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There's tech companies planning to add a little hope for Vegas and Reno alike with datacenters being opened up in the area due to the super low costs while stil

There's tech companies planning to add a little hope for Vegas and Reno alike with datacenters being opened up in the area due to the super low costs while still maintaining some general proximity to southern California. Unfortunately, all these announcements of companies opening up datacenters in random, low-cost areas of the US such as North Carolina seem to imply that these will bring the same sort of tech jobs as Silicon Valley in some way when this is pretty unlikely to actually add permanent jobs that are much more than commodity McDonalds-level employment. Modern datacenters are basically fancy warehouses and are engineered for maximum autonomous operation (I think we have robots that can rack & stack 1U and 2U boxes now actually depending upon server vendor). These places are typically being constructed by people barely making more than minimum wage and can barely spell Cisco, and they're not going to be the ones actually running anything either except occasionally fixing up shoddy work that probably doesn't even meet the really relaxed electrical and commercial building codes. But once these DCs are up and the cables installed, they're managed pretty much remotely as a rule and the jobs of racking and stacking are fast disappearing. Sometimes your network guy has to drive out to the DC, sometimes people engineer around entire racks failing due to a PDU going down, anything to avoid putting a higher-paid engineer on the ground there. There's almost no Fortune 500 I know of that has a datacenter that isn't trying to decommission most of theirs, so while each DC being raised up is theoretically more jobs in disadvantaged areas, this comes at the cost oftentimes of losing 2-3 more datacenters with 2-3 times more jobs in slightly higher costs of living areas like Missouri, southern Virginia, Michigan, and Indiana.

