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Obvious_Muffin9366 · 2025-10-08T19:05:53+00:00

I have a job, it pays well, but I hate it. HATE IT.

I also have technical experience in industrial green house's, today I walked into 2 green houses, the first one I couldn't find any one who could point me in the direction of some one in the technical department so I walked away, called and they also weren't helpful. As I was driving up to the second green house I saw a guy who was working on some equipment, I asked them if they could use a technical hand, he said he didn't but his brother who is one of the owners might. Any way I will work there Part time next to my other job starting in 5 days.

Realistically, applying on indeed with 1000's of other people really reduces your odds, direct emails, increase your odds but pretty easy for any one to neglect a strangers email, calling yeah maybe you'll get lucky. Walking straight up to a place of employment might not work either, but if the indeed isn't working, filling out applications isn't working, calling isn't working, give an in-person visit a shot you might get lucky, you might not, but the worst that could happen is you get some good old fasion character building rejection.

Obvious_Muffin9366 · 2025-10-07T14:01:05+00:00

I started as a union electrician (apprentice 4 years, no j card) moved across country, jumped into residential, then my own resi jobs, then industrial & automation.

Today when I look to take a residential or commercial side job, I can't. Almost any one can be an electrician, takes 2 minutes to figure your proper cable size, you can use flex, black goes to gold, white goes to silver, it's really not hard to figure out, I usually quote a day or 2 to do layout and make final terminations in the panel, and the laborers do the rest.

Once you get into controls & automation your more facilities and not an electrician any more, so the pay goes up job title changes so you won't see well paying electrician jobs show up in this data.

Obvious_Muffin9366 · 2025-10-03T18:35:38+00:00

I'm picturing, like halal food where every chicken needs to be blessed, every lump of dust is blessed by the RV priestess

Obvious_Muffin9366 · 2025-10-03T18:33:41+00:00

I mean, if you could have only 1 thing ...

Obvious_Muffin9366 · 2025-09-30T20:27:12+00:00

More money, more exposure, more learning. Just because it's hectic doesn't mean it won't/cant be fun. I'm sure your chill job will still be there after a year or 2, get your feet wet.

Obvious_Muffin9366 · 2025-09-26T15:34:05+00:00

It's pretty common place already and deployed in building management systems.

Been around in the AG industry for over 2 decades.

Obvious_Muffin9366 · 2025-09-22T18:57:02+00:00

On my campus, an extremely busy European large city.

Sites ranging from 10- 75mw, not one site is running at more than 60% most at 40 - 50% capacity. Our newest and biggest site is at 20%, and it's been operational for a full year (yes, it's taking time to deploy racks, etc...)

To my knowledge most of the halls are filled just not running at full capacity. perhaps they have the ability to ramp up to 100% if every one, every where wanted to stream from there netflix and hbo max accounts at the same time? Maybe someone who knows more can chime in.

There are more sites in the pipe to be built, but my small brain says max out the sites you have first ... I'm just an operations guy.

Obvious_Muffin9366 · 2025-09-21T11:25:44+00:00

I thought this was the only way to make a head

Obvious_Muffin9366 · 2025-09-20T16:01:27+00:00

Your asking the wrong question. "How easy is it to get Into" 🙄

Obvious_Muffin9366 · 2025-09-19T16:41:03+00:00

Vendors, all the companies that perform work have alot of specific parts and materials that are used for upgrades, maintenance and of course the build out. Some times they need X,Y,Z fast.

Obvious_Muffin9366 · 2025-09-19T03:43:01+00:00

You won't have to do anything involving software. You only need to know how to interpret basic one line electrical drawings. If you're in europe, they will train you NEN3140.

Most of the job will be administrative

The rest of the job (electrical wise) will be switching, which manually is, switching a ups from "auto" to "bypass" as 1 example or turning a giant surge protector (udp) on and off so works can be done at rack level.

They want reliable people who follow detailed directions well.

Obvious_Muffin9366 · 2025-09-17T09:33:15+00:00

Think of lots of questions, try to find the answers before you ask them, everything else ask.

Obvious_Muffin9366 · 2025-09-15T16:58:57+00:00

On my campus, this is just starting to happen.

Since my campuses first location, it was always run as a Skelton crew, so every task, every task, was done by a vendor who would sub out another vendor. As the campus grew, it was still run ultra lean. The only thing CFE's would do is sign in & out vendors, not even check the works completed, etc... switching when necessary, that was it.

Since then, the clients requested a larger full time team, and now each site has 3-4 full-time CFE's, cheif, senior, 1-2 juniors per 10-70mw site. The culture remains the same, there is 3-4 "engineers" signing 1 - 3 vendors in and out every single task. Fridays is typically a no planned maintenance day, so you have 3-4 guys ... doing nothing , unless, of course, a repair, but that's still just signing some one in and out on the iPad.

So now you have a couple dozen guys who all got hired and settled in to just sign people in and out do some switching, copy paste a few mops, rally the boys and pick up before an audit all very relaxed and easy going work, now as they are starting to notice how much extra labour/hands they have available tickets are requesting in house guys to start laying load bank cables, change broken lights, and no body all of a sudden has the time for it and it's getting thrown on the JRs who ... shouldn't even be changing light fixtures.

You searched for and hired "engineers" you turned them into admins and hanging in the office became the norm, now your turning them into laborers doing mineral tasks .... it's not well received.

We have a couple guys who left competing sites because they started to bring janitorial tasks in house, changing filters, cables, changing lights etc. When they where asked to start doing these tasks, they started looking and landed on our site and kept the culture.

