October 16, 2008 at 9:07 am
The MS data center in Iowa is not excatly being built in some small remote town, yes Des Moines is small compared to NYC, Dallas etc, but still ok. And lots of plan B companies available. Granted, most companies that rely heavily on IT here are finance companies, but luckily none of them has been hit hard (so far).
I do agree witht he poster above though, that a call center would be far preferential to a data center as far as jobs go. The numbers I have seen for MS is about 80 people employeed in Des Moines.
October 16, 2008 at 12:42 pm
I think it is a nice move for those companies. I live at Update NY area, the living standard here is much lower than NY city, Philly and California, but the salary is not bad. My boss had an interview with Google two years ago in Mountain View, California. They offered him a job (technical manager) but the salary was lower than the one he has right now. But in Mountain View the cost of living is 10 times higher than here. So he turned down the job at Google. He said he could not even afford a 1000 square condo with the salary they offered him. Now he owns a 2500 sq feet house with 2 aces of land.
October 17, 2008 at 1:30 am
One thing that helps to drive this is the amount of support staff that can be available remotely. I work in a company with a large on-site data center, but I haven’t actually been in the data center for several years, even though it is located less then 50 feet from where I sit.
I like this idea very much. With technology going at the current rate you can sit far from the actual datacentre and still provide support. I grew up in the countryside and now am living in Johannesburg. I would give anything to go back to the small towns again. Steve, organize me a greencard and a plane ticket and I will come work for you.
:-PManie Verster
Developer
Johannesburg
South Africa
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. - Holy Bible
I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times. - Everett Mckinley Dirkson (Well, I am trying. - Manie Verster)
October 17, 2008 at 1:33 am
Ditto! lol
July 24, 2013 at 12:02 pm
I'm interested to see how the discussion unfolds 5 years on. Is the point still valid given the growth of cloud computing. Incidentally where are cloud data centers located - city or country?
July 24, 2013 at 6:04 pm
Living in the Midwest, I have seen a few new sites pop up. Although I think cloud computing has put a damper on this growth.
July 25, 2013 at 11:13 am
Barry G Freeman (10/16/2008)
Personally, I'd love to get out the UK... however, I'm not too sure the US is much better 🙂
Maybe somewhere like Magdeburg or Leipzig would be better. Having got rid of the Stasi as recently as 1990 that part of the world is perhaps less likely to accept the sort of oppressive nonsense that politicians and intelligence services have been peddling for quite some time now in the US and the UK.
I wouldn't much fancy Colorado or Iowa though, even without the oppressive policies. I want to be near sea and hills, and neither of those states has any sea coast, while tornadoes and thunderstorms are an extra minus for Iowa. But Iowa must have its good points - it produced Norman Borlaug.
Tom
July 25, 2013 at 2:47 pm
I live in a small town near the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina, and work for a software company here. There are two challenges I've seen here:
1- Finding qualified developers who want to move here (although I can't understand why they wouldn't want to) when you're hiring.
2- Finding reliable internet access for home when you have to support the business off-hours. Most homes here in the mountains are off the beaten path, and your options for internet are limited.
Nevertheless, I still love living here; it's laid back, quiet, and simply beautiful.
Tony
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Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?
July 25, 2013 at 5:42 pm
tabinsc (7/25/2013)
I live in a small town near the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina, and work for a software company here. There are two challenges I've seen here:1- Finding qualified developers who want to move here (although I can't understand why they wouldn't want to) when you're hiring.
I can give you three good reasons why people like me don't want to go there: (1) the climate is too cold (probably OK for me, but my wife wouldn't survive a North Carolina Appalachian winter); (2) the nearest sea is in storm and tornado country; and (3) I need the internet and the web for social reasons and for buying things that I can't find locally in England or in Spain, let alone in NC.
Maybe a few decades back, when Ann was fitter (and so was I, and we might have taken chances on storms and tornados when visiting the coast) and getting hold of Gaelic books and music on the web wasn't an issue because there was no web we might have moved there. I was looking for something new and considering the USA seriously at the beginning of 1969 and again six or seven years later - but then there weren't any jobs: North Carolina only employed mathematicians or computer scientists (no-one was called a "developer" way back then) in the area around Chapel Hill and Raleigh, not in the mountain areas. And the pay in most places in the USA didn't look good.
2- Finding reliable internet access for home when you have to support the business off-hours. Most homes here in the mountains are off the beaten path, and your options for internet are limited.
For those of us who use the internet and the web for all sorts of things other than work, that's probably a killer.
Nevertheless, I still love living here; it's laid back, quiet, and simply beautiful.
Mountains about one and a half times as high as the West Highlands of Scotland - but with about the same prominence/tallness, because they start off from quite high, not from sea level as most of ours do (the closest to the sea the Smokies get is several times further from the sea than the farthest you can get in he West Highlands). So I suspect that I would like it.
Tom
July 25, 2013 at 6:51 pm
Can you not get satellite internet?
Asheville NC, which is close to the Smoky mountains is about the same distance/time from the ocean as Leipzig is to the Baltic.
I lived in Massachusetts for 18 months, so I would expect even the mountains of NC to be warmer. Is that a fair comment?
Either way, I'm not phased. I am used to changing countries and climates. Living/working there sounds very interesting. I'd like to live in the US again but agents are put off by the need to get me an E3 visa, which they've never heard of and which takes 2-3 weeks. If you are interested in further discussions, please get in touch.
July 26, 2013 at 7:21 am
Howard Perry (7/25/2013)
Can you not get satellite internet?Asheville NC, which is close to the Smoky mountains is about the same distance/time from the ocean as Leipzig is to the Baltic.
I lived in Massachusetts for 18 months, so I would expect even the mountains of NC to be warmer. Is that a fair comment?
Either way, I'm not phased. I am used to changing countries and climates. Living/working there sounds very interesting. I'd like to live in the US again but agents are put off by the need to get me an E3 visa, which they've never heard of and which takes 2-3 weeks. If you are interested in further discussions, please get in touch.
Everyone i've talked to here says satellite internet goes down a lot, so that's not a good option for me. Even my satellite TV drops with every heavy rainfall. DSL is kinda sluggish but stays up for the most part, which is more important than speed in my opinion.
Here in Franklin, we get less snowfall than most of the mountains but the winters are still chilly. The best part is that it rarely gets above 90 in the summer and gets quite cool at night, which is way better than most of the south.
Tony
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Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?
July 26, 2013 at 12:47 pm
Hey Steve,
Elbert County, CO sound great but no Data Center we will just do chores and ride horses.
LOL,
Jerry
July 26, 2013 at 4:38 pm
Perhaps you need multiple types of internet. If so this might be useful
http://bloggerabroad.com/better-internet-abroad-load-balance/
Satellite reception can be a problem with heavy rain, although it's recommended to switch it off in thunderstorms.
The key issue is whether the receiver in the centre of the dish is properly aligned with the satellite. I understand that the tolerance is low, so it can slip out of aligned as result of extreme weather. I hassle my ISP to send someone to fix it. Usually they bring a later version.
90F Max summer temperature is a dream. Summer temperatures often exceed 105 but at least it's dry heat and I have a 50Mgl dam to cool off in.
Howard
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