, a partner in the employment practices and litigation groups of the Silicon Valley law firm Fenwick & West.

That's still the norm: Facebook, Google, Amazon and Microsoft are among the big names that are not imposing vaccine mandates.

But in the last few weeks, Ghassemi-Vanni has been fielding more calls from clients who want to know how they can require employees to get vaccinated, which potential legal issues they need to avoid and how to accommodate employees who refuse.

"It's not a total pendulum swing at this point, but it's definitely gaining momentum," Ghassemi-Vanni said. "I'll be interested to see, in the fall and then through Q1 of 2022, what employers end up doing."

Soft vax summer

Indeed, some companies are tying their vaccine mandates to "soft reopenings" this summer, where in-office work is allowed even as most employees continue working from home. Some of those mandates may lift by the time offices fully reopen in the fall or winter.

Salesforce, for example, reopened its offices in San Francisco and New York to small groups of vaccinated employees this spring. Those who are unvaccinated can come in during later reopening stages, Salesforce said.

Adobe and Asana — which are both mandating vaccines this summer — said they would continue to assess the need to impose this rule based on the safety risks and government guidance and regulations.

Asana said this reassessment would come "as we approach the fall," when the productivity software company plans to open a new headquarters in San Francisco.

Why vaccine mandates are gaining steam

Employers seem to be getting more confident about requiring the vaccine thanks to recent mandates and guidance from local, state and federal agencies, Ghassemi-Vanni said.

First came an FAQ from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which says anti-discrimination laws don't bar employers from requiring on-site workers to get vaccinated. (They still have to accommodate those who refuse for religious or medical reasons.)

Then, last month, the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) said vaccinated employees could go without masks at the workplace.

"I think that has really prompted this. That is where I've seen the most uptick in inbound calls," Ghassemi-Vanni said, adding that companies seem to be reasoning that "if our vaccinated employees can go maskless, even better of an incentive to have them be vaccinated."

Do employees want vaccine mandates?

Recent surveys have found that a majority of professionals support vaccine mandates at the office, but that most employers aren't imposing them.

In February, a Glassdoor survey of more than 2,000 U.S. employees found that 70% supported making vaccines a requirement to return to the office.

There's some evidence that tech workers are more receptive to vaccine mandates than other professionals: More than 80% of techies told Qualtrics in March that they supported mandates, compared with two-thirds of the general population of workers who responded.

Yet 90% of employers that Rocket Lawyer surveyed in April said they would not mandate the vaccine (or were undecided).

Ghassemi-Vanni said her clients who have done internal surveys have heard from employees that they want a vaccinated office.

"In most cases, companies and their employees have said, 'We want everybody to be vaccinated,'" Ghassemi-Vanni said. "There's still, interestingly, a bit of hesitation by employers — for obvious reasons — to require vaccinations to come into the office, even though they legally can do that."

Passports, please

Companies are also split on whether to require employees to show proof of vaccination before they come to the office.

Out of the four companies that have told Protocol they're imposing vaccine mandates, only Asana said they would need to see proof of employees' vaccination status. Adobe, Twilio and VMware all said they would take employees at their word.

And since the new Cal/OSHA guidance came out, many large companies say their vaccinated employees can go maskless at California offices. (One holdout here is Intel, which still requires its employees to wear masks rather than police who's vaccinated and who's not.)

That brings up another question for companies: Should employees have to prove they're vaccinated if they want to go without a mask, or is it enough to just say they've received the vaccine?

Either approach is allowed under Cal/OSHA's guidance, Ghassemi-Vanni said.

In California, Facebook, Google and Amazon all require employees to prove their vaccine status before going mask-free at the office. Microsoft, Adobe and ServiceNow, on the other hand, are not requiring vaccine proof when it comes to masks.

For its part, Hewlett Packard Enterprise said it came down to trust: The Houston-based IT giant told Protocol in a statement that it was "counting on the integrity and professionalism of its team members to follow the rules if they are unvaccinated."

But to make more employees feel safe returning to the office, Ghassemi-Vanni's group has been advising clients to go the extra mile and require employees to have a vaccine card on file, both if they want to come to the office and if they want to take off their mask.

"If you're having vaccinated employees come to the office and not wear masks, you are better served getting a copy of that record," Ghassemi-Vanni said. "Then you know that they have been vaccinated, and your employee population — if you communicate that that's how you're verifying it — they will feel more confident in being in the office."

Update: An earlier version of this story said that Twilio was requiring employees to show proof of vaccination. It has been updated.

Fintech

Judge Zia Faruqui is trying to teach you crypto, one ‘SNL’ reference at a time

His decisions on major cryptocurrency cases have quoted "The Big Lebowski," "SNL," and "Dr. Strangelove." That’s because he wants you — yes, you — to read them.

