Ep8: Data Center Scale, AI and Talent Challenges

(upbeat music) This is uptime now, a Norton Roseville Bright podcast dedicated to conversations about data centers. From development and construction to cutting edge technology and operational breakters and the people driving it all. Joining us today is Andy Davis, director of DataX Connect and the host of the Inside Data Center podcast. He has nearly two decades of experience and recruitment and work for a strategy, and he's become one of the most visible connectors across the data center ecosystem. His work gives him a uniquely cross-functional view of challenges facing operators, developers, hyper-scarers, and investors worldwide. And Davis, welcome to the show. How are you? - Thanks, sir. - I'm great, thanks for having me. Thanks for the intro. Always makes me feel older than I am when someone says I've got 20 plus years experience, but unfortunately it's true. - It's great experience. Great to have you on. What's it like being on the other side of the mic? - I actually enjoy it, it's good. I still don't know what you think, but sometimes it's nice to kind of turn the tables and I think you've learned so much from doing a podcast. You hear so many different voices. It's good to share kind of what you've learned on that journey as well. So now I enjoy it and I appreciate you asking me to come on here. - Very happy to have you. Tell us for anyone who may not know you, tell us a little bit about your background, how you got to be here. And I'm also just personally curious what made you decide to start your podcast. - Now I'll go back to the beginning. I'm a sports science graduate that ended up in recruitment. I think as I asked a lot of people in this industry, how did they end up in the world of data centers? It was a pure chance in about 2005, 2006, I was recruiting for a general contractor, building a major data center in the UK. And that was how my data center journey started. It kind of evolved from there. And the podcast, I listened to a lot of podcasts. It's going back to August 2020. I think I released my first episode, recorded the first one around June, July. So if you remember those dark days, it was in the highest of COVID. And there wasn't a lot to do. And I wanted to have conversations with people and obviously at that time, people had more time available for conversations because they were traveling less. And the industry was quite a critical point. It was busy, but not as busy as it is now. And I wanted to get some stories out there of the people that are working in the industry because I found a lot of the podcasts at the time were more technical, more on the detail. And I'm not technical myself. And I thought, if I can bring some of the stories to the fore, hopefully that will help attract more people to the industry. So that was how it started. And now I look back and think, as I say, it's nearly coming up six years since I started it, 200 and something episodes. And I love doing it, but it's amazing that the time has gone that quickly. Yeah, it's a great way to connect and learn. And I'm curious, you've been talking to people for a long time. You have this unique cross-section of the global data center ecosystem that you talk to. What are some of the trends that you've seen over time over the last three or four years? I always never listen back to my podcasts. I don't know if anyone else does a lot of the sound of my voice, which seems crazy now. But I think when I look back to the conversations when it started, or even just if I look back to the industry kind of pre-2020 and pre that inflection point, I think whenever it happened, the industry was always busy. It was always growing. It was always quite an energetic industry, amazing people, quite a small network of people at that time. I think it was probably, I'd say, more of a corporate industry, more real estate as an industry than it is today. And I think what we've seen over that sort of five, six-year period, and particularly over the last two, three years, is kind of the evolution of the industry from, I say, like a core real estate industry to more of a techie software. It's an all-encompassing industry now, and I think, I'm from a trend perspective. When I sort of try and look back, it's just scale. It's just the sheer scale of change from, I was at dinner with some people last week, I'd been in the industry a long time, two to five megawatts was a big data center. If you go back 15, 20 years, and that's not that long ago, whereas now we're in the gigawatt campuses, and the scale of the industry is kind of evolved with the scale of a facility. So the industry is now much bigger. There's more people in it, there's more organisations, there's more technology, there's significantly more investment, there's more eyes on the industry. So I think just the scale of growth is probably what I notice most. And I always say a great example of that, I think, is when you go to events. And if you've been going to industry events for quite a while, you've just seen it go from 50 to 100 people to 500 people, to 1,000 people, and if you go to Cannes or PTC, you're in a 4, 5, 10,000 people. I think that shows you how much this industry has grown over the last, as I say, four to five years, but particularly in the last two to three years. - Yeah, I was one of my colleagues at a conference, maybe a few weeks ago, a MetroConnect. And it was wild, they'll line up just to get inside. And I remember walking over to the conference hall where the presentations were happening. And I thought that we were on break or something because there were so many people in the hallways, and then I realised, no, the hall was completely full, and these are the people outside trying to get in. It was really remarkable. And I think about these, I guess I think about data centers as deals because I'm a deal attorney, and I was trying to describe to somebody, 'cause they're like, well, what kind of deal is it? And I was like, well, it's not a real estate deal, it's not a tech deal, it's not