A peek inside a data center

Summary

Podcast Summary: Click Here – "A Peek Inside a Data Center"

Host: Dina Temple-Raston (Recorded Future News)
Guest: Shannon Waite (former Google data center technician, now union organizer)
Release Date: October 31, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode of Click Here’s “Mic Drop” gives listeners a vivid, personal look into the hidden world of data centers—the physical infrastructure powering the digital age. Through the story of Shannon Waite, a former contract technician at a Google data center in Moncks Corner, South Carolina, the show explores the difficult realities behind the high-tech façade: contract work, working conditions, labor rights, and the real consequences for those keeping the internet running.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Invisible World of Data Centers

• Atmosphere & Secrecy
  • The Google data center is hidden behind trees and unmarked buildings, out of view from passersby.
    • "You would not be able to see the data center from the road, so it's nestled behind trees." — Shannon Waite [00:37]
  • The environment inside is described as surreal and even reminiscent of the eerie TV show "Severance."
    • “Did it feel severancy to you?” — Dina Temple-Raston [00:54]
      “It did feel severancy.” — Shannon Waite [00:56]

2. Shannon Waite’s Journey: From Egyptology to Tech

• Shannon’s childhood fascination with ancient Egypt led her to grad school, but financial pressures steered her into the tech sector.
• She applied for a data center technician position—a job she knew little about at the time.
  • "It kind of felt like winning the lottery at the time." — Shannon Waite [01:13]
  • Surprised to learn she would be employed by a contractor (Modis), not directly by Google.
    • "It wasn't until my first day that I was told that I was working under a contract." — Shannon Waite [04:22]

3. Day-to-Day Realities on the Data Center Floor

• Physical Demands and Environment

  • Constant loud hum—sometimes as loud as a jet engine, requiring hearing protection.
    • "There are machines that are as loud as an airplane jet engine that you cannot even go on that aisle without special hearing protection." — Shannon Waite [05:21]
  • Physically exhausting work: moving, repairing, and logging machines, often with no guarantee of job security.
    • "You don't need a gym membership if you're doing repairs on the machines at the Google data center." — Shannon Waite [06:40]

• Repetitive Tasks and Monitoring

  • Repairs are logged in minute-by-minute increments; pressure is high to keep up with quotas due to short-term contracts.

• Job Insecurity

  • Contracts are often short, and renewals are uncertain, causing stress and anxiety among workers.
    • “She said that she didn't buy her kids Christmas presents because her contract is up on January 1st and she still didn't know if she was going to have a job.” — Shannon Waite [06:55]

4. Labor Practices: Life as a Contract Worker

• Invisible Barriers & Unspoken Discouragement

  • Negative discussion of working conditions is discouraged, if unofficially.
    • "It's not explicitly discouraged. I believe it's kind of an underlying theme. You know, it's a cool place to work. Why would you complain about it?" — Shannon Waite [01:27]

• Pay & Workplace Support Concerns

  • Technicians earned $15/hour, which Shannon deemed inadequate for such labor at a trillion-dollar company.
    • "I was talking about the $15 an hour issue, which for a multi trillion dollar company just didn't feel like enough." — Shannon Waite [09:54]
  • Even small requests, like a broken water bottle cap, highlighted the strict hierarchy and lack of support for contractors.
    • "A Google manager said, no, we're not replacing your water bottle because you're just a contract worker." — Shannon Waite [10:19]

5. Speaking Out and Organizing

• Shannon posted about her experiences (wages, working conditions, the water bottle incident) on Facebook—which led to immediate repercussions.

  • “Security came and found me on the data center floor, walked me out, escorted me out of the data center and I thought I was done for.” — Shannon Waite [10:59]

• The story gained attention, and the Alphabet Workers Union intervened, filing a complaint on Shannon’s behalf with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

  • NLRB ruled in her favor, forcing Google and its contractors to affirm workers' rights to discuss pay and conditions openly.
    • "Google violated my Section 7 rights to organize and the company had to settle with me." — Shannon Waite [11:35]

• Shannon was reinstated and presented with a new water bottle by the nervous site manager (without an apology).

