Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ralph84 16 days ago
Big Tech isn't exactly doing a great job of marketing them. Saying they're for AI while doing mass layoffs attributed to AI isn't a winning message.
4 comments

That's like saying Big Industry didn't do a good job of marketing factories in the industrial revolution. Datacenters aren't meant to be directly marketed. The benefits accrues to those who purchase the resulting services, and the marketing is for those services.
Any individual layoff is truly awful.

But at the macro level, it is not really a big number so far. From ~2.48 million in 2023 to ~2.37million now. Or a 5% drop in employment in 3 years.

Fred: All Employees, Computer Systems Design and Related Services (CES6054150001)

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ces6054150001

Interesting stats to look at.

Is "Telecommunications" the only tech that's actually been steadily automating it's workforce since 2000:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES5051700001

edit: or is "Telecommunications" the old school landlines and such, and this is just the effect of the Internet

"Telecommunications" would have to, by any reasonable standard, include Telephonic Communications and the vast switching networks for voice.

Clearly that's a domain that has been automating at the very least since the human operated plug and board switching centres with human operators that answered phones and hand routed calls left the network centres.

You'll need to compare how many job postings there are as well to get the full picture, especially for junior roles. That's one of the most contentious effects and has an outsized impact on society.
Not much layoffs and they're probably due to the Trump #1 tax hikes on engineering anyway. But you can't say that without getting tariffed. Saying you're using AI is a much safer bet
And saying they’ll bring in jobs, while neglecting to mention that is during the construction phase.

And also they come with huge tax breaks.

Why does the construction of buildings to run business operations of any kind need to be "marketed" in the first place, absent manipulative media campaigns trying to manufacture a controversy around them?
Because the public is affected? If they were to run a highway through the middle of San Fransisco, a lot of people would also be affected. Like in Eastern Oregon a data center used agricultural water for evaporative cooling. The remaining water that was pumped out has nitrate levels over 5x the legal limit. Enough to cause cancer and miscarriages in nearby homes.

Our environment and communities are being treated as economic externalities.

- https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy8gy7lv448o

- https://idahoconservation.org/blog/the-dark-side-of-data-cen...

- https://www.akcp.com/index.php/2025/09/02/truth-about-data-w...

> Because the public is affected?

An abstract concept is being affected in unspecified ways by a generalized category of activity?

> If they were to run a highway through the middle of San Fransisco, a lot of people would also be affected.

Right. That's why they'd need to do all of the hard work to acquire all of the necessary property rights, easements, contracts, etc. from those people in order to undertake such a project.

Are data centers being constructed on other people's property without their consent? Are the actual negative externalities that impact specific people -- not the vague, all-encompassing notion of "the public" -- not being addressed within their context? I'm not aware of any of that happening.

> Like in Eastern Oregon a data center used agricultural water for evaporative cooling. The remaining water that was pumped out has nitrate levels over 5x the legal limit. Enough to cause cancer and miscarriages in nearby homes.

This is a good argument to back up the proposition that fertilizer-rich water from agricultural sources shouldn't be fed into municipal water supplies for use as tap water. In fact, I'd go so far as to say this proposition holds regardless of what intermediate uses the water may be put to as it travels from the farm to your kitchen faucet.

It's a terrible argument to back up the proposition that people shouldn't build data centers. It would be akin to citing the MV Dali incident a few years back (in which a cargo ship with improperly maintained power systems collided with a bridge) as an argument against the use of containerized logistics.

> Our environment and communities are being treated as economic externalities.

Yes, that's what we'd hope for. Would you rather that they weren't?