a construction deal, it's not pure M&A, it's not just a financing, it's like everything all in one. Yeah, it's really interesting. - And I think the industry, I always describe the industry as like a cross of engineering, IT, and construction. If you go back, that's kind of, you'll go to kind of phrase, it's a mix of all, but it's a mix of so much more. It always has been, but now, like you say, the investment side of it is an industry, so to speak, on its own. That scale is so big now, and yeah, it's just grown exponentially, and the industry is trying to catch up, I think. - Yeah, the scale is unreal. It seems like every conversation about data centers, you can't talk about it. You can't talk about it in megawatts anymore, you can't talk about it in millions of dollars anymore, everything is in the billions of dollars suddenly. When you zoom out, what do you think people outside of the industry still misunderstand about the data center market today? There's data centers in the headlines every single day, and there's a lot of optimism and positivity around it. There are also a lot of folks that are concerned about it. What do you think the misunderstanding is? - I think with the overall sort of PR in the industry, I suppose I think it's, if I go back, we were far too secretive for far too long. I understand why, but the industry didn't really tell its story, and therefore there was a lot of misunderstanding just based on a lack of information. I think now what the industry is trying to do is tell that story, but it's chasing its tail a little bit because of that period of a lack of information, and I think I understand why there's differences of opinion, but a lot of it is based on a lack of detail, I suppose, or a lack of knowledge. From both sides, and sometimes you have to listen to both sides of the story to understand why someone's formulated that opinion. When you look at water use, you can understand why sometimes there's a challenge for the industry, but the industry is doing a lot of great work to manage that challenge, but are we telling that story enough? I think overall there's just a lot of different facets of why people maybe don't fully understand what the data center industry is, but I very much believe that it's on us to tell the story. It's not on these people outside the industry to learn. It's on us to make sure we're getting that story to the fore, and to say it was so much better than we were. I get invited to events as media now, whereas before they wouldn't even have events let alone invite the media there. I know it was at one last week, and you had big networks, like CNBC and RTU and Ireland, a big industry network, or big media networks, there to try and tell the story of the industry. And I think that's a positive start, but we just need to do it so much more. And present the facts. Don't try and hide away from what's actually happening. Present the facts of if it's around water use or energy use or whatever it might be, present the facts. And I think sometimes we don't help ourselves by announcing a five gigawatt campus or a 10 gigawatt campus. We need to explain that that five gigawatts might be over a period of, say, 15 to 20 years. It's not immediately going to take five gigawatts from the grid. So just explaining what we do, I guess, in a way that's understandable to the wider media, not all the wider people, so not a technical presentation. Yeah, I think the announcements or the volume of announcements is almost a little bit too much for the public to handle at this point because many of these campuses, they're not going to come on anytime soon, they're planned. They may end up going nowhere, but I know from like an investor in capital standpoint, people are excited to announce it because they want these projects to be very real. But it can almost make it seem like there's one popping up in every neighborhood, and that's just not the case. Yeah, and I think the difference is now the wider media pick up on them. Whereas previously, that would be announced within the industry or within the markets, and that's great. it would achieve what it needs to achieve if that's looking for capital or or just wants to get a message out there. But now these announcements do get picked up by the wider media so we have to understand that that announcement is not no longer just an industry announcement. It is now going to be like you say if it's in a region it's going to be picked up probably by that local regional media who are going to present that to the community quite rightly but you want that community to understand the full benefits or the or the real story not simply there's going to be a two gigawatt data center campus you know five kilometres out the road from where you live. No one wants that so it's just explaining it better. Yep so I want to talk a little bit about your day job at DataX Connect and you're in the business of people in talent and I want to talk a little bit about how AI-driven demands are shaping or reshaping the types of skills and roles that are the most scarce or valuable right now on your on your website under under candidates you've got a bunch of different types of roles and it goes commercial commissioning construction managers data center managers health and safety planners project managers QAQC and SAPs and testers of those what are the what are the most in demand like if if you know I'm a kid about to go off to college like what what am I thinking is the future going to look like. I think it's interesting I mean what I guess the AI kind of evolution has has created is an increase in demand so not necessarily a change in the roles just an increase in demand of each particular skill set we're quite fortunate that we recruit across the ecosystem so whether that's a developer a customer an operator or a general contractor that's building these facilities. What you've seen in the last two two issues is a significant growth in construction and development so a lot of the a lot of the demand has been in from land acquisition