{"id":1046,"date":"2008-01-25T08:44:35","date_gmt":"2008-01-25T15:44:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/wp\/?p=1046"},"modified":"2008-01-25T08:44:35","modified_gmt":"2008-01-25T15:44:35","slug":"welcome_jobs_bu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=1046","title":{"rendered":"The lucky 200"},"content":{"rendered":"

Behind a tightly guarded barbed-wire fence, Google’s new $600-million data-center complex in Lenoir, North Carolina, is rapidly taking shape, reports<\/a> the Charlotte Observer:<\/p>\n

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At the 220-acre Google site, past, present and future coexist. More than 300 construction workers, many from local contractors, have transformed a hill into more of a mountain, moving vast quantities of earth. The surrounding neighborhood, meanwhile, looks much as it did before, with a mix of modest homes and largely shuttered furniture factories. The Blue Ridge Mountains and snow-capped top of Grandfather Mountain loom in the distance.<\/p>\n

The first data center has risen at the base of the hill, along N.C. 18, with large cooling units at the side. It’s on track to begin limited testing this spring and should be fully up and running by the end of the year … Google is also excavating the pad for the second building, which is expected to begin operating in 2009.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The company, stung by criticism about the rich tax breaks it wrangled from state and local governments, has been doing a great deal of outreach to ensure good community relations. It’s brought in a former Vermont politician, Matt Dunne, to chat with residents about its plans, helped a nearby community college develop a new course of study in information technology, and donated Christmas trees for a holiday display. Google’s high-profile investment in the town, which has been depressed since the exit of the big furniture makers and other manufacturers that were once the mainstays of a thriving local economy, has boosted people’s morale and given them new optimism about the future, reports the paper. The mysterious new buildings rising near the state highway are a big source of pride for the beaten-down community.<\/p>\n

What they won’t be, however, is a big source of jobs. Once the construction of the server farm is complete and the work crews leave the site, the actual number of people that Google will employ in Lenoir will be modest. Unlike the old furniture plants, which provided well-paying jobs to many thousands of workers, only about 200 people will end up working in the vast but highly automated Google complex, though the lucky 200 will enjoy all the famous Google perks:<\/p>\n

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The company’s Lenoir offices will look “good and Googly,” Dunne said, with bean-bag chairs, lava lamps and a massage chair. A foosball table is already in use in the temporary trailers behind the first data center building. Employees will also receive free food, incentives to buy hybrid cars and to buy homes in Lenoir, and either an on-site gym or subsidized gym membership.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No matter how pampered, such a small cadre of workers won’t in itself be enough to turn around Lenoir’s fortunes, as Google itself is quick to point out. “We’re not here to save the town,” the company’s local operations chief, Tom Jacobik, told the Observer. “We’re here to run a business.”<\/p>\n

It’s a business that bears little resemblance to the manufacturing businesses that spurred the growth of the middle class during the last century. The great plants of the information age are being engineered to run with a whole of computers but very few people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Behind a tightly guarded barbed-wire fence, Google’s new $600-million data-center complex in Lenoir, North Carolina, is rapidly taking shape, reports the Charlotte Observer: At the 220-acre Google site, past, present and future coexist. More than 300 construction workers, many from local contractors, have transformed a hill into more of a mountain, moving vast quantities of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1046\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}