Insights, tips, and industry news
A clear, no-fluff guide to the data center technician role — what the job is, the skills and certs you need, and what it takes to get hired, including paths that require no degree.
OpenAI, Blackstone, QTS and SoftBank have teamed up with five national building-trades unions to form the American Infrastructure Alliance, a multimillion-dollar coalition aimed at heading off state data center moratoriums before they spread further. It's a genuinely new move after a year of industry-vs-community conflict: labor is now at the table alongside the AI companies, not just on the sidelines. We look at who's in it, what it actually wants, and what having unions in the room could mean for pay, standards, and job security.
AWS said it will no longer use nondisclosure agreements with local governments and pledged $1 billion to data center communities, days after a congressional investigation into Amazon, Google, Meta and Oracle over the same practice. Micron posted a record quarter and strong guidance, though the stock gave back most of its initial gain by week's end. OpenAI, Blackstone, SoftBank and major unions also launched a coalition to fight state moratoriums. Here's what it means for data center job seekers.
September's snapshot: data center hiring rose ~31% month-over-month, QTS overtook Amazon as the most active employer, and Texas and Virginia kept their lead.
A breakdown of the Digital Realty data center interview — the multi-round process, the critical-systems questions, and how to prepare for the facilities and Remote Hands tracks.
What Digital Realty pays its technicians and critical facilities engineers, what you need to get in, and how to get hired at one of the world's largest data center operators.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott expanded his data center moratorium to halt all environmental permits statewide until at least December, and Wall Street's appetite for data center IPOs is cooling as Holtec Nuclear and SB Energy delay their listings. Meanwhile Akamai signed an $11.6 billion cloud deal with Anthropic, Vertiv agreed to buy a European cooling-services firm, and the Fed's rate hike keeps pressuring capital-intensive builders. Here's what it means for data center job seekers.
In the space of one week, three data-center-adjacent companies delayed their IPOs, a new report showed $68 billion in projects blocked or delayed by local opposition last quarter alone, and Texas froze new data center permits statewide. This is the first time the backlash has visibly hit capital markets rather than just individual projects. We break down what's actually being disrupted, what isn't, and what it means if your paycheck depends on this industry.
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A breakdown of the Meta data center technician interview — the multi-round loop, the technical and behavioral questions candidates report, and how to prepare.
What Meta pays its data center technicians, why the figure is higher than most rivals, the difference between Meta employees and contractors on Meta sites, and how to get hired.
AI lab leaders asked the industry to slow frontier model development, sending chip stocks down before a quick recovery. AWS said data in Bahrain and part of the UAE can't be recovered, the House passed a ratepayer bill 417–3, and Amazon signed a Generac generator deal worth up to $8 billion. Here is what it means for data center job seekers.
More than half of data center operators now report trouble finding qualified candidates, and the pipeline producing ready-made data center engineers doesn't exist. So operators like Digital Realty have widened their hiring criteria to include master electricians, HVAC techs, and people with no technical background at all — then trained them on the payroll. Meanwhile Meta, Google, and BlackRock have pledged more than $265 million toward trades training. Here's what the door actually looks like right now, which programs are real, and what the short-course route does and doesn't get you.