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Cloud centers bring high-tech flash but not many jobs
- notatoad 15y ago"not many jobs"? in a town of 3400 people, the new datacenter is expected to create 50 direct jobs and 150 contracting/maintenance positions. if we say the workforce comprises half the population, that means 10% of the jobs in town will be datacenter related. that sounds pretty good to me. apple isn't going to magically turn your town from podunk, nowhere into some big metropolis.
- ebiester 15y agoYes, but it's very likely the 50 direct jobs will be handled by people mostly brought in by Apple and some won't even live in the town.
- sjs 15y agoThey contracted someone to build the thing in the first place. Whoever is there for the data centre will be renting or buying a place to live, or at least staying at hotels, shopping for food and going to restaurants. It may not solve all of the town's problems but it probably does not do any harm either.
- AlexMuir 15y agoYou're right. But the problem is bigger than this. It's that the data centre eliminates a far greater number of jobs than it creates. Somewhere else in the US, there's a CD pressing factory which has just closed its doors with 150 jobs lost. And 10 retailers who sold those CDs. And the company that printed Road Atlases. It's an inevitability, but one that is overlooked by saying, "Well it's progress, we're creating skilled jobs in the businesses that are doing the displacing. Let's retool our workforce."
- ianhawes 15y agoIf a data center produces only 50 jobs, then I find it hard to believe that a CD pressing shop produced 150 jobs.
- AlexMuir 15y agoSorry, I meant shop as short for workshop (ie. factory) It's probably not common now that I think of it.
- mbreese 15y agoThe Sony CD plant in Terre Haute, IN employs ~ 1,400 [1]. I know they have other plants, but I think that is it for the Eastern US. And, it's pretty much the only company in the country that produces physical media, so other CD pressing plants are pretty rare. [1] http://www.indianaeconomicdigest.net/main.asp?SectionID=31&SubSectionID=135&ArticleID=59952 http://www.indianaeconomicdigest.net/main.asp?SectionID=31&#... Edit: According to http://www.sonydadc.com/en/locations/ http://www.sonydadc.com/en/locations/, the only production facility in the US is in Terre Haute...
- flyt 15y agotough shit. I bet the candle industry was hurt pretty bad by the development of electricity.
- balloot 15y agoIf they're counting jobs at Apple HQ, there are FAR more than 50 jobs associated with this data center. They're talking about the people who report to work in the actual data center building. And that's an incredibly stupid way to measure the job creation of a cloud data center, given that its entire purpose in life is to allow remote access of its information.
- georgieporgie 15y agoTo the small town which is giving tax breaks, it's a somewhat important thing to discuss.
- politician 15y agoTrue, but there are knock-on effects of creating 50 new jobs in a town of 3400. These 50 people now have money to spend locally which could result in the creation of many more low wage jobs to service the new business.
- georgieporgie 15y agoYeah, but then, the town is also now on the hook for police and fire service (and probably a variety of other non-obvious costs) for a huge datacenter, though the company is paying discounted taxes...
- notatoad 15y agoThe direct jobs will be given to qualified people. It's not apple's fault that (likely) nobody in town is qualified.
- AlexMuir 15y agoI've just written an article (waiting for publication) lamenting the same thing from almost the exact opposite angle: Lots of jobs, no money. Here in Scotland, the government has just given £10.6m in 'support' to Amazon to encourage them to open a distribution centre (actually they already had two, but anyway...) The Scottish government is trumpeting this as a recognition of Scotland's "highly skilled workforce". Actually it's 750 jobs (gov't estimate) mostly on 1% above the legal minimum wage, with no real prospects. And to cap it all, Amazon don't even pay tax in the UK. All their sales go through a Luxembourg company. So it seems ridiculous that the taxpayer is subsidising the operations of a highly profitable, tax-avoiding company. Effectively we're buying jobs. Meanwhile, Borders is bankrupt (loss of 1,200 jobs), and other booksellers (Waterstones paid £2m in corporation tax last year) are struggling. Relating it back to this post - highly skilled work requires less people. Low skilled work requires less people AND pays less money. But it's progress, and I fear it's simply an economic reality. I don't know what the solution is. Note: I don't want to litter this post with climbdowns, moderations etc. I'm not disparaging Amazon jobs, and 750 people working instead of unemployed is good. But we can't win in a race to the lowest paid unskilled labour. And Amazon's labour can't even be offshored anyway, so who are we bidding against?
- wavephorm 15y agoI keep seeing new articles in this type of tone. Like they know what's wrong but are afraid to say what they want for fear it won't be published. What this article is describing is capitalism working effectively, maybe too effictively to be sustainable. Capitalsim is all about using technology to produce profits more efficiently. By building a data center in a small town Apple is efficiently using its techology to produce profits. This isn't something to be complaining to Apple for doing. Technology's effictiveness is outstripping captialisms mechanism for job creation. The unemployment problem probably cannot be fixed without drastic socio-economic reform.
