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Cheap electricity and good connectivity, mainly. Data centers don't actually employ a lot of people.
This. We have several data centers in San Antonio. At one of them, the servers are securely sealed into semi trailers, with their own HVAC systems and none of the on-site employees can enter them. As the servers inside of the trailer fail, they are remotely taken off-line. When the folks who run the data center decide too many servers in a given trailer have failed, they remove the entire trailer from the cluster and connect up a new one.
Most of the on-site employees provide physical security - so the jobs are security guards. They reportedly number about 30 at the data center I described above.
No one should view the presence of data centers in their community as a source of tech jobs.
Because cities like NYC, SF, Seattle are very desirable. People from all over the world dream of living there. The tech companies are looking to recruit the most ambitious and most talented workers. Those workers generally want to live in a world class and prestigious city, not in some rustbelt city or a redneck small town.
Why would I want to live in NYC, SF, or Seattle? The towns are run by morons.
I have lived here since 1975. That being said, the city and Peninsula were great places to live; commuting was fairly easy with reasonable (to us natives) cost of housing, and no traffic jams on neighborhood streets. Over the past ten years -- especially in the last 18 months -- this area has become extremely congested, housing sky high, building (office and housing) is occurring on every piece of vacant land, and on tear-down sites such as strip malls. Surface streets remain the same, so there is heavy traffic most of the time off the freeways and "in town."
I have spent 22 years as an HR professional in tech and it all boils down to this: recruiting is highly competitive (hence the high salaries and outlandish perks) mostly among the tech companies. Recent college graduates and international professionals (H1-b visa holders) flock to this area because of the high pay, etc. Plus, how cool is it to work for Google, Apple, Facebook, etc.? I can say unequivocally there are disillusioned young folks who end up returning home, and many of the long-term residents are leaving the state. There are streets in Mountain View that have turned into RV parking lots due to the unaffordable housing.
I personally find the quality of life is dipping. The roads are in horrible shape, for example, even though we are receiving yet another tax increase (and auto registration) to "fix the roads" that should have been maintained all along. California has one of the highest taxes in the country; the state government is running at a deficit, ad nauseam.
All that being said, I wonder what the area will look like in five years (shivers). Skyscrapers? Since Highway 101 cannot add any more lanes, alternative transportation is fortunately being proposed. Millennials in general are shunning vehicles, so that is a good thing.
Rather than relocate the tech giants, opening "satellite" offices in other states would alleviate the strain. There are many support jobs in tech... they aren't all in engineering....
This is the face of change and progress, so we must either accept it or leave.
honeywell, eli lilly, ... are based in indiana.
jacobs in dallas.
nasa-goddard in maryland.
panasonic avionics in washington.
boeing in chicago.
most large health insurers in hartford, ct.
...
several (most ?) s&p 100 engineering corporations are not headquartered in silicon valley.
Last edited by stanley-88888888; 06-18-2017 at 02:02 PM..
It's just reported that Google is buying 300 cargo container homes for their employees to live in, due to the high cost of housing in Bay Area.
I am wondering, why can't Google just decide to move to a cheaper place, say Hollister, CA, or a bit farther, Modesto, CA, or even farther, say Elk, NV; or the craziest, Bismark, ND?
Maybe they can even buy a 1000 acres of forest land in Mendocino land and create a city out of nothing.
I can understand a small startup will have a hard time making it outside the hub, but doesn't Google have enough gravitas to make this strategy work?
You'd have to sell your employees on the idea of living in Bismark, ND. Employees that your competitors are itching to get away from you.
Why would I want to live in NYC, SF, or Seattle? The towns are run by morons.
The invisible hand of the market has reached in and declared that by one empirical indicator - price - NYC, SF and Seattle are attractive places to live.
Cheap electricity and good connectivity, mainly. Data centers don't actually employ a lot of people.
Very true, We (Fortune 500 company, I'll bet 99% of CD posters have used our products) are moving our data centers to Nevada, but we'll have no employees of our own out there. The headquarters will remain in Los Angeles. The lights-out data center is what everybody is aiming for.
It's just reported that Google is buying 300 cargo container homes for their employees to live in, due to the high cost of housing in Bay Area.
I am wondering, why can't Google just decide to move to a cheaper place, say Hollister, CA, or a bit farther, Modesto, CA, or even farther, say Elk, NV; or the craziest, Bismark, ND?
Maybe they can even buy a 1000 acres of forest land in Mendocino land and create a city out of nothing.
I can understand a small startup will have a hard time making it outside the hub, but doesn't Google have enough gravitas to make this strategy work?
Have you ever started a town from nothing? We're talking roads, water, sewer, electric, gas, cable, phone, etc. This costs a FORTUNE and takes YEARS. This doesn't happen over night. Why one earth would Google want to build a town?
Have you ever moved? Have you ever moved a business? It's EXPENSIVE, a pain in the arse, and a nightmare. I wouldn't wish that on anyone! I've done it and my husband has. Neither one of us wants to do it again.....guess what we're doing this weekend? Finishing moving my business....it's taken a month and a half! His company is moving offices and they're been working on it for over a year.
Why would Tim Cook or Bill Gates want to move to po-dunk midwest USA? For one, they are in port citys and another they are in hip trendy cities people like living in for a hefty price. Or why would Google move Googleplex to backyard Lousiana from hip and trendy Mountain View, CA? Where the weather is nice, the beach is always open, and the women are 100 times hotter? You need to get an education and move there. ;-)
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I spent four years in Mountain View. (I'll never call that "living.") There is nothing "hip" or "trendy" about Mountain View.
Funny how in a discussion about tech, everyone thinks in terms of Google, Apple, Microsoft, and talks about IT and data centers. That is only a small part of the tech world that employees plenty of engineers and scientists in many other parts of the country, including some you probably haven't heard of.
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