Comment by throwaway2037
3 days ago
As I understand, data centers from hyperscalers (Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Oracle, IBM, Alibaba, etc.) don't create many long-term jobs. Mostly they create short term jobs in the construction industry. Data centers from non-hyperscalers, like Equinix, probably create more long-term jobs because companies rent space, then need (near constant) changes to their hardware that requires "remote hands". I think hyperscalers mostly install monolithic hardware that requires almost no regular changes, except for break-fix.
Having worked in a hyper scaler on a system to orchestrate hw breakfix, it requires a lot of hands. We replaced thousands of hard drives alone per day... And racks are constantly coming and going. Hyperscaler DCs are busy places.
Busy places but not compared to similar businesses of their capital value I imagine.
>but not compared to similar businesses of their capital value
So? it's not like if hyperscalers weren't building datacenters, the billions that would otherwise be spent on GPUs would be spent on 10 car factories or whatever. The only reason the billions was being invested in the first place was because there's a craze for AI datacenters
This is good first hand information. If you had a guess, how much did these people make per hour? Someone who (1) locates a physical server (amoungst thousands) and (2) replaces a hard drive has roughly the same skillset as someone stocking supermarket shelves in 2025. I guess then make max 20 USD per hour.