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Comment by notatoad | Hacker News Reader

"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.

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Yes, 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.

They 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.

You'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."

If a data center produces only 50 jobs, then I find it hard to believe that a CD pressing shop produced 150 jobs.

Sorry, I meant shop as short for workshop (ie. factory) It's probably not common now that I think of it.

The 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&#...

Edit: According to http://www.sonydadc.com/en/locations/, the only production facility in the US is in Terre Haute...

tough shit. I bet the candle industry was hurt pretty bad by the development of electricity.

If 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.

To the small town which is giving tax breaks, it's a somewhat important thing to discuss.

True, 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.

Yeah, 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...

The direct jobs will be given to qualified people. It's not apple's fault that (likely) nobody in town is qualified.

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