  • “He seemed nervous though. I think it's because my story went public with Bloomberg and the BBC.” — Shannon Waite [12:12]

6. The Bigger Picture: Jobs, Economic Impact, and Skepticism

• Shannon eventually left the data center and now works as a union organizer. She advocates for transparency and honesty when communities are promised economic boons from big tech data centers.

  • "Whenever there's this hype about data centers and AI creating jobs, there should be some skepticism that goes along with that because I know from experience that those jobs are not actual jobs that are sustainable." — Shannon Waite [12:40]

• The host reiterates that while tech companies tout broad economic benefits, only a fraction of the jobs created by such centers are sustainable or permanent.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Reality of “Invisible Labor”
  “It's a reminder that the digital economy still runs on physical labor and on the backs of people like her.” — Dina Temple-Raston [13:01]
• On the Disparity between Promises and Reality
  "Jobs are not actual jobs that are sustainable." — Shannon Waite [12:40]
• On Worker Organizing and Rights
  “Google violated my Section 7 rights to organize and the company had to settle with me.” — Shannon Waite [11:35]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:37 – Description of data center location (“nestled behind trees”)
• 01:27 – Culture of discouraging complaints at data centers
• 03:00 – Shannon’s journey from Egyptology to Google tech
• 04:22 – Discovering contract status with Modis
• 05:21 – Description of extreme working environment
• 06:55 – Emotional toll and uncertainty of contract work
• 09:54 – Low pay and difficulties as a contract tech
• 10:19 – Water bottle incident as a turning point
• 10:59 – Security escort and union involvement
• 11:35 – Labor complaint and NLRB ruling
• 12:40 – Shannon’s shift to organizing, skepticism about “tech job booms”
• 13:01 – Reflection on the hidden, physical labor behind the digital age

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Tone & Language

The episode sticks to a personal, narrative-driven style—making technical issues accessible, occasionally wry, and always empathetic. Both Dina and Shannon speak candidly, blending clear-eyed realism with humor and directness. The focus remains on the lived experience and systemic implications, using memorable stories (like the water bottle) as stand-ins for larger truths.

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This detailed summary provides a full sense of the episode’s content, dynamics, and takeaways—serving as a guide for listeners and non-listeners alike.

Transcript

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Chatgpt AI Machine Satellite Engine Ignition. Click here and lift up. From recorded future news and prx, this is Click Here's Mic Drop. A longer listen to one of our favorite conversations of the week. I'm Dena Temple Roust In Monks Corner, S.C. behind a stand of pines sit rows of unmarked white buildings. They're part of Google's expanding network of data centers, facilities that store and move nearly everything we do online.

[Shannon Waite]

You would not be able to see the data center from the road, so it's nestled behind trees.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Shannon Waite used to work there, walking aisle after aisle of servers that never seem to sleep. Have you ever seen the show Severance?

[Shannon Waite]

Yes, yes I have.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Did it feel severancy to you?

[Shannon Waite]

It did feel severancy.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Today. She's a union organizer, but back then she was one of those thousands of contract workers who keep the digital world running from these giant warehouses. She was pretty excited about working for Google.

[Shannon Waite]

It kind of felt like winning the lottery at the time.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

But the job turned out to be more complicated than she expected, and when she wanted to talk about it, well, that didn't go over very well.

[Shannon Waite]

It is discouraged to really discuss any negative implications of the data center. It's not explicitly discouraged. I believe it's kind of an underlying theme. You know, it's a cool place to work. Why would you complain about it?

[Dina Temple-Raston]

When we come back, how a grad student studying ancient Egypt ended up tangling with the peril and promise of the cloud. Stay with us.

