Best computer science schools aren't Stanford and Berkeley – Protocol
Swarthmore and UVA grads are among those scoring higher than students from elite institutions on the widely used SAT-style test for software engineers.
CodeSignal’s new report draws on just one data point: how people perform on its standardized assessment of the General Coding Framework.
It should feel safe to assume that the average computer science graduate from Stanford University would ace a coding proficiency test like the one given to entry-level software engineers at companies like Square. Most of them do. But on average, they are not the best of the best.
Stanford CS grads don’t even make the top 10 list for high scorers on the General Coding Assessment, the coding proficiency test designed by CodeSignal and given to software applicants at most major tech companies. Neither do those from the University of California, Berkeley, which is tied with Stanford for the second-best engineering school in the U.S. News and World Report college rankings, behind MIT.
Ranked ahead of Stanford (at slot 13 on this year’s CodeSignal list) and Berkeley (17) are schools like the University of Virginia, Charlottesville (1) and Swarthmore College (10), neither of which are famous for their CS degree programs. Twelve schools on CodeSignal’s list don’t appear anywhere on the U.S. News and World Report’s list of top 30 computer science schools, including Ivy League institutions like Yale (3) and state schools like the University of Colorado at Boulder (11), the State University of New York at Stony Brook (22) and Arizona State University (29).
Meta, Robinhood, Square, Uber, Instacart, Zoom and Asana are among the companies that have used or currently use CodeSignal’s assessments in hiring. CodeSignal creates these ranking reports each year as part of an effort to convince these companies and the rest of the industry that recruiting primarily from universities with prestigious reputations in software engineering is an inefficient use of resources. Elite universities like Stanford produce graduates with generally high scores, but the report aims to show that plenty of other schools train students who are just as competitive, if not more so, according to CodeSignal CEO and co-founder Tigran Sloyan.
“You could find a whole bunch of amazing software engineers at the University of Central Missouri, which graduates more CS grads than Stanford and Harvard combined. Companies spend millions and millions of dollars chasing grads from the Ivy Leagues, and they don’t even recruit sometimes from the other schools,” Sloyan said. “In this incredibly competitive market, it’s crazy.”
The tech industry’s racial, ethnic and socioeconomic makeup has remained relatively stagnant over the last several years. For tech companies that profess a desire to change that, recruiting from schools beyond the stereotypically elite institutions might be one of the most straightforward ways to go about it. “Talent is everywhere; you’ve just got to be able to look for it directly by measuring skill set versus by relying on, ‘Oh, we hear people from this university are good,’” Sloyan said.
Unlike traditional college rankings, which calculate degree program success based on attributes such as graduation rates, job placement rates, reputation among peers and funding, the CodeSignal report draws on just one data point: how people perform on the company’s standardized assessment of the General Coding Framework.
Sloyan argues that the industry’s widespread adoption of CodeSignal’s assessment has created a statistically significant data set that companies and job applicants should trust. Students and entry-level engineers everywhere grind in preparation for this test, and all types of tech companies use it to screen their applicants. More than 160,000 engineers have taken CodeSignal’s assessment, and the company estimates that more than 50% of graduating CS students take the test. Most college computer science programs teach algorithmic problem-solving skills, and the test is designed to assess those skills rather than knowledge of a specific language like Java or Python.
Students applying for competitive tech jobs train themselves on practice problems and tests that emulate the assessments these companies use, trying to estimate what score they might be able to get. Subreddits like r/csMajors are loaded with questions like “How high of a codesignal general score should I aim for to get an interview at Square?” and “How hard is the Facebook codesignal assessment for University grad role?”
CodeSignal scores range from 600-849, and the company says that scores above 800 indicate excellent problem-solving skills equivalent to the 84th percentile. The university ranking list is based on how many test-takers from each school score above 800 out of the total pool of people from that school. An impressive 43% of test-takers from UVA Charlottesville scored above 800 in 2022, while Swarthmore’s 22% sits just above Stanford and at about the same level as the California Institute of Technology.
At Swarthmore, a tiny liberal arts college, the computer science program will graduate just over 50 students this year and managed to best not only Stanford and Berkeley, but the Georgia Institute of Technology and other massive engineering institutions. Swarthmore CS graduates are excelling in more than just the CodeSignal test; at the North American championship for the International Collegiate Programming Competition last year, a Swarthmore team placed fourth, becoming the only liberal arts college in the United States to qualify for the world championship.
