Is working in an Amazon Data Center, like working in one of their warehouses?

Working in a data center is not glamorous.  Neither is working in warehouse.  I used to spend lots of times in warehouses at HP and Apple working in logistics.  Big buildings with racks and rack of pallets.  I remember when the Mac 512K was going to be released and people were excited about the product.  I said the Mac 512K is no different than the Mac 128K, same size box, and it weights the same.  All that is different is the sku # and a label.  Many times the servers look like that to people in the data center, it’s another 1U server, what processor it has, RAM, HD, or SSD isn’t that much difference.  How much does it weigh, how much power does it consume.

BBC has a controversial post from a warehouse worker in the UK on the conditions inside the warehouse.

"We are machines, we are robots, we plug our scanner in, we're holding it, but we might as well be plugging it into ourselves", he said.

Prof Marmot, one of Britain's leading experts on stress at work, said the working conditions at the warehouse are "all the bad stuff at once"."We don't think for ourselves, maybe they don't trust us to think for ourselves as human beings, I don't know."

He said: "The characteristics of this type of job, the evidence shows increased risk of mental illness and physical illness."

One of the observations I have made and asked others about. 

“Do you notice that we don’t see people at other data center companies that are ex-Amazon data center staff?"

“We’ll see ex-Microsoft, ex-Google, etc.  But, when was the last time you saw someone who was ex-amazon data center?  Many of us know a person or two who have joined amazon.com and once they are in, they disappear."

One way you could explain is they are so burnt out of working on data centers at amazon.com they don’t want to do it any more.  Maybe the noncompete agreements are too painful.

Any vendor who works on amazon.com projects knows they say nothing about their work for amazon if they want to stay a supplier.  

Being hyper competitive probably leads to being Insular, Intel admits it is Insular

There are many who pride themselves on being competitive.  So competitive they are regularly saying in their mind and to others how much better they are than the rest.  This superior attitude then leads you to think others are dumb.  They don’t get it.  Your way is better than others.

This could be described by Type A vs. Type B behaviors.

I have many times told the story one of the things I realized being surrounded by many Type A people in major corporations is that one way to look at people who are Type A is they are much more insecure than Type B, and happen to be really good at a few things.  So good at these few things that they these things become a top priority in their work and lives, they then tell others how good they are at these things.  Some may be impressed.  Many times though as time goes on, 5, 10, 15, 20 years, it looks kind of silly.

An example is Intel’s new CEO admitting the company had become Insular.  The world does not revolve around x86 processors.  In the Intel view, they are dominant of the x86 processor and they beat everyone else.  Meanwhile, many others have moved on to smartphones and tablets where the x86 processor is irrelevant. 

“We’d become insular,” Krzanich said. “We’d become focused on what was our best product versus where the market wanted to move.”

...

“I was personally embarrassed that we seemed to have lost our way,” said Bryan, who lives in Oregon and works from Intel's Jones Farm campus in Hillsboro. He acknowledged that Intel had flat-out missed the consumer appeal of the iPad and other tablets, which now run primarily on designs from rival ARM Holdings.

That “put us in a hole,” Bryant said. “We’re paying a price for that right now.”

I can imagine there were dozens if not hundreds of people since the launch of the iPhone and iPad at Intel who were trying to tell others to wake up and embrace the mobile market.  “We are we have the Intel Atom.”  No that is a dumbed down x86.  The market wants a powerful mobile chip.  “We have the Intel Atom v2, then version 3.”  Meanwhile Qualcomm ships a Snapdragon 800.

One way to view Intel is to think of them is not as a processor company, but as the dominant x86 processor semiconductor manufacturing company.  No one builds x86 processors better than Intel.  Who cares?  Qualcomm, Apple, Samsung, Marvell, and many others are running many times faster than Intel building ARM processors to create the mobile experience.  Intel has become Insular to the mobile change.

We all have many more ARM processors in our lives than x86.

This problem is not unique to Intel.  I can name many more dominant companies that show the Insular, Type A I am better than you weak Type B people behavior.  Type A people because they are so competitive they will do anything to get to the top which means the Insular views grow faster.  

