Using the Data to Improve Your Performance with Colin Yasukochi

Episode 190: Show Notes

Here today to share insights from his 20 years of experience in San Francisco’s tech and real estate industries is Colin Yasukochi, Executive Director of Tech Research at CBRE. In this episode, we discuss how the shift to remote work has given companies the opportunity to expand their borders beyond a physical location, why many companies have chosen to adopt a remote first or hybrid work strategy, and the surprising growth in tech talent hiring over the past year despite the pandemic. Colin introduces us to the Brain Gain and Brain Drain principles, which describe hiring culture based on proximity to universities. We explore the lack of diversity in tech and the slow growth that requires the younger generation to develop an interest in tech careers and explore the relevance of geographic data in a remote era to guide you in prioritizing diversity and seeing how you fare compared to other companies. We hope you join us today! 

Key Points From This Episode:

• An introduction to Colin Yasukochi and his 20 years in tech and real estate in San Francisco.
• How the shift to remote work has opened up a lot of companies to take on new hires.
• The benefits of remote work, which include flexibility and access to a larger pool of talent.
• What the 2021 Scoring Tech Talent Report aims to do: to help inform workforce decisions.
• How it does this by looking at labor market trends in workforce growth, tech degree graduates in each market, and supply and demand. 
• What is meant by ‘tech talents’: what you do for your job, not where you work. 
• The staff contingent of tech companies: half tech jobs, half sales, finance, HR and more.
• The growth in tech talent hiring over the past year despite the pandemic.
• How there has been a 5 percent growth in demand for software engineers over the last year.
• What companies realized about expanding beyond a physical location during COVID.
• Why many companies have chosen to adopt a remote first or hybrid work strategy.
• How remote hiring is still a relatively small contingent of the growing work force.
• The benefit of having in-person interactions for innovation and how we cannot determine whether the hybrid working situation will work well or not.
• Tech graduates as the primary source of hires and the brain gain and brain drain principle.
• The movement towards hiring graduates who don’t have a background in tech.
• How diversity is becoming an increasing focus in terms of staff contingent.
• How the data showed the overrepresentation of white and Asian males.
• Why we need to encourage people in high school and before that to pursue tech degrees.
• The relevance of geographic data in a remote era: most companies aren’t totally remote, and this data helps to guide the location of new offices with diversity in mind.
• Why geographic data enables you to develop a strategy to increase the numbers.

Tweetables:

“Remote work has always been there, but we’ve got this new opportunity to expand that beyond where we ever thought it would go.” — @colinyasukochi [0:03:14]

“Having in-person interactions with people and collaborating is a big part of the innovation process. It’s not the only necessary method, but it’s certainly something that has been traditional over time. We’re going to have to see how well the remote or hybrid situation works.” — @colinyasukochi [0:11:20]

“We analyzed the data and we found that the majority of tech talent employment was white, Asian, and male. What that means is that Hispanics, Black, other non-white and non-Asian, and females were underrepresented across the board.” — @colinyasukochi [0:16:28]

“Change is going to come slowly. That’s where it’s really important to reach back a little bit further and try to encourage people in high school or even before that to get interested in tech degrees.” — @colinyasukochi [0:17:04]

“If you understand where the diverse or underrepresented groups are physically located and then what markets or what universities they may be attending, that is going to give you a leg up to develop a strategy that enables you to increase the numbers.” — @colinyasukochi [0:23:20]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Colin Yasukochi on Linkedin

Colin Yasukochi on Twitter
CBRE

Scoring Tech Talent Report

Talk Talent to Me