💎️ S3T Sept 8: EthOS Phone, STARS, Open Source LLMs, Paper Ceiling, Talent Retention in the GenAI Era...

In this edition of S3T: What leaders are talking about this week

• Emerging Tech Key Themes for Leaders: Open Source LLMs for Regulated industries, Cross Chain Financial Settlements, Blockchain Phones
• Need to Know Economics: Tearing down the Paper Ceiling - Plus: Plight of Unions
• For Paid Memberships: Talent Strategy Briefing: Inspiring and Retaining Talent in the GenAI Era. End of year annual performance review season is just around the corner. So are Autumn All Hands, and Q4 Town Halls. Rarely has there been a more challenging time for crucial conversations about purpose and performance. How to proceed.

🔊 Listen to this edition on the S3T Podcast

Opinions expressed are those of the individuals and do not reflect the official positions of companies or organizations those individuals may be affiliated with. Not financial advice. Authors or guests may hold assets discussed.

Emerging Tech

Open Source GenAI Models and why they matter for regulated industries

UAE's Technology Innovation Institute just rolled out Falcon 180B, the largest open-source language model yet with performance allegedly on par with GPT-3.5. In my testing, GPT-3.5 delivered faster better formatted results. Try it out here.

Why this is a space to watch: Open models like Falcon 180B can make it easier for regulated industries like healthcare to make use of GenAI without submitting their data to a 3rd party.

One interesting example (that is still maturing) is Dolly, an open source LLM from Databricks that holds promise for organizations who need to fine-tune a large language model with their own datasets, and then use the model while still complying with their security policies.

Swift and Cross-Chain Transfers

Swift the financial network that enables secure money transfers around the world has successfully completed a series of test transfers of tokenized assets across a set of different blockchains. The tests utilized Chainlink's Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol and Ethereum.  

Visa and Solana

Visa has just announced it will now settle stablecoin transactions using the Solana blockchain (in addition to its ongoing use of Ethereum). Visa sees the moves as key to its plan to modernize cross-border money transfers.

Blockchain Smartphones

Ethereum Smartphones sold out in 1 day during a pre-sale event this past week. The phones are Google Pixel's running an EthOS thin client is one of two blockchain phones coming to the market.

Economics: Empowerment and Equity for Employees

‌Tearing through the paper ceiling

The Paper Ceiling - the barrier to workers who lack a diploma - has become a focus of diversity and inclusion advocates as well as employers struggling to fill roles, and has crystallized a new term STARs to refer to people who were "Skilled Through Alternative Routes".

60% of Americans don't have college degrees. These stats from Opportunity at Work shows how the Paper Ceiling impacts groups across the spectrum in the US:

• 61% of Black workers
• 55% of Hispanic workers
• 66% of Rural workers
• 61% of Veterans

Employers are starting to rethink whether they require college degrees for some roles. In addition, State governments are tearing down the paper ceiling, removing degree requirements for state jobs (with bipartisan support).

For a guide on how you can take action on this issue in your organization or industry, see the Navigating STARs Report.

Unions

71% of Americans favor labor unions per this 2022 Gallup poll. Still these are challenging times for unions - some data suggests unions don't improve employee engagement and work life.  Unions have played a crucial role in improving work conditions and equity, especially for non-privileged workers. Some of the challenges facing unions seem to also exist for non-union workers as well as noted by this Dept of Labor data on worker's perceptions of how empowered they are (union and non-union).

🧭 Change Leadership: Inspiring and Retaining Talent in the GenAI era.

Special Talent Strategy Briefing for Paid Memberships

Technology talent is bombarded today by multiple confusing messages about the economy, technology, and their jobs:

• Crypto and emerging tech companies hired lots of talented individuals in 2021 and early 2022, then over the past year laid off many of them.
• Legacy companies are modernizing, and have been hiring some of this available talent - especially those with cloud and emerging tech skills.
• But now there are wild claims that AI technologies like Stability AI, ChatGPT Code Interpreter will eliminate the need for developers.

Is this the message you want your key talent being distracted with?

Leadership Communication about the changing nature of work

End of year annual performance review season is just around the corner. So are Autumn All Hands, and Q4 Town Halls announcing themes and initiatives for the new year. Rarely has there been a more challenging time for crucial conversations about purpose and performance.

If you are a manager responsible for retaining technology talent for your company's change initiatives and mission-critical operations, how do you sort this out?

You can't help but feel the pressure of your teams looking to you for signals about what they should be doing. If you don’t give them signals they will go and make decisions on their own - which often means losing key talent to other companies that seem to be saying all the right things.