Fortune - USA (2020-04)

32 FORTUNE APRIL 2020

BEFORE THERE were influ­

encers and algorithms, there

was just a baker’s dozen

of employees huddled in a

small office space outfitted

with Ikea furniture in San

Francisco determining what

was “Instagrammable.” In

No Filter (Simon & Schus­

ter), Bloomberg reporter

Sarah Frier chronicles the

rise of the photo­sharing

social network from scrappy

startup through its $715 mil­

lion acquisition by Facebook

(cobbled together over a

weekend barbecue at Mark

Zuckerberg’s house) to the

ad­driven juggernaut it is

today. Interviews with key

executives, venture capital­

ists, and most­followed

celebrities get to the heart of

what has made Instagram a

cultural phenomenon, as well

as the tensions between its

founders and corporate own­

ers. No Filter might be the

most engrossing book about

Silicon Valley drama since

Nick Bilton’s Hatching Twit-

ter. But instead of cofounder

infighting, the focus here is

on the battle for Instagram’s

soul, which has far­reaching

consequences for society

and its relationship with

technology.

REVIEW

PICTURE NOT

SO PERFECT

BY RACHEL KING

A CAPITALIST SOCIETY measures value by what

it’s prepared to pay for people’s time. So, what

to make of the fact that when it comes to the hard

work of care, Americans pay the most—$14.80 an

hour—to the people who walk their dogs? Those

who tend to children and the elderly make consid-

erably less, according to PayScale, a compensation

data and software company.

But don’t blame free-market forces, says Sudar-

shan Sampath, PayScale’s director of research. Dog

walking is a competitive business, while roughly

70% of home health workers are paid by Medicare

and Medicaid. The government caps reimburse-

ment for the service at a rate that—given operating

costs and margins—makes for paltry wages, says

Jeounghee Kim, an associate professor at Rutgers

who studies the care economy. Parents, meanwhile,

tend to pay for childcare and often rely on family

members or unlicensed providers; for regulated

services to compete, they have to keep wages low.

With a senior population that is expected to

double in the coming decades—not to mention

a shortage of professional caregivers already—

Sampath sees the artificially low wages as a real

issue: “The economic case doesn’t make sense

anymore.” Kim calls it a crisis that has so far proved

“too expensive to fix.”

SERVICES

Are We

Caring for

Carers?

Thanks to caps on

reimbursement for

senior care, dog

walkers are leading

the home-care

pack. BY ERIKA FRY

THE BRIEF

Pounding the pavement

with pooches could

prove a better career

than senior care.

MEDIAN

ANNUAL PAY

Dog walker

$31,300

Senior caregiver

$26,200

Childcare provider

$23,300

HOW THEY

COMPARE

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CRE.W.0420.XMIT.indd 32 FINAL 3/9/2020 11:51:57 AM