Andrew Danner, the college’s computer science department chair, speculated that the school’s focus on algorithmic problem-solving over teaching specific languages might explain its success.
“Our intro course, it’s taught in Python, but the goal here is not to teach you Python, it’s to teach you enough Python so that you can solve some computational problems with it. We do that again in our intermediate courses too where we switch the language and teach them C and C++ so that they see a variety of different languages throughout their career,” Danner said. “There are also a lot of schools, you come in and you start learning Java, you do Java your entire time, you know that language extremely well and maybe do not know how to adapt to other languages.”
Computer science is the most rapidly expanding degree program for undergraduates at almost every school that offers it. At Swarthmore, it’s now one of the top three degree programs despite the fact the school doesn’t actively recruit students focused on CS. Because of the school’s small size, students have certain advantages compared to those at larger schools with famous degree programs. While a student at an elite research university might take a 300-person CS class with teaching assistants, the largest class at Swarthmore is around 60 students, and everyone will learn from the professor.
“I think debunking that myth that the best people only go to the top schools is such an important message for everyone: for companies, for parents, for students,” Sloyan said. “Students get it into their head, too. When you get it into your head, ‘There’s no way I can be great,’ that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s practice, dedication that gets you to that skill level.”
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Anna Kramer is a reporter at Protocol (Twitter: @ anna_c_kramer, email: akramer@protocol.com), where she writes about labor and workplace issues. Prior to joining the team, she covered tech and small business for the San Francisco Chronicle and privacy for Bloomberg Law. She is a recent graduate of Brown University, where she studied International Relations and Arabic and wrote her senior thesis about surveillance tools and technological development in the Middle East.
Some VCs still see remote work as “phoning it in,” and would rather bet on IRL startups.
High-profile VCs showing interest in IRL startups could give companies one more reason to work in person.
Remote work has taken over startup culture in the last two years. But some investors now say they specifically want to fund “IRL startups.”
Not all have been as brash as Elon Musk, who told Tesla employees last week that remote work was “no longer acceptable” (and later said he’d be laying off 10% of his salaried workforce). But Musk’s jeer that employees who don’t like the policy should “pretend to work somewhere else” seems to have tapped into a brewing disillusionment with remote work on the part of some vocal VCs.
“[Tech workers] aren’t storming the beaches of Normandy nor climbing out of coal mines,” Lux Capital co-founder Josh Wolfe told me in a Twitter DM last week. “They’re asked to suffer the inconvenience of showing up into fancy modern offices to be with their teammates.”
Wolfe, whose firm invests in companies developing emerging technologies, said that top talent should expect flexibility when it comes to time off, parental leave and “family or health needs,” but “will also show up and build camaraderie” rather than working remotely indefinitely.
“There’s been a wave of entitlement attitude slowly crashing ashore,” Wolfe said. “There is a reason people talk about fair-weather, fickle or checked-out colleagues as ‘phoning it in’ — long before Zoom.”
Tech workers have reason to feel entitled. Most are still enjoying a candidate’s job market that has put pressure on companies to offer flexible work. But more high-profile VCs showing interest in IRL companies could give startups one more reason to work face to face.
Some investors are going so far as to announce their interest in investing in companies with an in-office culture. Founders Fund partner Keith Rabois tweeted last month that he was “looking to fund IRL startups.” When I followed up with him later, Rabois told me in a DM that he is “only investing in startups that are primarily IRL.” Apparently, startups with remote-first cultures need not apply.
Wolfe tweeted last week that Musk’s in-office requirement was “another example where I strongly agree with @elonmusk.” Wolfe cited that a recession will require in-person communication to show “commitment + companionship + compassion.”
Wolfe hasn’t yet been deterred from investing in a company because of its remote-first culture, he told me, but he reiterated that “tougher teams together will outcompete” others in a down market.
A SaaS investor from a leading VC firm — speaking on the condition of anonymity because they aren’t authorized to speak to the press — admitted a “strong preference” for founders who promote an in-office culture. In-office cultures can move a company through its early stages faster, and early-stage ideating is “very, very hard” to do remotely, that investor has found.
But, that investor said, once a startup has customers and starts to build out an executive team, things tend to get more flexible by necessity, with some startups allowing hybrid schedules and opening up additional offices in other cities. That stage typically comes when the startup has matured to the point where it makes decisions without needing to involve the whole team in real time.
