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Google makes Berkeley County cornerstone of the state’s innovation economy |
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Thursday, 05 April 2007 |
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Page 2 of 4
What’s in store
Andrew Johnson, Google’s East Coast regional manager of hardware operations, said that while he couldn’t go into details on all the specifics of the data center, the easiest way to describe it is as a specialized facility that contains lots of computers that run Google’s services.
“It’s literally where your search goes when you request information,” he said.
The company will be hiring a wide range of employees, from system administrators to entry level hardware technicians to managers, food service workers and ground keepers.
The average salary of these workers will be about $48,000 plus benefits.
“We’re trying to hire locally where we can, although certain jobs requiring specific skills sets will probably go to applicants from outside the area,” Johnson said.
Unlike many large companies that have located here in recent years, Google is not leveraging the ability of the state’s technical college system to provide worker training.
“We honestly feel that the Charleston area work force is sophisticated enough to suit our purposes, and whatever training is necessary can be done in-house,” Johnson said.
Like other Google facility’s, the internal culture will stress creativity and have the accouterments of a college dormitory, with access to free food, ping pong tables and video games, and even an in-house laundry being made available to employees.
As for how the facility will function, Weiss said the design of data centers is constantly evolving as Google rethinks ways to optimize its operations.
“Safeguarding the environment and finding ways to reduce the amount of power we use are constants at Google,” he said. “Toward that end, we try to use the most efficient servers as possible at our data centers, and we use an evaporative cooler, which uses a lot less electricity that traditional air conditioning units.”
Weiss said while presently the company has concrete plans only for a data center on the site, there will be plenty of land left over for future expansion as Google grows and enters new business markets.
“Who knows what this facility might be in the future,” he said. “It could be that in the future we add a research and development facility. It could be we add a training facility. This is the first time, by virtue of the size of the site, that we’ve had the flexibility to think that way.”
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