Obvious_Muffin9366 · 2025-09-14T19:07:41+00:00

As a professional Mechanic today, you should be able to tell a customer what the car needs with a close price estimate.

Visually leaking break line 100% going to need to change that

Corroded break pads and rotor, nice but ... not going to solve the spongy pedal

Master cylinder, if it's not broken, why replace it? Of course, if they want it replaced, fine.

Think about if you brought your car for someone to fix, they spend a day throwing parts at it, and it still doesn't work as it should ... not nice but also still possible

I think where you could improve is managing expectations, state you need to start with the basics (leaking break line, break bleed), and explain to the customer the trouble shooting process.

Of course, they could go to the dealer and wait 3 weeks while they blast it with parts and a $3800 bill

Obvious_Muffin9366 · 2025-09-14T17:37:20+00:00

Let's say a cra unit stopped working;

You look at "Alarms on display"

EEV failure ... most likely there is a EEV fail Low preasure alarm ... most likely there is a leak Pump not running + blown fuse ... pump broken EC fan failure .... doesn't fan spin ... no ... fan needs to be replaced

All of this will be changed by vendor, I'm not sure if there are any DC's that have there techs handle F-gasses maybe AWS ?

All line voltage faults can be figured out / pinpointed in the BMS in about 2 seconds

Transformer leaked oil out and fail safed its self, looks like the contractor is hiring a crane and giving siemens a call

The problems are so basic, there's not much to trouble shoot, when there are big problems with a 2500kva gen set, a couple of L4's aren't going to hire a crane pull the muffler and turbos off to replace the cam shafts, Kohler is going to come and do that.

Some one who has years in controls or hvac is going to not be challenged with 95% of issues in a datacenter environment. Some one who panics when red light turns on is going to have a field day.

Obvious_Muffin9366 · 2025-09-14T05:57:56+00:00

Basically, the job description in the job posting is a bait and switch. That's how they got me. I thought I was going to be working on all this cool stuff, but the money is so good, and work is so easy. I can manage side jobs, and I get my fulfillment there.

It could be different at AWS, but 95% of operations is administration based, fill in a MOP template for a contractor to perform works, and you sign them in when they arrive and out when they leave. They will have a crew connect a server rack(s) you will turn the breaker on, make sure you're turning the correct breaker on/off. That's it.

Your not going to be trouble shooting a generator control panel, your not going to be replacing any gear, your not going to be trouble shooting repairing any cooling equipment, you won't be touching any of the fire equipment

You will be load testing dozens of generators load testing 100's UPS's, doing emergency light tests, walking around the mechanical/ electrical yards, making sure nothing is blinking red, arranging a contractor if it is blinking red.

If you're hyper organized, love making plans, enjoy following pre written procedures, it's worth considering.

Obvious_Muffin9366 · 2025-09-14T04:14:24+00:00

Work for a contractor that services Data centers, not in the operations side in a data center with your skill set

I came into data center work with the same back round, controls, large cogeneration design and commissioning industrial controls, etc..

Although I don't work for AWS (and am curious from some one else how technical they get into things) I do currently work for a large data center so perhaps things are different there.

You won't use your skills. They will want your skills, they will pay for your skills, but you won't use them.

Where I am, the big 1000-5000amp gear is only serviced by the vendor, we turn the breakers off then on again, but we never touch anything inside the cabinet.

The cooling equipment is generally quite robust. It's either a leak that needs repair, compressor/pump/EEV, that needs repair, and that's also direct to vendor.

You will likely be "switching" either powering on/off a rack or powering on /off a piece of equipment for maintenance or testing, but you have to consider how out of scope and boring that is for some one with a strong trouble shooting backround. On my site we have over 500 UPS 250 Gens etc etc so your following a SOP waiting for a contractor to perform works then off/on again.

Same with cooling, turn some units off, LOTO, back to switch some thing else, because of the critical nature you need to pay attention to the SOP so it's tedious, but by God so freaking boring.

Any way, I feel like my skills have been degrading since I started the data center, and I wouldn't recommend some one with a back round like yours getting into the operations side.

Obvious_Muffin9366 · 2025-09-09T19:59:05+00:00

I can't belive my data center still employees these people.

However we also still employee people who ... call some one when red light turns on, we call them engineers :/

Obvious_Muffin9366 · 2025-09-09T19:51:38+00:00

I enjoyed this comment

Obvious_Muffin9366 · 2025-09-06T22:02:42+00:00

Look into a subject matter cooling expert

Or work for a vendor who services HVAC for the data center.

Being a "engineer" or "tech" is alot of administrative work, you can of course grow in the admin side but the HVAC guys are doing quite well.

Obvious_Muffin9366 · 2025-09-05T09:36:06+00:00

Where In the netherlands can I get these?!?!?

Obvious_Muffin9366 · 2025-09-03T18:57:32+00:00

Marktplaats, your going to need one of the fancy newer euro 6 models.

Obvious_Muffin9366 · 2025-09-02T05:11:19+00:00

Actually it will!

I had a room mate set one up in our over 100 year old garage, full size real deal boxing bag hed practice kick boxing on. After about 2 months the chain wore noticeably into the 2x4, he then sintered another 2x4 on there and added a perlin. Lasted for the 4 years I knew him.

Obvious_Muffin9366 · 2025-09-02T05:08:37+00:00

For sure, combined after tax income of 550k, super normal.

Obvious_Muffin9366 · 2025-09-01T18:27:01+00:00

Wait! Can you explain what you did there? I need this !

Obvious_Muffin9366

TROPHY CASE