Data Center Staff: Show Us the Money

The best thing about working in a data center is not getting your hands on the latest kit, but wrapping them around the paycheck that lands on your desk every month this was the squalid, mercenary result of the latest Next-gen Data Center Forum poll.

With nearly 50 NDCF readers taking part in the latest poll, two thirds said that the best thing about their job is quite simply getting paid – nothing more, nothing less. The chance to work with data center technologies was cited as a plus by only 10 percent of readers, which suggests that the lure of filthy lucre is a damn sight stronger than that of servers and storage. Well, who can blame them?

A disgruntled 7 percent said that there's nothing good about their role whatsoever.

But it seems that NDCF readers are, overall, a pretty conventional bunch. Money worries are the most likely thing to cause sleepless nights, as cited by 29 percent of respondents. However, a carefree 24 percent said that nothing at all interrupts their slumbers.

Money (or lack of it) is obviously something of a sore point in the data center. Half of the respondents feel they’re underpaid, compared to 26 percent who feel fairly compensated and a smug 12 percent who think they’re actually getting more than they’re worth.Many NDCF readers are fairly mundane domestic types: Some 17 percent of people taking part in the poll said that their “significant other” is what keeps them awake at night; 15 percent blamed their kids for the bags under their eyes.

Surprisingly, given the mission-critical nature of the data center in today’s business environment, only 2 percent said that they were kept awake at night by the fear that their data center will fail. There are two possibilities for this: Either data centers are becoming much more resilient, or the people that run them have got better things to worry about when they get home from work.

— James Rogers, Site Editor, Next-gen Data Center Forum