Key Points:
The term “Silver Tsunami” is often used in the data center industry to describe the growing wave of older workers who will retire and leave the workforce over the next five years.
This is a real challenge, especially since the industry is already facing a shortage of skilled talent. According to research from the Uptime Institute, the global data center industry will need 2.3 million full-time staff by 2025. Many data center providers will struggle to attract, hire, and retain all the employees they need to sustain their business and achieve their growth objectives.
This may be a manageable situation if the industry were to slow down or stagnate. However, the global data center industry continues to experience extremely high demand for hosting, data storage, computing, and managed services, driven in part by AI. Also consider that hyperscale data center providers (companies like AWS, Microsoft, Google, etc.) may attract more technical talent, making it more difficult for other data center operators to recruit talent with the technical and mechanical skills to keep our systems running.
All of this highlights the growing need for a specialized yet often overlooked group of employees: skilled tradespeople.
Demand for data center craftsmen
Why focus on trades rather than employees with more traditional qualifications and backgrounds in the tech industry?
The first answer is that data centers tend to need employees with specialized skill experience who can hit the ground running, including occupations such as electricians, mechanics, heating and cooling technicians, and construction workers.
These employees can provide the technical, mechanical skills and other experience needed to keep mission-critical data center systems running – a key advantage in an industry focused on providing the highest levels of uptime to customers, with many operators having to meet “five-figure” service level agreements (99.999 percent uptime). Whether it’s a technician who spots potential server issues before they become problems or a skilled mechanic who can quickly fix a diesel generator, the right employee can often make a big difference.
Ideally, high schools, technical schools and community colleges would have programs in place to introduce students to potential careers in the data center industry and provide the foundational training to get started. Manufacturing companies have had success with similar efforts, helping them overcome past misconceptions and recruit younger generations to fill their own workforce shortages.
A similar approach could be taken in the data center industry, especially when it comes to raising employee awareness of their earning potential. Many students may think they won’t earn as much as their peers with four-year or graduate-level degrees. This isn’t true. There is now a growing group of data center employees without a college degree who are earning six-figure salaries, great benefits, and job stability not found in other technology companies.
Increased attention given to veterans
Many data center companies have had great success hiring military veterans for these types of roles. Veterans are often a good fit because they have extensive specialized experience working with a wide range of technology, machinery, and specialized equipment. They also have a track record of working within a group where everyone puts their own roles aside to sacrifice and support the overall mission of the organization.
Veterans bring a unique discipline that is necessary in most data centers when it comes to following instructions and upholding strict protocols. They are also encouraged to share their thoughts and suggestions on processes that could be managed differently. There are many examples where veteran employees have challenged the status quo and proposed innovative new solutions to improve business operations.
New Competitive Advantages
Finding the next generation of employees is a real challenge today and may seem insurmountable for many data center operators. By challenging traditional thinking and recruiting a new class of workers – skilled tradespeople – many data centers can hire better talent than their competitors and gain a valuable new advantage.