[Dakota State University Announcer]

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[Dina Temple-Raston]

I'm Dina Temple Roast, and this is Click. Here's Mic Drop. Shannon Waite never set out for a career in tech. She started out as an Egyptologist, an obsession that began very young.

[Shannon Waite]

We had show and tell in first grade, and I brought a book about Tutankhamun and read some pages from that book to the class. And whenever we had to do a book report of any kind, I would create or recreate a tomb, an Egyptian tomb with Legos. The plan was to become a professor and focus on the history of Egypt.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

But all that grad school needed to be paid for. And just as she was trying to figure out how to do that, a friend told her Google was hiring technicians and that she'd be a shoo in for the job. Now, Shannon didn't know exactly what a data technician did, but the schedule would allow her to keep going to class and pay for her loans. So it seemed like a win. This was back in 2019. So she applied and got the job. Google had arrived in South Carolina back in 2007, promising to create hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars in tax revenue. So to Shannon, it seemed like this could be a steady and potentially lucrative gig.

[Shannon Waite]

I interviewed for a position of a data center technician, and I started working at the Google data center.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Only it wasn't the job she was expecting.

[Shannon Waite]

I thought I was going to work for the directly for the company, but it wasn't until my first day that I was told that I was working under a contract.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

She was actually working for a contractor named Modis. Google and other tech companies use these outside staffing firms to find workers, to do specialized support and to meet certain surges in demand. As soon as she stepped inside the data center, Shannon felt like she was in another world.

[Shannon Waite]

So when you walk into the Google data center, the hum hits you immediately. It sounds like you're walking into a wind tunnel. It's almost surreal in the way that it just sounds like you're on another planet or something.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

In some areas of the center, that hum goes from ambient to deafening.

[Shannon Waite]

There are machines that are as loud as an airplane jet engine that you cannot even go on that aisle without special hearing protection. And to this day, I kind of question the quality of my own hearing. Since working at the data center, each.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Morning, Shannon would get a message on her phone with instructions on where to start the day. It say, go to building 10, rack 40. So she'd drive over there, scan her badge, grab her tools from a cabinet and stack them on a cart, and.

[Shannon Waite]

Then move on over to the server rack or the machine in question. And whatever you have to do to, you know, repair the machine, it's going to show up on the computer screen and you just perform that repair.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

She'd haul machines that could weigh as much as 50 pounds off giant racks. She'd tinker with their insides and then log each repair in one minute increments. She'd swap hard drives, replace motherboards, then lug the machine back up onto the rack and start all over again. And while the work was vital, it was pretty repetitive.

[Shannon Waite]

You don't need a gym membership if you're doing repairs on the machines at the Google data center.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

The pressure, as Shannon saw it, was constant because their contracts were short and no one was ever quite sure if they'd be renewed.

[Shannon Waite]

My friend, I saw her crying on the data center floor one day over her work and asked her what was wrong. And it was around the middle of December at the time, and she said that she didn't buy her kids Christmas presents because her contract is up on January 1st and she still didn't know if she was going to have a job.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

That uncertainty seemed to hover over everyone. And while Google says many of its contract workers do move into full time roles, Shannon said no one ever explained how that happened. So she just did what she could, worked harder, faster, longer, hoping it would keep her name on the list.

[Shannon Waite]

I always strived to do between 80 and 120 cases a day in order to keep my contracts getting extended. And they did. I got my contracts extended.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

It was exhausting work. Long hours, constant monitoring, and few breaks.

[Shannon Waite]

It could get very hot in the data center and I would drink so much water, I think, you know, four to five camelback quarts of water a day.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Then one day, the cap on her water bottle broke and the small request to replace it turned into a bigger deal than. Than Shannon ever imagined. We'll be right back.

[Robert Smith]

You should tell the people who we are and what our new show is. I'm Robert Smith and this is Jacob Goldstein. And we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast about the best ideas and people and businesses in history and some of the worst people, horrible ideas and destructive companies and the history of business. We struggled to come up with a name, decided to call it Business History. You know why?