“If things are more defined, I do think in general, founders and employees can be incredibly productive remote-first. There’s huge, huge benefits,” the SaaS investor said. But when companies are still ideating, “hopping in a room to have a conversation makes a big difference, as opposed to timing a Zoom. Grabbing that extra five minutes between meetings makes a big difference.”
Recruiting is already a huge challenge, and many companies simply can’t afford to limit their options by imposing an in-office policy. (For this reason, recruiters have a strong preference for flexible work policies because they make the widest possible pool of candidates available, the SaaS investor said.)
When I posed this to Rabois, though, he wasn’t swayed.
“LOL. I wouldn’t hire any of those people,” Rabois said. “The ambitious people want to work IRL.”
One IRL startup, the compensation-benchmarking software maker Pave, has so far only hired in San Francisco and New York, where it has offices.
“We’re very much in the minority” when it comes to being office-centric, Pave’s founder and CEO, Matt Schulman, told me last month. “It’s a huge selling point when we recruit candidates, actually.”
Companies that start remotely seem to have particular challenges transitioning to the office, Schulman said, because some employees won’t want to go to IRL.
By contrast, Pave has found success with an in-office culture because it’s “so explicit and proactive” in communicating it to candidates from the beginning, Schulman said. That can be a selling point when candidates visit the office and “walk in and hear the laughter, hear the [sales] gong ringing,” according to Schulman.
And during COVID-19 spikes, when Pave would temporarily go remote, Schulman said employees felt isolated, morale dropped and “velocity on the product road map slowed down.”
“It just wasn’t as vibrant of a company culture because our thesis is all geared around camaraderie and in-person collaboration and creativity,” Schulman said. “When you removed the office, the ability to be in person, it made it really tough.”
Rabois’ tweet attracted criticism from Yelp co-founder and CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, who posted that wanting to fund in-person startups was “equivalent to ‘looking to fund startups running Windows95.’”
“Time to live in the future and fully embrace remote [work],” Stoppelman tweeted. “Open source communities have built amazing and complex things entirely remote for decades.”
“Not a single $10b company was built this way,” Rabois fired back. But not all VCs feel so strongly oppositional toward remote work; remote-first startups will find “plenty of other investors” willing to bet on them, he said.
The SaaS investor I spoke with agreed. Most VCs are “completely indifferent” to whether a startup is working remotely or in person, they said.
As the market turns, some VCs are even recommending remote-first as a cost-cutting measure. In a blog post on Monday, Kat Steinmetz, a principal and talent adviser at Initialized Capital, suggested that companies “make everything virtual for now” — including subletting their office if they can’t get out of the lease — in order to save money.
When Initialized surveyed its own portfolio companies six months ago, it found that the share of fully distributed startups in its portfolio had more than doubled during the pandemic, with 42% saying they would be all remote. Of the Initialized-backed startups with offices, only around 15% said they’d expect employees to come in four or five days a week.
Ultimately, founders drive culture, whether it’s office-based, remote-first or somewhere in between. Most aren’t dogmatic about their strategy here. The SaaS investor estimated that around 80% of founders are open to changing their remote or in-office strategy based on where the market goes and what allows them to execute.
“They basically want remote-first so that they have better recruiting options and satisfy some employee needs, mostly driven by the FAANG companies,” that investor said. “If everyone suddenly said, ‘You know what? This remote-first thing sucks. Everyone’s going in person,’ they’ll gravitate that way.”
Internet for Growth, an initiative of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, supports the transformative role the advertising-supported internet plays in empowering America’s small businesses, helping entrepreneurs bring their ideas to life. Supported by a diverse community of over 700 IAB members including marketers, agencies, publishers, platforms and ad tech providers, as well as hundreds of small businesses and creators, Internet for Growth highlights the benefits the internet delivers to local economies, expanding opportunities for innovators to reach markets far beyond their neighborhoods. Their work ensures people understand the limitless opportunity the internet provides for creativity and commerce, fair competition, and connecting with consumers on mutually shared values and interests, no matter the background or geography.
Smaller companies like ours are buckling under the weight of unprecedented price increases, supply chain shortages and rising labor prices. To increase our marketing reach on a slim budget, the internet is our best option. Internet marketing is critical to the survival of our business. It’s one of the most affordable, effective forms of marketing at our disposal.