development regulations through to the actual on-site construction which then leads into your commissioning size. So you've seen that and that's not going to change probably for the next let's say three to five years as a minimum when you look at the forward forward order book but so there's that area but you've also seen a significant increase in demand within the developers and the operators for sales for example customer relationship legal you know legal has become much more capital investment because there's so much more capital in this industry now they need more skills around if I'm going to invest two to five billion dollars on a on a campus I want to make sure I get this right so there's there's more demand there so I think I wouldn't say there's any skill sets that are standing out if I was if I was a someone entering the industry or entering the world of employment I think trying to get a cross-sector of experience is great I think if you can experience a couple of different roles in your early stages it really helps you understand the life cycle of this industry because it is slightly different to a lot of others you know having different skills to your boat is actually really really beneficial in data centers because it moves so fast but I think I look I think attributes are probably more important for me like agility curiosity things like that that's what this industry thrives on you know and everyone I talked you says the same I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow in this industry and that's why we love it but you have to react to what's going to happen tomorrow like it is going to happen so you've got to have that agility and when I'm hiring at kind of senior level or sea level or anything like that it's they're the skills they're looking for the attributes like entrepreneurial ism you know that drive to really create something and change something and agility and flexibility they're they're the kind of words they look at but I think if you're going into the industry you can enter it from like engineering you can enter it from construction you've got all the support services like finance legal HR etc and now you've what you've got now which is different and driven by AI is that full stack like kind of GPU cluster type organization that are now integrating software engineering within the actual build and within the facility and that's quite a cool area if I don't know if anyone knows what's going to happen in that area but that's quite a cool area to get into if you're if you're more sort of aligned in that engineer software engineering type area like building the infrastructure within these facilities is is a pretty cool thing and you know Jensen was talking last night as we record about what's coming next and I think that's a really interesting market to sort of dip your feet into yeah and I'm going to dig a little bit into something you said earlier it was like you know when you think about what's coming next like nobody really knows what's coming next that's got to make it exceptionally difficult to actually run an organization that's building data centers or in this in this space what aspects of running or scaling these organizations do you think are harder today than they were like five years ago I think it is that I mean you know when you talk to people that you know leading these organizations it's you know one of the questions I always ask it's kind of like how would you build a data center for tomorrow when you don't really know what tomorrow looks like allowing that the answer to that question is largely around the same as the people question it's you've got to have that flexibility built into your facility so that when technology evolves or whatever in my opinion if calling changes or that the GPUs become the scale that they're talking about you do need flexibility within your facility whereas I think previously there's a lot of legacy facilities out there that were kind of built just for the today and that was you know they didn't really see this foresight of technology I think what what an Nvidia does or organizations such as that it gives you a bit more foresight you don't really know when it's going to come or what's going to come but their roadmap will give you an idea of how technology is evolving and that will be then integrated into the design of these facilities in the hope that they can get pretty close to what's going to be needed in the future but I do think it's really difficult and that is why I said like the point on people when being agile and flexible and curious because you do need to you kind of need to sort of pay attention to what might happen but understand that it it's not a definite and you don't know when so I guess that's the biggest challenge it's more the the organizations are built around what's coming next as well as what's happened in today and that's a difficult place to be when you're you know the scale of some of these organizations now do companies come to you and say like hey Andy you know we're we're scoping out you know locations for our data centers and yeah we're thinking about like you know land and power and all that stuff but also we want to think about like you know what what our competitive edge would be from a people perspective and where we're actually likely to find the people who can help with this or to help us grow with the scale that we're trying to grow in do they do they have those conversations with you around like what parts of the country they should focus on when they're thinking about growth yeah definitely yeah they come to I think what I've noticed is people come to I was a much earlier now or myself or whoever it might be they come to us earlier in the conversation because of that because they're the invet I think because the capital so much now there's much more strategy around like is this the right investment for us is this the right location for for the facility and obviously that encompasses everything around the site they've already identified the sites correct but then