[Shannon Waite]

Why?

[Robert Smith]

Because it's a show about the history of business, available everywhere you get your podcasts.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Shannon Waite had been working at the data center for almost two years. She'd learned the systems, kept up with the pace, and she was proud of the fact that she'd become one one of the fastest technicians on her team. But over time, she started to realize that no matter how hard she worked, a full time job at Google probably wasn't in the cards.

[Shannon Waite]

I think that the writing was on the wall. For me.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

It'S a familiar story. The promise of opportunity just out of reach. And when the path forward isn't clear, frustration has a way of finding an outlet. And for Shannon, that was Facebook. She began posting about the data center, complaining about the pay and working conditions.

[Shannon Waite]

I was Talking about the $15 an hour issue, which for a multi trillion dollar company just didn't feel like enough.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

And one of her posts mentioned this small frustration. Her water bottle cap had broken and she asked a supervisor if she could get a new one, only to be told the company didn't provide replacements for contract workers.

[Shannon Waite]

And I requested a new one. And a Google manager said, no, we're not replacing your water bottle because you're just a contract worker. Like that totally didn't sit right with me. And I thought, you know, like, you're not going to let me get a new water bottle that might have cost 20 cents wholesale. You know, when I'm doing all of this heavy manual labor for lower pay, I'm not worth a new water bottle.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Shannon posted something about it on social media and apparently Google or its contractor tracked employees social media accounts because the very next day she was approached by a security guard.

[Shannon Waite]

Security came and found me on the data center floor, walked me out, escorted me out of the data center and I thought I was done for.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Within hours, representatives from the Alphabet workers union reached out. That's the trade union for workers at Google's parent company, Alphabet. They filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board on Shannon's behalf, and the NLRB eventually ruled that the company violated labor law by prohibiting workers from talking about working conditions, including pay and benefits.

[Shannon Waite]

Google violated my Section 7 rights to organize and the company had to settle with me.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

And while Google didn't have to admit to any wrongdoing, it did say publicly that it wouldn't interfere with workers discussing wages or working conditions and that it wouldn't stand in the way of workers organizing. Shannon was eventually reinstated and returned to work.

[Shannon Waite]

The site manager at the time of the Google data center, when I was getting my access to the data center reinstated, approached me and gave me a brand new water bottle himself.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

H Did he apologize?

[Shannon Waite]

He didn't apologize. He seemed nervous though. I think it's because my story went public with Bloomberg and the BBC.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

When her contract ended in 2021, Shannon decided she wouldn't be going back to the data center. Instead, she became an organizer for the Alphabet workers union. Now she tries to educate people about what it really means when a data center comes to town offering local work.

[Shannon Waite]

Whenever there's this hype about data centers and AI creating jobs, there should be some skepticism that goes along with that because I know from experience that those jobs are not actual jobs that are sustainable.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

While large data centers can boost local tax bases and create hundreds of jobs, the work is mostly initial construction jobs, and only a small share of those eventually become permanent positions. Google, for its part, says the Moncks Corner complex remains a model of economic development, a billion dollar investment that local officials say provides steady work for residents. Shannon Waite sees it a little differently. She says it's a reminder that the digital economy still runs on physical labor and on the backs of people like her. From Recorded Future News, this has been Click Here's Mic Drop. It was written and produced by Megan Dietre, Sean Powers, Erica Guida, Zach Hirsch, Lucas Riley and me, Dina Temple Raster. It was edited by Karen Duffett. We'll be back on Tuesday with an all new episode of Clip. Click Here. Have a great weekend.

[Recorded Future News Announcer]

Looking for more of the cybersecurity and intelligence coverage you get on Click Here? Then check out our sister publication the Record from Recorded Future News. You'll get breaking cyber news from reporters in New York, Washington, London and Kyiv, among others. And you'll see for yourself why it attracts hundreds of thousands of page views every month. Just go to the Record Media.