Limiting our options will only hurt us at a time when we need every opportunity possible to stay in business. Small companies like ours are competing with much larger competitors to reach the same customers in a busy, crowded space.
How many Valpaks, grocery store flyers and random postcards from local businesses have you discarded in the last month? We’re all overloaded with physical junk mail. Even if an offer catches our eye, there’s no instant online access or interactivity. Generational shifts have also impacted marketing. For younger generations, digital media is a part of everyday life. How they shop, date and travel: It’s all digital. For most of our customers, shopping online is the norm, and their payment choices are digital too, including at pop-up and live events. The digital economy is a way of life and here to stay. Congress needs to be careful tampering with digital advertising tools that Pot Pie Factory needs to stay in business.
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Over 100 years in business, Virginia Diner has learned and shifted approaches to advertising through changing times and overcome inevitable hurdles.
The idea that politicians could restrict cost-effective online advertising and marketing is daunting. These laws could potentially cripple the way small companies like ours do business in this ever-evolving digital age.
The recent pandemic was devastating for many brick-and-mortar small businesses relying on in-person transactions, especially those in remote, rural areas like ours in Wakefield, Virginia. E-commerce was a lifeline. As consumers spend more time online, they also demand goods be delivered directly to their doorsteps, quickly. Targeted, tailored advertising has become a critical tool for Virginia Diner to identify and serve customers, maintain growth and stay viable in a rapidly changing marketplace.
Traditionally, our core business had been wholesale, with retailers selling our products in brick-and-mortar stores. But during the pandemic, direct-to-consumer sales (DTC) became our biggest revenue channel, generating enough volume for us to stay at full capacity and keep all our team members employed. Proposed restrictions on data-driven advertising would demolish DTC sales. Our ability to identify and advertise to customers inclined to do business with us is at risk. Speaking as a consumer, I enjoy learning about and purchasing unique brands that meet my tastes, which I might not discover without personalized ads. I hope legislation making it hard to use data responsibly and to personalize ads to serve more customers never gets enacted.
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I founded my small business to help other small businesses grow. Whether they need help amplifying a brand, an artist or selling a product or service, our clients rely on S.S. Creative to connect with more customers, and much of that relies on consumer data.
The last few years have been tremendously difficult for small businesses, especially those I represent. For musicians and artists, live venues where they would typically connect with fans suddenly went dark, halting their ability to grow their brands and promote their work. For many, they could only connect with their audiences using social media and internet advertising.
Consumer data and digital marketing aren’t just nice tools to have: They’ve been essential to my clients’ survival. They range from recording studios and musicians to hair salons and lawyers, and the one thing they all have in common is that during the last two years, every one of them has had to move his or her business online to forge a path to success. The only reason my clients’ businesses are still surviving today is because they can connect with their customers digitally.
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Baby Chick is a digital media company covering everything from pregnancy and birth to postpartum and parenthood, helping parents make the best decisions for their families. My wife Nina and I started the company on Mother’s Day in 2015. Since then, Baby Chick has influenced over 26 million (primarily) women over the past seven years and gained over 81 million pageviews. If we didn’t have internet advertising, it would be challenging for us to continue operating the company.
Internet advertising has enabled us to grow our business to what it is today, but proposed regulations limiting advertisers’ ability to reach target audiences would hurt media publishers like us. With less precise information, advertisers would likely reallocate budgets from programmatic ad-buying or bid less money on digital ads, which would negatively impact Baby Chick’s revenue and our family’s income. The readership experience would suffer if site visitors weren’t seeing ads relevant to their interests and Baby Chick’s unique content. If Congress enacts restrictions on using data for advertising, it would be extremely difficult to deliver the content our customers enjoy and to pay our staff.
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New markets are constantly emerging on the internet. That’s why we see the IBM and AOL of one era replaced by the Google and Spotify of the next. That’s why today direct-to-consumer brands like Madison Reed in hair care are winning market share from giants of the industry, and brands like Allbirds are finding entirely new markets. This pace of innovation is only possible because companies are leveraging data about consumer behavior to create truly customer-centric products, services and media.
When television was the main way brands built their businesses, 200 advertisers were responsible for about 88% of network television revenue in the U.S. TV advertising was the only way to reach most households in a visual medium. It was costly, requiring relationships with big ad agencies and minimum campaign spends.
