‘Get back in there’: T-Mobile CEO exhorts tech industry leaders to return to the office

“It’s your responsibility to lead the way and get back in there.”

• T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert (above) said corporate leaders and their veteran employees in the Seattle area need to get back to the office regularly for the sake of the region and the next generation of workers. Speaking at a Technology Alliance event on Thursday, Sievert cited the benefits of in-person mentorship for young employees, and the impact of physical presence on the economic vitality of the region.
• Sievert also discussed how T-Mobile is thinking about artificial intelligence, using it as an opportunity to analyze why customers leave the company and retain more of them.

• AI will be “simultaneously bigger than most people expect, and take a little longer than the hype cycle suggests," he said. "The world's not going to be different as we know it in 18 months ... but it's going to be profoundly different in ways you can't even imagine in a decade."

Attention, Stranger Things fans. A new immersive experience is ready for visitors at a 44,000-square-foot warehouse near downtown Seattle. Fans of the show might feel like they’ve stepped into the fictional town of Hawkins, Ind. GeekWire reporter Kurt Schlosser (above, tangled in vines with a Stranger Things monster) checked it out. 

Latest in CFO fraud case: Nevin Shetty, the former CFO of Seattle e-commerce startup Fabric, who was recently charged with funneling company funds to his crypto business, pled not guilty to all four charges of fraud in his first court appearance on Thursday in U.S. District Court in Seattle.

Michael Smyers, 1983-2023: The software engineer and startup entrepreneur played a formative role in Seattle tech companies Zipwhip and Coinme. Read more. 

Can machine learning techniques help identify undervalued stocks? Seattle firm Euclidean recently launched an ETF backed by a tech-fueled strategy. Read more.  

Thanks for subscribing to the GeekWire newsletter, and have a great weekend. —  GeekWire managing editor Taylor Soper, taylor@geekwire.com.