it's people are how and whether that's how are we going to build this so is there a workforce to construct this and also when it's operational where are we going to get the engineers from where are we going to get the management I think what you've seen in Europe and states which are the two areas we really focus on much more development in this called them remote areas so areas that are not within a town the the hub markets are still very busy so you know you're Virginia still booming you know and in Europe it's still London Frankfurt Amsterdam you know the usual suspects but you've seen much more development outside of those regions now which would be in you know North Norway Texas you know areas where there's much less lower population and and definitely a very low if not nonexistent experienced data center workforce so what what they have to do now in the conversations we would have would be around in a construction phase like where can we get the workers from we're going to have to move them to this area we're going to have to accommodate them where can we get the accommodation from it starts that early and particularly at the trade level which we don't actually recruit at but that's a huge challenge for a lot of these organisations how can I get two to three thousand tradespeople to build this facility it's very difficult and but also from a when it's operational so when it's operational we need say 30 to 40 engineers where are we going to get them when should we start a hiring process if we've got to relocate all these people what do they want in the local area so we'd work with clients to create you know like relocation sort of brochures and why should you move to this area what the schools like what it starts much earlier now in the conversation but I even get calls from like investments looking to make acquisitions of businesses and they're concerned that the leadership team is not at their level they would like it to be so they'd like to hire a leadership team pre acquisition or during the acquisition process which again happens much more than it used to so they're comfortable that the businesses is the right acquisition but let's say for example they're fairly regional quite small they're looking to take them to the next level but that leadership team is not that leadership team and they know that and the leadership team are happy to leave but they need to hire in before they make the acquisition because that's part of the strategy so yeah you're definitely getting much earlier but I think it goes back to my earlier point is the amount of capital involved now makes you, you know, try and tick as many boxes as you can before you take that risk. That's interesting. So you're seeing, I guess, you're seeing this influence investment decisions. Yeah, definitely. And I think we do, I do a lot of hiring for pre-launch data center platforms, a lot of what we're doing, the start-up phase. And a lot, you know, the conversations that we're having are very, very early around, you know, sometimes they're pre-race, they're actually fund this. You know, if we do this, these are the sort of people we need. Are they there? Are they, are they in a march? Can, Andy, can you identify these people for us? So we've got confidence that if we do this, you can, you know, we can go and find them. I mean, as the industry's grown, there's less, there's obviously less, there's the same amount of people, but more people coming in. But, you know, when you look at experienced people, it doesn't, that never grows really. It's like, it takes two to five years for people to gain that experience. And this industry's only really grown over the last sort of two to five years. So there's not masses of people with that experience. And when you're hiring at a senior level, you're looking for that experience a lot of times. So it is less people to go at. So they want confidence and reassurance that they are available and in the market. And that's, yeah, where we have those conversations. And as you know, there are only so many of those senior people that are out there that have direct experience with data centers. So are there other industries or sectors that you're pulling from when you're looking for these senior leaders? I think, yeah, senior wise, it's always very difficult. I think it depends on the role. So if you're looking into certain verticals, you can look to other industries, you know, finance, you know, you can, you can find like-minded attributes within other, within other industries. When you're looking at the, this is like sea level or SVP, they tend to look for experience. Where we've hired in that level outside of the industry, largely over the last six to 12 months, has been in power. So when they look into power now, which has become a skill, it wasn't a role in a lot of companies until probably again, 18, 24 months. Yeah. But if you want someone that understands the power market, it's not probably not someone in the industry because the industry's not really being that involved in that area for too long. So you're going out to whether you're going to the power companies or, you know, the equivalent of local government, those type of individuals that are very experienced in that. But when you're looking at operations, you know, they'll take people from other industries into operations, but not at the sea level, or the SVP, it tends to be more management level. Although we've just done a hire in Amsterdam for an SVP of operations that's come from FMCG. So, you know, high-spec manufacturing. So they are, because it's very processed driven, you know, they understand how to sort of take one blueprint from one facility to another, because that's how that industry works. Yeah, it's like copy and paste. So it's definitely happening much more. Industry-wise, it's anything, so construction is anything that's like high-capex construction. So whether that's pharmaceutical oil and gas power, anything that's got high value, they'll look at within operations, it tends to, as I say, anything that's