One thing I learned is waiting for change is more frustrating than just moving on.  Some who are Insular will show a steady decline, than no different than that hype competitive person is point the blame on other things, and not on themselves that they focused on something that most of us don’t care about.

in·su·lar

ˈins(y)ələr/

adjective

adjective: insular

1. 1.

   ignorant of or uninterested in cultures, ideas, or peoples outside one's own experience.

   "a stubbornly insular farming people"

   synonyms:

   narrow-minded, small-minded, inward-looking, parochial, provincial,small-town, shortsighted, hidebound, blinkered; More

   antonyms:

   broad-minded, tolerant

   • lacking contact with other people.

     "people living restricted and sometimes insular existences"

     synonyms:

     isolated, inaccessible, cutoff, segregated, detached, solitary, lonely,hermitic More

     antonyms:

     cosmopolitan

      

Duke Energy pays $1 million for birds killed by Wind Turbines, do the Bird Lovers protest the Environmentalist?

BBC reports on Duke Energy Renewables paying $1 million for eagle deaths from wind turbines. 

A huge US energy supplier has agreed to pay out $1m (£620,000) over the deaths of golden eagles at two wind farms.

Duke Energy Renewables agreed to the sum after pleading guilty to charges over the deaths of 14 eagles in the past three years at the Wyoming site.

It is the first time the Obama administration has taken action against a wind energy company in such a case, the AP news agency report.

There are almost always consequences from energy projects, even renewable ones.  I wonder if Bird Lovers will protest the Renewable Energy movement?

Other Birds are killed by a Solar Array in California.

Some animal rights activists are wondering just how many birds green energy may unintentionally kill as more and more birds turn up dead at solar energy facilities throughout California.

A recent article by Vice author Lex Berko notes that dead birds are being found with "singed wings" around several California solar energy facilities.

It happens that many of California's solar plants are, the article claims, in the path of "the four major north-to-south trajectories for migratory birds" called "the Pacific Flyway."

Birds are dying in one of two ways. In some cases, they imagine the shining solar panels to be bodies of water and dive straight into them. There they die when they smash into the panels from the sky.

Others "feel the wrath of the harnessed sunlight." The ultra polished solar mirrors bounce sunrays strong enough to burn the feathers off birds that quickly crash to the ground, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Many of the fowl dying as a result of their unfortunate flight paths over solar facilities are birds protected by the federal government under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

7x24 Exchange Fall 2014 achieves over 800 attendees, continuing a steady growth of DC events

One of the friends I have made in the data center industry is David Schirmacher who is the new President of 7x24 Exchange.  I had heard about 7x24 Exchange, but was busy attending Uptime, DataCenterDynamics, Gartner, and AFCOM in 2011.  David convinced another top DC executive and myself to give 7x24 a try.  We did and we’ve been going twice a year since. 

Why is 7x24 different?  Because, it puts the users needs first, and given it is a non-profit the organization is more transparent then the rest.  How  transparent?  Here is the attendance for the last 10 years.  What other organization shares their attendance?  7x24 hit 819 attendees this event.

I’ve written about 7x24 Exchange each time, and when the number 819 was up there it felt good to know I’ve helped get more people to attend.  One of the groups I’ve reached out to his the high tech crowd who would tend to go to SF/SJ events.  Here are some of the tech companies who attend - Apple, Dell, EMC, Facebook, Google, Intel, HP, Microsoft, Oracle.

I’ve already made plans on how my schedule will align in 2015 as I figure I’ll keep on this roll and be attending twice a year in the future like I have in the past.

Open Compute V Registration is Open, Jan 28-29, 2014 San Jose Convention Center

Registration is now open for Open Compute V.

OCPSummitV

We are pleased to announce the dates for the next Open Compute Project Summit on Tuesday, January 28 and Wednesday, January 29, 2014 at the newly expanded San Jose Convention Center in San Jose, CA.

At the last summit, attendees came from the technology sector in addition to finance, government, and consulting. These attendees represented executive-level roles of vice president or higher as well as IT directors and managers.

The Open Compute Project Foundation would like to thank these sponsors for making this event possible!

Venue

San Jose Convention Center - 150 West San Carlos Street, San Jose, CA 95113

Registration

Please register HERE by Monday, January 20, 2013