[toast0]

You need on the order of 15 permanent onsite employees to run a datacenter; 5 each for 24/7 coverage of security, building maintenance, and tech. You probably don't really need 24/7 onsite for building maintenance or tech. Traveling employees or (probably traveling) contractors can handle projects that exceed the local scope.

Should be able to locally source security and building maintenance, if the pay is good. These are skills that are needed everywhere. The onsite tech can likely be sourced locally too: first and foremost, they're remote hands ... knowledgeable remote hands are nicer, but the mandatory skills are: read and follow directions, notice and report unusual circumstances, lift and manipulate heavy objects. It's not rocket surgery.

If you put your datacenter in the near boonies, say 30 minutes away from the nearest suburb, you can usually still find the big lots you need, and people can commute from there: a 30 minute commute with no traffic isn't too awful. Of course, you'll have neighbors on large lots who didn't think through that living out on the boonies with no zoning meant noisy neighbors could move in. :P

[win311fwg]

While most people wouldn't hesitate to travel 30 minutes out of town, the generally don't ever think to see if jobs exist 30 minutes out of town, and thus won't find the work there. When looking for work they search within the city they live in, not the next town over with a name they might not even know. This is a real problem for a lot of businesses that exist 30 minutes out of town.

In fairness, the companies behind these data centres are well known and have endless marketing budgets, so they can likely find a way to close that gap where the typical rural-based business cannot, but at the same time why take the risk when you can just as easily build the datacenter right beside the person you want to hire?

[toast0]

> so they can likely find a way to close that gap

I mean, typically you just list your job in the nearby major city, even when the site address isn't there. Same thing that you do when listing your hotel or your car for sale.

[win311fwg]

30 minutes out of town isn't nearby anymore. The highways are surprisingly efficient. And consider that it is more like a 1-1.5 hour drive for someone living on the opposing end of the city — possibly more if it is a large city. Advertising a job 1.5 hours away as if it is local doesn't tend to win you any admiration from job seekers. Maybe AI companies are prominent enough that they can piss off workers and still hire them in the end, but that doesn't fly for most businesses.

But, again, why take the risk when you can just as easily put the work right beside the workers?

[qurren]

I don't consider 30 minutes away from town the "boonies", that's more like a normal commute. The boonies would be like a 3 hour drive in the Sonora desert.

[toast0]

Well, "boonies" is pretty ill defined, but my criteria is most homes are are 10+ acre lots, and large lots are widely available.

You want your datacenter to be in reach of interstate highways (rail might be nice, too), two electrical substations [1], and close to fiber that's already run. That restricts your available boonies, but there's still lots outside of the east coast.

[1] yes, you'll have onsite generation, and yes, you might plan to run from onsite generation most of the time, but you still want to have the option for utility power, and it's nice to have two substations to get more uptime, subject to more transfer switch complexity.