- AlexMuir 15y agoI absolutely agree. And it's all well and good talking about startups creating jobs, but really, what YC startups have created any meaningful number of jobs (aside from highly paid developers (Dropbox, Heroku) or sales staff (Airbnb)? I'm not taking away from their success in any way, I just think we need to recognise that there's a fundamental problem on the horizon. I suspect the solution lies in fewer people working and contributing a greater proportion of their income. Obviously that's unpalatable to everybody.
- zerostar07 15y agoDo you remember that article from Mark Andreesen that "Software is eating everything"? It's a reality in the West that is often neglected and may lead to major changes in the (industrial-age) model of employment. There are other sectors with similar problems: Green energy, where people assume more jobs will be created although its obvious that it actually requires less human effort.
- marshallp 15y agoit's beyond the west, china for example has a worse problem, with many 20 million factory jobs being automated out over the past decade
- thwarted 15y agoI absolutely agree. And it's all well and good talking about startups creating jobs, but really, what YC startups have created any meaningful number of jobs What's a meaningful number of jobs? Creating jobs is only worth doing if it creates 10 jobs? 100 jobs? 1000 jobs? 10,000 jobs? None of these jobs can be "created" overnight, it requires years of building a company to get to the point where you can employ 10,000 people, much less employ an additional 10,000 people. The US civilian labor force is 154.2 million[1]. At 9% unemployment (13,878,000 of the total labor force), 10,000 jobs reduces the number of unemployed people by 7/100ths of a percent, so even that seems like it's not good enough. The point being that every little bit helps, and we're going to have an easier time getting people employed in handfuls than trying to get massive companies (of which there are fewer, over all) employing an additional 10,000 or 100,000 people -- nevermind that an economy that has a large number of smaller employers is going to be stronger and more resilient than a small number of massive employers. A business that employs 4 people is better than that business not existing at all. [1] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=employable+united+states http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=employable+united+state...
- 10100101001 15y agoCreate your own job, instead of relying on someone else. Isn't that the idea of a startup?
- marshallp 15y agoWhat if your startup doesn't make any money
- 10100101001 15y agoNot sure. My startup does not have that problem.
- motters 15y agoThis is very much in agreement with my observations about technological unemployment in the US. http://sluggish.homelinux.net/wiki/Employment_and_Productivity_Trends_in_the_US_Economy http://sluggish.homelinux.net/wiki/Employment_and_Productivi... Jobs in software related industries have been stagnant or in decline in the US for the last decade, and traditional narratives about the ability of workers from older industries to upgrade their skills and become "knowledge workers" seem to no longer be true.
- marshallp 15y agoAccording to the bureau of labor statistics jobs in software industries are set to massively increase, so who's right
- rndmize 15y agoI'm not sure I'd trust the BLS projections very far. According to this article, http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/robot_invasion/2011/09/will_robots_steal_your_job_2.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/robot_invasion/2011... the BLS projects a sizable increase in pharmacy work, but automation may end up flipping that on its head.
- balloot 15y agoIt is incredibly short sighted to say that the sum of the jobs created by a data center is the people reporting to work in the building. This data center likely created hundreds, if not thousands of jobs. It's just that most of them aren't in hicksville, NC. There are hardware engineers designing the facility, software engineers maintaining the software infrastructure, product managers scheming of ways to use Apple's cloud facilities, etc.
- msbarnett 15y ago> This data center likely created hundreds, if not thousands of jobs. It's just that most of them aren't in hicksville, NC. Well, yes. But it's worth taking note of the point that Governments subsidizing the creation of data centers in places like hicksville, NC with the idea that the jobs they create will become a huge boon to the local hicksville economy is fundamentally mistaken. Aside from a skeleton staff to main the facility, most of the work is, as you say, create for people who will never need to set foot in North Carolina. The local jobs aren't bad for Hicksville, but they don't justify the huge subsidies, and they aren't going to ever save hicksville from economic irrelevancy.
- balloot 15y agoAbsolutely. But it appears that the fault falls clearly on the NC state government, which according to the article debated for less than a minute before awarding Apple $46 million in tax breaks. The irony is that Apple basically used Republicans' blind allegiance to Job Creators to get huge tax breaks that will allow them to hire hundreds of people in the Socialist tax-happy hellhole of California, where most of the best knowledge workers live.
- yummyfajitas 15y agoAccording to the article, the government didn't subsidize Apple. Town Manager William “Todd” Herms said Apple’s presence boosts the town’s tax base and helps it lower overall taxes... Apple benefits from reduced taxes, and the town gets 50% of something rather than 100% of nothing.
- spitfire 15y agoTechnology is about making things easier. Computers, in particular, are about automation. We're finally starting to figure out this automation thing in operations. Cool. If you're not figuring out how to make you redundant the guy beside you, then the guy beside you is trying to figure out how to make you redundant.
- 10100101001 15y agoInstead of subsidising jobs, subsidise education.
- georgieporgie 15y agoAround here in Oregon, I've seen a fair amount of similar stuff over a few decades. A big company moves into the area. Everyone is thrilled to be building the new facilities. Then, a few locals are hired, a few skilled employees are brought in from their other areas, and everyone else is left scratching their heads. After a few years, the municipal tax break comes to an end. The big company needs new technology anyway, so it's cheaper just to build a new facility in a new town with new tax breaks, than it is to upgrade the existing one.