High barriers made it hard for small firms and startups to advertise at all. By contrast, millions of small businesses today are finding customers on Amazon, Facebook, Google and niche platforms like Marriott and Uber Eats with the help of data-driving advertising. There’s also “earned media.” In the open environment of the internet, millions of times a day social media users are promoting their favorite brands on Instagram and TikTok.
Used responsibly and transparently, data does not harm competition and innovation. It fosters it, as my research for the Interactive Advertising Bureau shows. A healthy economic future depends on fair and creative use of data.
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Internet for Growth, an initiative of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, supports the transformative role the advertising-supported internet plays in empowering America’s small businesses, helping entrepreneurs bring their ideas to life. Supported by a diverse community of over 700 IAB members including marketers, agencies, publishers, platforms and ad tech providers, as well as hundreds of small businesses and creators, Internet for Growth highlights the benefits the internet delivers to local economies, expanding opportunities for innovators to reach markets far beyond their neighborhoods. Their work ensures people understand the limitless opportunity the internet provides for creativity and commerce, fair competition, and connecting with consumers on mutually shared values and interests, no matter the background or geography.
The Xbox app will let you stream games straight to your TV without dedicated console hardware.
Microsoft’s partnership with Samsung has been rumored for weeks now.
Nick Statt is Protocol’s video game reporter. Prior to joining Protocol, he was news editor at The Verge covering the gaming industry, mobile apps and antitrust out of San Francisco, in addition to managing coverage of Silicon Valley tech giants and startups. He now resides in Rochester, New York, home of the garbage plate and, completely coincidentally, the World Video Game Hall of Fame. He can be reached at nstatt@protocol.com.
Microsoft is entering new territory for its Xbox Game Pass subscription platform: smart TVs, no Xbox required.
On Thursday, the company announced a partnership with Samsung to bring a dedicated Xbox app to the electronics giant’s newest line of TVs, so subscribers to Game Pass can stream games straight to the display. You won’t need an Xbox, PC or any other separate hardware save a game controller to link with the Samsung display. You will, however, need a good internet connection to stream Xbox games from the cloud. The app will be distributed to compatible Samsung sets starting June 30.
The news marks a pivotal moment for Microsoft’s gaming division and an initiative it’s now calling “Xbox Everywhere.” The vision is to make its library of Xbox games available on virtually any screen, using cloud gaming in the absence of dedicated Xbox or PC hardware. The company is starting with Samsung, but it says it wants to work with other TV makers in the future, too.
Microsoft’s partnership with Samsung has been rumored for weeks now, and the company said a year ago that it had ambitions to make Game Pass available on smart TVs and through dedicated set-top box hardware. The company is in the process of building its own streaming device, said to be similar to a Roku puck, but it’s still in the development stage, according to a report from Windows Central last month. Microsoft isn’t sharing any new details about the device, codenamed “Keystone.”
That way, the company can sign up new Game Pass subscribers and grow its audience, even if those customers don’t own pricey consoles or gaming computers, and especially if they might be new to the hobby and hesitant to drop hundreds of dollars on hardware and software to get started.
Microsoft took the first steps toward this vision with the launch of its cloud gaming platform in 2020. Since then, the company has expanded access from PCs and Android phones to iOS devices and Xbox consoles, the latter allowing players to quickly try games without downloading them and to stream more graphically intensive titles on older Xbox hardware.
Going forward, one of the primary goals of Microsoft’s Xbox strategy is to expand its customer base well beyond the console audience, which includes a few hundred million customers worldwide but pales in comparison to the world’s billions of smartphone owners. “As we look to make gaming more accessible to even more people, and reach the three billion players globally, we’ve invested heavily in the cloud,” Xbox Cloud Gaming chief Catherine Gluckstein wrote in a blog post last month detailing the Xbox Everywhere initiative.
Gluckstein’s boss, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer, has said similar versions of this countless times over the past few years. “At some point in our future, more people are going to be part of the Xbox community on mobile than they are on any other device, just by the nature of how many mobile phones there are,” Spencer told Axios last year.
Microsoft is planning a number of updates to Xbox Game Pass in the coming months. The company is expanding the subscription service to Argentina and New Zealand, and later this year it will let subscribers to Game Pass’ pricier Ultimate tier stream purchase games from the cloud, even if those titles are not part of its subscription platform. (Right now, Microsoft’s cloud gaming platform only supports Game Pass games.)
