Dark Clouds - To the Cloud: Big Data in a Turbulent World - page 156

criteria, such as pay and beneits, as well as such subjective considerations
as sense of community and camaraderie. By the looks of its 2013 list, the
sixteenth annual for the company, cloud computing does not have a labor
problem. Of the top ten, three are leading cloud companies, including
numbers one and two. Google takes the top prize for the fourth time,
as its 34,311 employees in its headquarters location enjoy three wellness
centers, a seven-acre sports complex, and the beneits of knowing that the
company continues to list dozens of vacant positions. In second place is
SAS, the data analytics company, with its own artists in residence and
an organic farm for its cafeterias. It is no wonder that turnover is less
than 5 percent annually. The data storage company NetApp holds down
sixth place. Like the irst two, it provides both an on-site itness center
and domestic-partner beneits for same-sex partners. The rest of the list
includes other major cloud companies, including Salesforce (19), Rack-
space (34), Cisco (42), and Microsoft (75), as well as some irms that,
while not primarily cloud-computing companies, are involved in some
aspects of the cloud, such as Autodesk (54) and Intel (68) (Moskowitz
and Levering 2013).
While it may surprise some that the list does not contain Apple, Ama-
zon, Facebook, or Twitter, the cloud is well enough represented that one
might question the inclusion of work in a discussion of dark clouds. This
is certainly understandable because when we think of leading IT irms,
including those in the forefront of the cloud, we tend to think of the top
slice of workers, what Giridharadas calls “the tech aristocracy”; for him,
“this emerging aristocracy is, of course, the technocracy—the thousands
of men and women who are striving, through the gadgets and services
they sell, to change the texture of being human: to change fundamental
things about all of our relationships with time, with our brains, with each
other” (2013a). These privileged few get to enjoy workplaces illed with
luxuries beyond the imagination of most of the world's workers. Google's
New York ofices contain, in the words of one touring reporter, “a laby-
rinth of play areas; cafés, coffee bars and open kitchens; sunny outdoor
terraces with chaises; gourmet cafeterias that serve free breakfast, lunch
and dinner; Broadway-theme conference rooms with velvet drapes; and
conversation areas designed to look like vintage subway cars” (Stewart
2013). Hundreds of software engineers get to design their own desks and
workspaces, including the precise ergonomics of furniture and whether