Apple is raising the pay of its corporate and retail staff

Apple will start paying its corporate and retail employees more likely in hopes that they won’t leave the company to find better prospects. According to CNBC and The Financial Times, the company will also raise its starting wage for new employees to $22 an hour, up from $20. Further, it will start giving some annual increases in salary starting in July instead of in the autumn. The tech giant didn’t discuss specific details on how it will change its compensation structure, but it told the publications:

“Supporting and retaining the best team members in the world enables us to deliver the best, most innovative, products and services for our customers. This year as part of our annual performance review process, we’re increasing our overall compensation budget.”

A previous Bloomberg report said Apple is paying its sales staff, Genius Bar support personnel and senior hourly workers by as much as 10 percent more, though it’s unclear if this is the same pay hike. Retail employees in various Apple Store locations started planning to form unions earlier this year in their quest for better pay and benefits. Inflation in the US has reached 8.5% in March, forcing people to look for better compensation as the cost of goods in the country reach new heights. 

At the same time, labor shortages caused by the pandemic have bolstered workers’ confidence in challenging their employers and solidified plans to unionize across industries. While the company is raising employee compensation, it has also been accused of union busting by retail workers. A leaked video even showed Deirdre O’Brien, its VP of people and retail, trying to dissuade the company’s employees from joining a union. 

Apple isn’t the only tech giant trying to hold on to its workforce and to prevent them from unionizing by increasing their salaries. Amazon more than doubled its base pay cap for corporate and tech employees, Google revamped its annual review process so that it results in increased salaries and Microsoft promised its people that pay increases are on the way.

NVIDIA reportedly slows down hiring as it braces for a drop in gaming sales

A slowing economy continues to affect the tech industry, as NVIDIA has become one of the first chipmakers to announce a pullback on new hiring, according to memos seen by The New Indian Express and confirmed by Protocol. That lines up its comments during its latest earnings release, when it said that it expects sales of GPUs for gaming consoles and PCs to decline in the current quarter. “Overall the gaming market is slowing,” CEO Jensen Huang told Reuters. 

NVIDIA actually had a solid previous quarter, with revenue up 46 percent over last year to $8.29 billion. It also noted that its “gearing up for the largest wave of new products in our history” with new GPU, CPU, DPU and robotics processors coming online in the second half of the year. 

However, it forecast lower revenue than the market expected for next quarter. And internally, the company appears to be bracing for a slowdown. “Onsite interviews… continue, but we will raise our standard to the highest levels,” it reportedly said in a Slack message. “We were told that leadership wants to take a pause to onboard the thousands of new hires we’ve recently made.” The company also told Protocol that it’s slowing hiring “to focus our budget on taking care of existing employees as inflation persists.

NVIDIA will be joining a number of tech companies, including Lyft, Uber and Snap, in announcing hiring slowdowns. Tech companies have been hit particularly hard by economic headwinds cause by COVID lockdowns in China and the war in Ukraine. NVIDIA, however, was expected to weather events due to continued strong demand in the GPU market that has kept prices high and supply short. 

Boeing’s Starliner safely returns to Earth after second test flight

Boeing’s Starliner has returned to Earth safely after docking with the International Space Station for the first time. The six-day Boeing Orbital Flight Test-2 mission came to an end when the spacecraft landed at the US Army’s White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. It’s the first American capsule to touch down on land instead of in the ocean. Starliner undocked from the ISS at 2:36PM ET and by 6:05PM, it was firing its thrusters to drop out of orbit. 

The uncrewed Starliner, which took over 800 pounds of equipment to the ISS (including a Kerbal Space Program plush toy), brought back over 600 pounds of cargo. Among the returned items were reusable Nitrogen Oxygen Recharge System tanks, which are used to provide air to those on the ISS. They’ll be refilled and taken back to the space station later.

The spacecraft’s first test flight took place in 2019. While it reached orbit, an automation system issue prevented thrusters from firing, meaning Starliner was unable to dock with the ISS. An attempt at a second test flight last year was scrapped because of a propulsion system valve problem, which led to a nine-month delay. In the interim, SpaceX conducted more crewed trips to the ISS than previously planned. 

After assessing the data from this flight, Boeing will be able to start planning crewed flights that will take astronauts to the space station and bring them back to Earth. The New York Times says NASA will announce the astronauts who’ll be flying on Starliner this summer, and the mission could take place before the year ends. 

Mark Nappi, vice president and program manager, Boeing Commercial Crew Program, said:

“We have had an excellent flight test of a complex system that we expected to learn from along the way and we have With the completion of OFT-2, we will incorporate lessons learned and continue working to prepare for the crewed flight test and NASA certification. Thank you to the NASA and Boeing teammates who have put so much of themselves into Starliner.”

Mariella Moon contributed to this story.