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Comment by chirau | Hacker News Reader

Funny story about datacenters, I worked on optimizing algorithmic performance for 4 years at one the big 4 but I was never allowed in a datacenter because I didn't have a green card. So my team would go on and explore whilst i had beers in the lobby.

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That is funny. When I toured the supernap data center in Las Vegas (Blekko was thinking about locating a cluster there) they had a very elaborate security theatre sort of thing going on. Presumably they wanted to impress me at how secure it was. Clearly it was amusing as one of the sysadmins from a company there pulled me aside and said not to worry, once you had a contract it was a lot simpler to go in and out.

Can you elaborate on that? Wasn't it a private facility? Why is your green card status relevant to that? Were they hosting government assets and that was a requirement on the government's part? In that case odd that it's "green card" and not "citizenship".

maybe by "green card" they mean a green light didn't light up when he scanned his access card. <badum-ching>

He likely means the "green card" as in the green card.

Datacenters are sensitive facilities. It's not surprising that they block entrance to many people.

From what I've seen in Europe, I can remember a couple of places in military, datacenters and national research centers where it's clearly written "European Only" on the jobs.

Whats the green card?

https://www.usa.gov/green-cards

"A Green Card (Permanent Resident Card): Gives you official immigration status in the United States. Entitles you to certain rights and responsibilities. Is required if you wish to naturalize as a U.S. Citizen"

Yes, they had DoD and DoE assets. They are very specific about who can go in there.

My guess is he was a contractor and not a FT employee?

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