critical, critical operations. But within the support functions, or whatever you want to call them, it's normally pretty flexible now, whereas again, if you go back to when I started, or even 10 years ago, if you didn't have five to 10 years experience in the data center industry, no one would even consider looking at your profile. And I always say that a lot of time change comes from necessity, and I think that's what's happened in this industry. They can't be as fussy anymore, but there's some exception of people in this industry that are not from the data center world, you know, that's what it's created. And I think it's been massively important for diversity of new ideas, new technology. I think a lot of the best ideas come from outside of the industry, like Uber is the obvious, and it wasn't created by a taxi driver, you know. Sometimes you need different viewpoint, different mindset to see where the opportunity is. I think you've seen that a lot in this industry recently, and it will continue to do so. I think there's some great people in it now that are bringing some new ideas, and they've come from multiple different types of industries. Yeah, I come from the power industry, and a lot of the, I guess, the core principles of how these things are put together are very similar to how it's done on the power side. And then obviously there is a very strong connection between the two things in terms of can't have one or that the other. You've spoken a lot about the need to bring in new talent into the sector. What approaches have you seen as you move the needle, and what do you think needs to be done? I think the key is to be open-minded. I would say higher for attributes as well as the skills, you know, like again, if you want someone from power, obviously you know you need these certain skills within the power industry, whatever they might be, but the attributes for your business are what's important, like what can they bring from an attribute perspective that's going to help you achieve your business objectives, whatever they might be. I mean, hiring when I started in recruitment, and probably for the first five to ten years, hiring was always very much a, you look at a resume or a CV, does it tick the boxes? Yes, get them in for a chat, quite a standardized conversation. You're kind of hiring for someone to just fit a role, really, whereas now I think you need to be more forward-thinking, because most individuals are looking for development progression, and development progression doesn't mean like you have to move up in your career, it just means in your role, you can develop in your role and have a really successful career. Don't have to go up levels. Most people want development now, so you've got to really focus on that when you're hiring, so I think what good people or good organisations do is highlight people within their organisations that have come from other industries, so explain that, you know, whoever it might be that's now in a great position, has only been in the industry for two years, and they've achieved all this, and they've brought all this with them. That's always a good thing to do. I think being quite vocal about accepting people from diverse backgrounds or different sectors is really important, so I'd say the main thing is be quite open about it and promote the fact that you are looking for people from other industries. Don't put on your job specification or adverts that we're open, and then at the bottom it says must have three, five, seven, insert, whatever number you want, years experience. It puts a lot of people off. Even people in the industry can be put off by it because they feel like, well, do you really need that? So I guess just being open. But there's some companies out there that have really, really changed the dynamics of their organisation by bringing in people from other industries. It's helped change the way they think, the way they work in the right way, so there's a lot of positives out there if you go looking for them. Yeah, I always like to just check in with people to see how their journey on the world of AI is going in all this. I know there are people out there that are using AI to review resumes against job descriptions, and in the case that you just pointed out, if you had a job description that had specific requirements related to data centers, and I applied in my background as in power, the AI would just say, no, Samir doesn't know what he's talking about, and we're going to find somebody else. How are you guys using AI in your world? I think I use it a lot for, I'm a big, big believer in it for the positive. Obviously there's challenges around how it's utilised as it becomes more advanced, but I'm a massive believer that it's going to make life for the better. I'm not one of those that's we're in a service industry, and I'm not remotely concerned that it's going to take over my job. I think it's going to enhance our business and help us provide a much better service to our customers. I use it a lot for administrative tasks, reviewing documentation. I think from a resume perspective, I am a big believer that that's a conversation over the phone at this stage. I think we work quite closely with our customers, and in order for me to understand if somebody is suitable for a customer, yes, the resume will help me get a basic knowledge of where they work, what their history is, maybe what types of companies they work for, maybe the projects or the investment or whatever it is they've been involved with. But it's the conversation that's important because when I'm speaking to a customer, and I'm saying that I've just spoken to this person, I think that'll be great for you because of this. They really match what your business is. I think they're fitting really well with your team. It's all those aspects which I think are now more important to employees than they've ever been. AI can't do that. Will it ever be able to do that? I say it's very much up for debate. I think I was talking to someone the other day about LinkedIn. Obviously