Why surprised?

What kind of tech? Lots of it gets contracted out, there's not that much full time staff at any given facility.

I used to travel installing Optical Networking equipment, there's definitely demand there but it's brutal travel.

You could look into the big 3rd party providers Equinix, Digital Realty, etc, they often have some openings. The main thing to consider is they have some pretty crazy shift schedules. Lots of them 12 hours 3-4 days a week with nights etc.

Microsoft is listing positions on their public job board (I know because I'm nosy and they're building a big data center complex a few miles from me). They look like good jobs for the area. A couple pay over $100K and only require a high school diploma for what looks to be essentially security guard roles.

You're fishing in a small pond with few fish. It doesn't take many people to run a DC.

> With how many are being built rn I thought it would be easier.

Data centers don't need very many employees once they are built, many have less than 20 employees.

This is a big part of the reason why they are such a bad long term deal for localities and why giving them tax breaks, etc is just a scam. They add a lot more negative externalities than they help with the local economy.

The page seems to be pretty clear that these are datacenters "owned and operated" by Google. They're not redefining "datacenter." The caches and edge PoPs are typically rented racks in partner datacenters, usually telcos and ISPs.

Edge node map didn’t get archived I see: https://web.archive.org/web/20170106184020/https://peering.g...

But “…Google has placed more than 7,500 edge nodes, which are Google servers installed in the networks of Internet service and network providers.” https://web.archive.org/web/20250722030821/https://spectrum....

This page isn't new, it's just marketing for a different purpose. This one is about "owned and operated" data centers, as this is basically a careers page. The cloud page is marketing for another purpose – cloud customers. Is there really any lying going on here?

Cost prohibitive?

I was confused at first but it seems like the site lists for google products only, doesn't seem to list some of the regions google cloud is available in (such as nothing in shown in Canada). But scrolling down it has a link to Google cloud regions.

I assume that's only their own data centers, not where they rent space in other data centers.

And none of the on the continents of Africa or Australia.

Surely anyone with an interest could find this through various means.

Also easily found potential military targets: power generation, water treatment, hospitals, schools, government buildings, etc.

Is it actually possible to hide the locations of datacenters? At least large ones?

Finding a datacenter from aerial or space photos isn't hard if you know how to identify a heat exchanger or huge generator. Both of which are very distinctive. Then limit that search set to certain sizes of big rectangular buildings. And ones with relatively low counts of passenger cars parked during mid day times.

> not really sure its a wise choice to disclose datacenters anymore publicly.

Transparency is good.

Kinda hard to hide them when you choose to build them in people’s backyards and ask them for a local tax break. The Meta ones near me are very visible.