It’s also working on launching something it’s calling Project Moorcroft, a specialized game demo program just for Game Pass subscribers that sounds similar to Sony’s planned game demo program for its competing PlayStation Plus platform.
Nick Statt is Protocol’s video game reporter. Prior to joining Protocol, he was news editor at The Verge covering the gaming industry, mobile apps and antitrust out of San Francisco, in addition to managing coverage of Silicon Valley tech giants and startups. He now resides in Rochester, New York, home of the garbage plate and, completely coincidentally, the World Video Game Hall of Fame. He can be reached at nstatt@protocol.com.
The agency’s chair is getting ready to zero in on behavioral advertising.
Lina Khan has long been preparing to write regulations that would ban the collection of certain kinds of data.
Ben Brody (@ BenBrodyDC) is a senior reporter at Protocol focusing on how Congress, courts and agencies affect the online world we live in. He formerly covered tech policy and lobbying (including antitrust, Section 230 and privacy) at Bloomberg News, where he previously reported on the influence industry, government ethics and the 2016 presidential election. Before that, Ben covered business news at CNNMoney and AdAge, and all manner of stories in and around New York. He still loves appearing on the New York news radio he grew up with.
Congress is getting closer to some kind of agreement on how it wants to regulate data usage, but FTC Chair Lina Khan told Protocol that companies will still have to contend with her agency’s powers as well.
Khan welcomed an agreement struck last week by three of the four congressional negotiators on a privacy bill, calling it “incredibly exciting to see Congress take this important step.” The FTC chair made clear, however, that she feels the agency shouldn’t pause its agenda just because of the congressional push.
“While this effort is pending, we’re also of course fiercely committed to using all of our existing tools, enforcement and policy — doing anything we can to make sure Americans are fully protected,” Khan said.
Khan, who is coming up on the end of her first year in office, has long been preparing to write regulations that would ban the collection of certain kinds of data, as well as tackle algorithmic discrimination. She’s also complained repeatedly about behavioral advertising.
“We need to be very clear-eyed about the fact that the behavioral ad-based business model creates a certain set of incentives that are not always aligned with people’s privacy protections,” she said.
To Khan, this work — which would likely rely on the commission’s existing power to regulate specific “unfair or deceptive acts” — should proceed even while Congress weighs its own approach to data protection. In their recent draft, lawmakers propose dramatically expanding the FTC’s role in digital privacy. The bill would give the agency power over what kinds of sensitive data need the most protection, a say in how companies can minimize the information they collect and oversight of data relating to kids and teens. The FTC’s role in the bill, however, is part of the reason the measure would give consumers only limited rights to sue companies, and at least one key senator, Democrat Maria Cantwell, is still withholding her support for the draft over the issue.
Available legislative days are also rapidly dwindling on Capitol Hill, making it more likely the U.S. will continue without a national privacy law for years to come.
Still, many Democrats in particular would like to see the FTC act on data. A number of Democratic senators recently wrote to Khan, for instance, asking the FTC to help ensure protections for the data of people seeking information about abortion. The letter cited the likelihood that the Supreme Court will soon overturn a federal right to abortion and the fact that many consumers rely on health and location-based apps that could give law enforcement and anti-abortion activists personal information about people seeking to terminate pregnancies.
“We take very seriously the fact that there are now all sorts of technologies that Americans rely on to navigate everyday life that have either business models that are endlessly surveilling them or that are collecting that data and then selling it on secondary markets,” Khan said. “Inasmuch as existing laws and our existing tools cover some of those practices, we’re going to be taking action.”
Despite the coming anniversary of her tenure, Khan’s agenda is only just now really getting started. Alvaro Bedoya joined the FTC as its third Democratic commissioner less than a month ago, and his votes are likely needed to kick off any privacy rulemaking, both because of his career focus on the issue and because the possibility of expansive rulemaking has alarmed big business groups and the FTC’s two Republican commissioners.
Ben Brody (@ BenBrodyDC) is a senior reporter at Protocol focusing on how Congress, courts and agencies affect the online world we live in. He formerly covered tech policy and lobbying (including antitrust, Section 230 and privacy) at Bloomberg News, where he previously reported on the influence industry, government ethics and the 2016 presidential election. Before that, Ben covered business news at CNNMoney and AdAge, and all manner of stories in and around New York. He still loves appearing on the New York news radio he grew up with.
