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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   3094 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 23, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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The ongoing "jobs" they create are usually something like eight security guards working part time for $18/hour with no benefits.

Ohio's about the lowest cost-of-living state that has a serious data center presence. It's hard to get great numbers given "data center guard" includes everything from armed and security-cleared to glorified stor-all clerk, but at least from a quick check all the big name AI ones look to be starting at 30/hour and better benefits than I've got now.

There's just not many jobs there.

Most of the ones around me are neocloud providers, and they contract out the security.

I wonder if that's part of the disconnect in the conversation here - different companies could well be handling things very differently.

Could be, and I don't have the tooling to check Ohio numbers on those. Would be stupid to pay them less than a McDonald's and sit them in front of million-dollar servers, but wouldn't be the first stupid thing.

I'm reminded of a joke about college football refs and fixing games: "If you want us to believe that they're not fixing the games, pay them enough money that it's not plausible!"

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