ktsmith 12y ago
Most people in Reno aren't stupid enough to believe that opening a DC will bring tech jobs. The city council certainly hopes they are though. Reno has been courting the Bay Area tech companies for over 20 years with no success. This is a PR puff piece.
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  > with no success. Not entirely. "In addition to confirming that the gigafactory will employ 6,500 full-time employees, Tesla also raised its average wage estimate to $26.16 per hour. Full-time staffing for the gigafactory will comprise of: 4,550 production associates paid $22.79 per hour 200 material handlers paid $22.79 per hour 460 equipment technicians paid $27.88 per hour 360 quality technicians paid $27.88 per hour 930 engineers and senior staff paid $41.83 per hour. Wages paid by Tesla for the gigafactory will total $353.6 million per year at full employment. The figure does not include construction jobs for building the plant. Tesla partner Panasonic already started listing jobs related to the gigafactory." http://www.rgj.com/story/money/reno-rebirth/2014/10/23/tesla-lists-jobs-salaries-for-gigafactory/17753369/ http://www.rgj.com/story/money/reno-rebirth/2014/10/23/tesla...
  - ktsmith 12y ago
    The Tesla factory is not in Reno and will not benefit Reno. Neither are the majority of manufacturing facilities that have opened here recently. If you are a welder I can can get you a job making between $25-50 per hour depending on your certifications in about ten minutes. If you are a programmer you'll be hard pressed to find a job paying market rate.
    - toomuchtodo 12y ago
      > If you are a programmer you'll be hard pressed to find a job paying market rate. If you're a programmer, work remote and disconnect your wage from your geography.
      - devonkim 12y ago
        As an engineer with a remote job, you will be unlikely to get certain kinds of jobs that have the same sort of pay-off that people get locally. If I was a remote worker for Facebook or Google, I wouldn't be able to use the cafeteria, and most start-ups in early stage tend to want people onsite where they can talk to each other much more. Furthermore, companies seem to pay significantly more just to have you on-site. In contrast, I've noticed most of the remote jobs I've applied to just aren't as good in compensation as ones onsite. I can easily find a random job as a senior engineer for $160k+... but it's really hard to find that as a remote worker. The extra $20-$40k / yr does add up even if you're in a significantly lower cost of living area.
        toomuchtodo 12y ago
        > I can easily find a random job as a senior engineer for $160k+... but it's really hard to find that as a remote worker. The extra $20-$40k / yr does add up even if you're in a significantly lower cost of living area. I don't believe the $60K+ more a year ($160K SFBA vs $100K remote) makes a SFBA job a net positive, considering how substantially higher the cost of living is. Equity, of course, is always a lottery ticket.
        12y ago
fiatmoney 12y ago
One thing a large datacenter project does give your town is the potential ability to tax a big chunk of relatively immobile capital.
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  How immobile is it? The building can't move. But from what I can tell, servers depreciate quite rapidly. If your town decides to exploit the DC too badly, you'll get a nice chunk of change for a few years. Meanwhile the owner will stop replacing servers in that location and rebuild in a location without unfriendly natives.
- devonkim 12y ago
  This is in direct contradiction to the numerous articles showing these kinds of economically disadvantaged areas giving so many tax credits that the companies will pay basically nothing in taxes to put a DC there. I'd say that these municipalities are so desperate for jobs of any sort they're willing to take almost nothing in taxes just to have a big DC show up by some big name tech company once and give blue collars jobs for even a year or so. You're not going to see big cities be able to do that kind of a desperate move for jobs, but for a lot of rural areas they might be able to swing the money. Thing is that Nevada doesn't have a state income tax, so the hope is that the working age population in the area won't be discouraged enough to completely leave. Random towns in Texas are similar due to no income tax at state level. North Carolina, however, does have a mixed income of state taxes, moderate sales tax, and fairly low real estate taxes. Meanwhile, start-ups and small businesses in general will get almost none of the same kind of treatment, so companies that are struggling to grow due to lack of capital are forced into areas closer to their investors, whom being wealthy, tend to gravitate toward higher cost areas of living.
beachstartup 12y ago
in one of our datacenter facilities with multiple cages i.e. hundreds of servers and networking gear to support, the onsite work is less than 10 hours a week. almost all failures are engineered against. one of our co-founders just goes there one afternoon per week since he lives nearby. he says it's nice to get out of the office occasionally. it's basically just rack/stack/wire/replace. as we move into more software automation the job will be less hours as failures will no longer be time sensitive. maybe one visit every month. i've never personally seen a robot in a datacenter so i'm not sure how the physical aspects are being automated but it's fairly low wage work so i figure it will take a long time before putting robots in DCs is cost effective. having said all that, it still requires someone smart onsite to know wtf is going on when something is seriously broken or needs to be built right the first time around.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
selimthegrim 12y ago
In this vein, somebody, at some point, needs to investigate how precisely IBM and EA bamboozled Baton Rouge and LSU that they were bringing "tech jobs" there. LSU even gave EA two whole floors of an on campus building (the Digital Media Center) built largely with disaster relief money to host...wait for it...their video game testers. We can now sleep soundly knowing our federal tax dollars went to ensure the quality of the next Battlefield and Sims releases.
- Spooky23 12y ago
  It's easy, politicians are always looking for good news. Metrics like "jobs created" get cranked out of some model based on dollars invested.

ktsmith 12y ago

Most people in Reno aren't stupid enough to believe that opening a DC will bring tech jobs. The city council certainly hopes they are though. Reno has been courting the Bay Area tech companies for over 20 years with no success. This is a PR puff piece.

