IBM is under fire for age discrimination, the U.S. spends big on electric vehicle charging stations, and Apple to raise pay for its retail employees.
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That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now, welcome to Hashtag Trending. It’s Monday, February 14, and I’m your host, Tom Li.
IBM is under fire for discriminating against older employees in an ongoing lawsuit. The latest filing to court alleged the company used derogatory terms to describe its older workers, calling them “dinobabies” and discussing plans to make them “extinct”, Business Insider reported. It’s also used to support the claim that the company is trying to replace old employees with millennial workers. One IBM spokesperson denied the filing, saying that the company has never engaged in systemic age discrimination. He claimed that IBM separated employees because of changing business conditions, not because of their age.
The U.S. Department of Energy will be spending about $5 billion on installing more electric charging stations across the U.S. With this investment, the country will be a step closer to the goal of having half a million electric charging stations. Once complete, there will be an electric charging station every 50 miles along interstate highways. There were about 1.5 million registered electric vehicles in the U.S. in 2020, Gizmodo reported. The increased availability of charging stations will hopefully drive up its adoption.
Apple will allegedly increase the pay of its retail employees by between 2 and 10 per cent, according to Bloomberg. The pay raise applies to salespeople, Genius Bar tech support staff, and some hourly employees. There isn’t a flat increase baseline and not everyone will see a wage bump. If this rumour is true, then it could be another move made by Apple in response to the dynamics of the job market, wrote the article. Unnamed sources have told Bloomberg that the wage increase for Apple Store employees has started before the pandemic started in 2020. More than just talent retention, the raise also sought to establish wage equity between senior and newer employees.
Now for something a bit different. Coinbase’s simple and creative Super Bowl ad had people buzzing. Instead of extolling its cryptocurrency exchange service, Coinbase simply had a multi-coloured QR code bounce around on the screen for a full minute, the entire duration of its ad spot. When scanned, the QR code directed the viewers to the signup page, which also notified them of a sign-on bonus of $15 in bitcoin.
That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash briefings or your Google Home daily briefing. Make sure to sign up for our Daily IT Wire newsletter to get all the news that matters directly in your inbox every day. Also, catch the next episode of Hashtag Tendances, our weekly Hashtag Trending episode in French, which drops early every Thursday morning. If you have a suggestion or a tip, drop us a line in the comments or via email. Thank you for listening, I’m Tom Li.