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Comment by hollow-moe | Hacker News Reader

I've been looking for datacenter tech job. With how many are being built rn I thought it would be easier. Guess there's a lot of them being built but none near there, or are companies being secretive about that, staffing internally? Am I looking in the wrong places ? (Usual job hunting sites, linkedin)

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What kind of tech? Lots of it gets contracted out, there's not that much full time staff at any given facility.

I used to travel installing Optical Networking equipment, there's definitely demand there but it's brutal travel.

You could look into the big 3rd party providers Equinix, Digital Realty, etc, they often have some openings. The main thing to consider is they have some pretty crazy shift schedules. Lots of them 12 hours 3-4 days a week with nights etc.

Microsoft is listing positions on their public job board (I know because I'm nosy and they're building a big data center complex a few miles from me). They look like good jobs for the area. A couple pay over $100K and only require a high school diploma for what looks to be essentially security guard roles.

> With how many are being built rn I thought it would be easier.

Data centers don't need very many employees once they are built, many have less than 20 employees.

This is a big part of the reason why they are such a bad long term deal for localities and why giving them tax breaks, etc is just a scam. They add a lot more negative externalities than they help with the local economy.

Are you sure? Microsoft hired about 500 full time employees for its first data center in Wisconsin.

https://www.wpr.org/news/microsoft-hired-375-people-for-moun...

And most of them will be on unemployment or working on another location pretty soon.

Construction jobs. Those will only stay around as long as Microsoft keeps churning out additional datacenters in that local area.

Those aren't construction jobs. They're for the finished data center.

Construction is ongoing

The Mount Pleasant fairwater campus is ~1.27 square km... That's massive compared to the DC who employ only 20 people

Moreover, from the same article that you linked:

> “These aren’t short term construction jobs,” he said. “These are construction jobs that are going to take place over years and years.”

That's better than a short term-only construction job... And in the meanwhile it's possible that the rest of the local economy might also witness a boost

But once the construction will be complete, those jobs will go.

I think it's possible and likely that, per-square-meter the Mount Pleasant DCs might employ more people than other DCs, but:

- Microsoft wouldn't pay more people to do the same job that fewer could. Maybe compacting the construction of multiple massive DCs grants them some economies of scale that offset the additional costs due to the additional complexity and employment requirements... Or maybe they are building a massive project precisely because that bumps up the employment numbers, making their project more appealing for local authorities. Either way, a DC is a DC. If the employment numbers are different, we should ask ourselves why

- just because hundreds more are planned, doesn't mean that we can trust 100% those numbers will materialise: Oracle claimed force majeure to step away from a $3 billion New Mexico facility... If leases are uncommenced, any company might also be able to easily walk away

The article distinguishes between the 500 permanent jobs at the completed data center from the thousands more jobs for building a dozen more data centers (many of which are construction jobs as you note) that will last into the medium term.

Microsoft almost certainly ain't the one hiring construction workers. That work gets contracted out.

A warehouse of equivalent size in square feet often doesn't have many more employees, if it's just a bunch of truck docks and people driving forklifts.

That's also a problem but a modern one. Only a generation or two ago an industrial property of that size might employ four figures worth of hands and employ most of the neighborhood or town in question.

You're fishing in a small pond with few fish. It doesn't take many people to run a DC.

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