toomuchtodo 12y ago
> with no success. Not entirely. "In addition to confirming that the gigafactory will employ 6,500 full-time employees, Tesla also raised its average wage estimate to $26.16 per hour. Full-time staffing for the gigafactory will comprise of: 4,550 production associates paid $22.79 per hour 200 material handlers paid $22.79 per hour 460 equipment technicians paid $27.88 per hour 360 quality technicians paid $27.88 per hour 930 engineers and senior staff paid $41.83 per hour. Wages paid by Tesla for the gigafactory will total $353.6 million per year at full employment. The figure does not include construction jobs for building the plant. Tesla partner Panasonic already started listing jobs related to the gigafactory." http://www.rgj.com/story/money/reno-rebirth/2014/10/23/tesla-lists-jobs-salaries-for-gigafactory/17753369/ http://www.rgj.com/story/money/reno-rebirth/2014/10/23/tesla...
- ktsmith 12y ago
  The Tesla factory is not in Reno and will not benefit Reno. Neither are the majority of manufacturing facilities that have opened here recently. If you are a welder I can can get you a job making between $25-50 per hour depending on your certifications in about ten minutes. If you are a programmer you'll be hard pressed to find a job paying market rate.
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    > If you are a programmer you'll be hard pressed to find a job paying market rate. If you're a programmer, work remote and disconnect your wage from your geography.
    - devonkim 12y ago
      As an engineer with a remote job, you will be unlikely to get certain kinds of jobs that have the same sort of pay-off that people get locally. If I was a remote worker for Facebook or Google, I wouldn't be able to use the cafeteria, and most start-ups in early stage tend to want people onsite where they can talk to each other much more. Furthermore, companies seem to pay significantly more just to have you on-site. In contrast, I've noticed most of the remote jobs I've applied to just aren't as good in compensation as ones onsite. I can easily find a random job as a senior engineer for $160k+... but it's really hard to find that as a remote worker. The extra $20-$40k / yr does add up even if you're in a significantly lower cost of living area.
      - toomuchtodo 12y ago
        > I can easily find a random job as a senior engineer for $160k+... but it's really hard to find that as a remote worker. The extra $20-$40k / yr does add up even if you're in a significantly lower cost of living area. I don't believe the $60K+ more a year ($160K SFBA vs $100K remote) makes a SFBA job a net positive, considering how substantially higher the cost of living is. Equity, of course, is always a lottery ticket.
      - 12y ago

fiatmoney 12y ago

One thing a large datacenter project does give your town is the potential ability to tax a big chunk of relatively immobile capital.

yummyfajitas 12y ago
How immobile is it? The building can't move. But from what I can tell, servers depreciate quite rapidly. If your town decides to exploit the DC too badly, you'll get a nice chunk of change for a few years. Meanwhile the owner will stop replacing servers in that location and rebuild in a location without unfriendly natives.
devonkim 12y ago
This is in direct contradiction to the numerous articles showing these kinds of economically disadvantaged areas giving so many tax credits that the companies will pay basically nothing in taxes to put a DC there. I'd say that these municipalities are so desperate for jobs of any sort they're willing to take almost nothing in taxes just to have a big DC show up by some big name tech company once and give blue collars jobs for even a year or so. You're not going to see big cities be able to do that kind of a desperate move for jobs, but for a lot of rural areas they might be able to swing the money. Thing is that Nevada doesn't have a state income tax, so the hope is that the working age population in the area won't be discouraged enough to completely leave. Random towns in Texas are similar due to no income tax at state level. North Carolina, however, does have a mixed income of state taxes, moderate sales tax, and fairly low real estate taxes. Meanwhile, start-ups and small businesses in general will get almost none of the same kind of treatment, so companies that are struggling to grow due to lack of capital are forced into areas closer to their investors, whom being wealthy, tend to gravitate toward higher cost areas of living.

beachstartup 12y ago

in one of our datacenter facilities with multiple cages i.e. hundreds of servers and networking gear to support, the onsite work is less than 10 hours a week. almost all failures are engineered against. one of our co-founders just goes there one afternoon per week since he lives nearby. he says it's nice to get out of the office occasionally. it's basically just rack/stack/wire/replace. as we move into more software automation the job will be less hours as failures will no longer be time sensitive. maybe one visit every month. i've never personally seen a robot in a datacenter so i'm not sure how the physical aspects are being automated but it's fairly low wage work so i figure it will take a long time before putting robots in DCs is cost effective. having said all that, it still requires someone smart onsite to know wtf is going on when something is seriously broken or needs to be built right the first time around.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

selimthegrim 12y ago

In this vein, somebody, at some point, needs to investigate how precisely IBM and EA bamboozled Baton Rouge and LSU that they were bringing "tech jobs" there. LSU even gave EA two whole floors of an on campus building (the Digital Media Center) built largely with disaster relief money to host...wait for it...their video game testers. We can now sleep soundly knowing our federal tax dollars went to ensure the quality of the next Battlefield and Sims releases.

Spooky23 12y ago
It's easy, politicians are always looking for good news. Metrics like "jobs created" get cranked out of some model based on dollars invested.