The ways Zia Faruqui (right) has weighed on cases that have come before him can give lawyers clues as to what legal frameworks will pass muster.

Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images

“Cryptocurrency and related software analytics tools are ‘The wave of the future, Dude. One hundred percent electronic.’”

That’s not a quote from "The Big Lebowski" — at least, not directly. It’s a quote from a Washington, D.C., district court memorandum opinion on the role cryptocurrency analytics tools can play in government investigations. The author is Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui.

Keep ReadingShow less
Veronica Irwin

Veronica Irwin (@vronirwin) is a San Francisco-based reporter at Protocol covering fintech. Previously she was at the San Francisco Examiner, covering tech from a hyper-local angle. Before that, her byline was featured in SF Weekly, The Nation, Techworker, Ms. Magazine and The Frisc.

The financial technology transformation is driving competition, creating consumer choice, and shaping the future of finance. Hear from seven fintech leaders who are reshaping the future of finance, and join the inaugural Financial Technology Association Fintech Summit to learn more.

Keep ReadingShow less
FTA
The Financial Technology Association (FTA) represents industry leaders shaping the future of finance. We champion the power of technology-centered financial services and advocate for the modernization of financial regulation to support inclusion and responsible innovation.
Enterprise

AWS CEO: The cloud isn’t just about technology

As AWS preps for its annual re:Invent conference, Adam Selipsky talks product strategy, support for hybrid environments, and the value of the cloud in uncertain economic times.

Photo: Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services

AWS is gearing up for re:Invent, its annual cloud computing conference where announcements this year are expected to focus on its end-to-end data strategy and delivering new industry-specific services.

It will be the second re:Invent with CEO Adam Selipsky as leader of the industry’s largest cloud provider after his return last year to AWS from data visualization company Tableau Software.

Keep ReadingShow less
Donna Goodison

Donna Goodison (@dgoodison) is Protocol's senior reporter focusing on enterprise infrastructure technology, from the 'Big 3' cloud computing providers to data centers. She previously covered the public cloud at CRN after 15 years as a business reporter for the Boston Herald. Based in Massachusetts, she also has worked as a Boston Globe freelancer, business reporter at the Boston Business Journal and real estate reporter at Banker & Tradesman after toiling at weekly newspapers.

Image: Protocol

We launched Protocol in February 2020 to cover the evolving power center of tech. It is with deep sadness that just under three years later, we are winding down the publication.

As of today, we will not publish any more stories. All of our newsletters, apart from our flagship, Source Code, will no longer be sent. Source Code will be published and sent for the next few weeks, but it will also close down in December.

Keep ReadingShow less
Bennett Richardson

Bennett Richardson ( @bennettrich) is the president of Protocol. Prior to joining Protocol in 2019, Bennett was executive director of global strategic partnerships at POLITICO, where he led strategic growth efforts including POLITICO's European expansion in Brussels and POLITICO's creative agency POLITICO Focus during his six years with the company. Prior to POLITICO, Bennett was co-founder and CMO of Hinge, the mobile dating company recently acquired by Match Group. Bennett began his career in digital and social brand marketing working with major brands across tech, energy, and health care at leading marketing and communications agencies including Edelman and GMMB. Bennett is originally from Portland, Maine, and received his bachelor's degree from Colgate University.

Enterprise

Why large enterprises struggle to find suitable platforms for MLops

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, and as larger enterprises go from deploying hundreds of models to thousands and even millions of models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

Photo: artpartner-images via Getty Images

On any given day, Lily AI runs hundreds of machine learning models using computer vision and natural language processing that are customized for its retail and ecommerce clients to make website product recommendations, forecast demand, and plan merchandising. But this spring when the company was in the market for a machine learning operations platform to manage its expanding model roster, it wasn’t easy to find a suitable off-the-shelf system that could handle such a large number of models in deployment while also meeting other criteria.

Some MLops platforms are not well-suited for maintaining even more than 10 machine learning models when it comes to keeping track of data, navigating their user interfaces, or reporting capabilities, Matthew Nokleby, machine learning manager for Lily AI’s product intelligence team, told Protocol earlier this year. “The duct tape starts to show,” he said.

Keep ReadingShow less
Kate Kaye

Kate Kaye is an award-winning multimedia reporter digging deep and telling print, digital and audio stories. She covers AI and data for Protocol. Her reporting on AI and tech ethics issues has been published in OneZero, Fast Company, MIT Technology Review, CityLab, Ad Age and Digiday and heard on NPR. Kate is the creator of RedTailMedia.org and is the author of "Campaign '08: A Turning Point for Digital Media," a book about how the 2008 presidential campaigns used digital media and data.

Latest Stories
Bulletins