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Comment by bluGill | Hacker News Reader

Data centers provide jobs. Not as many as manufacturing, but the difference isn't as large as you would guess. A modern data center needs 50-100 people to repair/replace hardware, maintain the generators and such. A modern factory needs 200-500 people to do the assembly, shipping, and other such work that isn't automated.

Of course if labor is cheap you can use a non-automated factory and then you will have 2000-10000 people needed. However those are not coming back to the US (or Europe).

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Is that comparison similar square footage? I know of factories that have 10 employees and are small machine shops, and factories that have a few thousand employees (even ones that are highly automated). The difference is scale.

I’m not sure square footage is what matters here, though comparing the overall market for datacenter/manufacturing jobs would be more useful than individual installations anyway. It’s not like the U.S. is hurting for physical space in which to put factories or data centers. Speed of light isn’t that slow — the big New York IXP is actually in New Jersey and it would be fine even if it was further away.

Yes, but I'm comparing a specific factory with a specific data center that I happen to know enough about to compare. There are larger factories that have more people.

The factory I'm thinking of had 2000 people in 1950, and around 250 today - while producing the same amount of product. Automation is continuing to come to that factory - there are number of things that could be automated but their volumes are not quite high enough today to justify the upfront costs.

> A modern data center needs 50-100 people

I doubt it. Job density for land usage and other externalities generated is going to be one, maybe two, orders of magnitude greater for manufacturing.

One CNC laser cutter replaces the 40 humans in a factory. I don't know how many people the automated paint system replaced... factories are not near as labor dense these days as you would guess.

> One CNC laser cutter replaces the 40 humans in a factory. I don't know how many people the automated paint system replaced.

In any new, expanding, or relocating factory, nobody is getting replaced by these things, because they are already priced in.

> factories are not near as labor dense these days as you would guess.

That's a bit presumptuous of you.

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