Lina Khan said she’s been focused on stories of workers who had their pay cut or schedules thrown into disarray by consolidation.
FTC Chair Lina Khan is eyeing mergers.
Lizzy Lawrence ( @LizzyLaw_) is a reporter at Protocol, covering tools and productivity in the workplace. She’s a recent graduate of the University of Michigan, where she studied sociology and international studies. She served as editor in chief of The Michigan Daily, her school’s independent newspaper. She’s based in D.C., and can be reached at llawrence@protocol.com.
Ben Brody (@ BenBrodyDC) is a senior reporter at Protocol focusing on how Congress, courts and agencies affect the online world we live in. He formerly covered tech policy and lobbying (including antitrust, Section 230 and privacy) at Bloomberg News, where he previously reported on the influence industry, government ethics and the 2016 presidential election. Before that, Ben covered business news at CNNMoney and AdAge, and all manner of stories in and around New York. He still loves appearing on the New York news radio he grew up with.
Companies need to think more about how their mergers and acquisitions affect working conditions, according to FTC Chair Lina Khan.
In an interview with Protocol, Khan explained that her recent efforts to collect information on the results of consolidation, including in tech, have highlighted how M&A “can really degrade working conditions for people,” and she suggested U.S. antitrust enforcers will do more to take labor issues into account when analyzing deals.
Khan said she was particularly concerned with reduced wages or shaky schedules. She spoke after a series of listening sessions by the FTC and Justice Department antitrust section, which aimed to hear from workers, and signaled interest in trying to block deals that competition enforcers might have previously ignored because they didn’t raise prices.
One goal of the FTC and DOJ forum, Khan said, is to provide a space for everyday workers to detail their lived experiences with mergers and acquisitions. “There have been a few areas where we’ve heard particularly salient stories that compel us to make sure our merger guidelines are addressing those problems,” Khan said.
This isn’t the first time Khan has referenced labor as a metric for scrutinizing deals. In a January interview with CNBC, Khan said both the FTC and the Department of Justice are focused on protecting workers caught up in mergers. It’s not a question of whether labor is important, she said, but of how to incorporate worker protections in the FTC’s merger guidelines.
“Both agencies have been looking at the ways in which mergers in particular may lessen competition for labor and have downstream effects on workers in ways that are harmful,” Khan told CNBC. “That needs to be on our radar.” She made clear to Protocol, however, that wages and schedules had emerged as key themes as she’d heard from workers in recent months.
Khan also urged Congress to pass antitrust legislation further protecting gig workers’ right to organize in September of last year.
2022 has been a big year for M&A, starting with Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard in January for $68.7 billion. The deal was reportedly influenced by rampant workplace issues within Activision Blizzard, including misconduct allegations that led employees to call for CEO Bobby Kotick’s resignation. The never-ending Elon Musk-Twitter saga has also prompted speculation as to how such a controversial acquisition might impact Twitter employees.
It’s unclear how much mergers help or harm workers: It depends on the particular deal, and who you ask. Khan acknowledged this herself in her interview with CNBC, noting that in some cases, unions think mergers act in workers’ best interests. But previously, some M&A activity has clearly been viewed as cutting prices — and thus, good for competition — because it would eliminate jobs. Khan also referenced retrospective studies that revealed detrimental effects of mergers.
Khan and the head of DOJ’s antitrust section, Jonathan Kanter, have been pushing to hear more from workers and others in the economy, while relying less on price in analyzing competition. That’s prompted criticism from conservatives and antitrust traditionalists that the two enforcers, who are known as reformers, are abandoning the economic grounding of competition law and using it to pursue a left-wing agenda outside of the text of the statute.
As part of their efforts, Khan and Kanter have been taking in comments on revamping guidelines that tell the public and the business community what kinds of deals the enforcers tend to scrutinize more heavily and which they tend to let pass through without much investigation.
Lizzy Lawrence ( @LizzyLaw_) is a reporter at Protocol, covering tools and productivity in the workplace. She’s a recent graduate of the University of Michigan, where she studied sociology and international studies. She served as editor in chief of The Michigan Daily, her school’s independent newspaper. She’s based in D.C., and can be reached at llawrence@protocol.com.
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