We’ve all heard of the gold-plated wristwatch as a reward for faithful years of company service, but solid gold… computer keyboard keycaps, those little squarish switch covers with letters, numbers, and symbols on them? That’s a new one.
Insta360, maker of webcams, action cams, and, recently, drones, recently awarded 21 solid gold keycaps to celebrate Programmer’s Day, as reported by the South China Morning Post, an English-language Hong Kong newspaper.
all that glitters…
No, you didn’t skip a holiday. While the rest of the world celebrates Programmer’s Day (or tech people, at least) on the 256th day of each year, because 256 is a reference to bytes (a unit of digital information, in China, it lands on October 24 each year. The data, 1024, is a binary code reference. Those crafty computer people.
The heaviest of all the keycaps given away, the space bar, weighs 35.02 grams and is currently valued at about $45,000, although most keycaps were obviously much smaller and worth less.
“Insta360 has consistently provided gold keycaps as a Programmer’s Day bonus, totalling 55 keycaps over the years,” reports the SCMP. “The value of these gold bonuses has more than doubled since the first year due to rising gold prices.”
The SCMP doesn’t say how Insta360 determined which employees received which keycaps, and what got them a space bar and what got them a lousy “C” keycap. They do mention that Insta360 is known as the “gold factory” in China’s tech scene because gold is a favorite gift to employees, including those who marry or have a baby.
“Insta360’s founder, Liu Jingkang, explained that the company gives gold not for its monetary value, but for its ‘stability,’ emphasizing that a company’s stability relies on its talented workforce,” writes the SCMP. “The gold keycaps symbolize that each keystroke is a touch that ‘turns the stone into gold,’” as Jingkang puts it.
Hell, you know those chocolate coins with the gold foil wrappers? I’d settle for one of those. Or, you know, health insurance.
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