LinkedIn. I'm big believer in LinkedIn, obviously. I'm all over it. I can't say I'm not, but people put the information that you want to share. You don't share everything about somebody on it. I don't think that I'll ever change. You'll never know everything about somebody or as much as you need to know without having a conversation. It's like the journey of a relationship. You have the email, then the speaker on the phone might have a team's call, then you meet them, and then you go for dinner. It's generally that process with people. It's really important. We use AI a lot in our business. We use it for call recordings, meeting recordings, meeting notes. A lot of the administrative tasks are probably not much different to your role yourself, that take up so much time, trying to eliminate them from the start of time and the people's time. can spend more time talking to people, more time meeting, more time out the office, that's our objective from an AI perspective. I went to the Microsoft AI London event, which was a few weeks ago, and such did the keynote, and it was quite fascinating like what, where they're looking, you know, there was a lady on stage, it basically built a website in about five minutes, reduced using, you know, using co-pilot, and then they were talking about how it's been utilised in healthcare, except I think some of the things it's doing are unbelievable today, and where it's going to go, we can't even fathom where it will go, but all I say to people is like, get out like Google real cases, real cases of what AI is doing, and it's changing things sort of better in a lot of different ways. Again, it goes back to the data center store, we just need to promote it better, rather than think it's going to, all you ever really is it's going to take your job, and obviously nobody's keen on that idea, not yet. Yeah, I keep telling myself, I need to take like a weekend out, and just like our parents had to take training sessions to learn how to type on a keyboard and like use the internet, I think we all need to take training sessions on how to actually work with AI and do all the different things they can do, instead of using it like a Google search, which is currently primarily how I'm using it. Are there any other emerging trends or technical geographic workforce-related that you're watching or that you're hearing about a lot recently? I think from a people perspective, it's very much, I think the change has just been the spread in geography, so it's just more regions, more new areas, whether that's in your opinion or entering new countries or in the states where it's moving into different states, I think that's the workforce challenge, it's very much new regions and how can we manage with the demanding growth. I think there is an inflection point where they just can't keep building, I do think there's a point where we have to say we don't have enough people. That is potentially where AI comes in at some point that can aid that, but then the trades, which is the area that's probably creaking heaviest, I don't see it replacing that area for the foreseeable, you obviously look into modular and prefab and et cetera, which again is probably going to come a bit more to the floor again as demand increases, but I don't know if it can replace. I do think there's a point where as an industry we will probably reach a point where you can't keep building and building at the scale we are, it'll still be building, but maybe not at the scale. Technology wise, I'm always amazed every day at the new technology that comes in where it's calling software. I get so many messages from new start-up tech companies that are creating something that's now integrated within X number of data centers and is managing or coordinating some other technology within it. So I think AI is going to have a huge impact on the sort of internal infrastructure of data centers as well. So I guess I'll try and keep a foot of technology, but it's so hard now to keep track of what's coming in, but there is some really, really cool stuff out there that, again, I just say to people, try and read as much as you can, really, just keep on the news and see what's coming, but there's a lot of cool stuff happening. And I think, again, the GPU cluster type, well, where you're creating this like full stack, that's cool if you read about it. Yeah. Okay, if you could give one piece of advice to organizations that are preparing for the next decade of digital infrastructure expansion, what would it be? Best advice, I think I give to people is don't forget retention, because I think a lot of people talk about attraction. How can we get more staff out? And obviously, that's my job, say, I can understand why they're talking to me better, but how can I find more people? How can we, how can we recruit in this area? I think in this industry right now, if you do not retain your talent, you're in a big problem because it's very difficult to replace. So retention has to be top of mind. If I'm a CEO of industry in the data center, top of my list would be retaining the best people I have in my organization. There might be everyone, it might not, but retain the people and therefore you don't have to replace because you want your hiring to be for growth, you know, or for enhancement or development. You don't want it to be because somebody's left. People will naturally leave, obviously, and I think I'm going to employ myself. You want people to progress and move on and sometimes that's the right thing to do and they might change career. That's all fine, but what you don't want to be doing is losing people to your competitors or to other areas. So I think focus on retention and around that area when we did our salary survey, last year, the main thing was individual development. So make sure everyone's got like a development plan and that they're working towards something because I think it's easy to forget about somebody that's doing a great job and you think they're happy and they're because they're so good at what they do and they smile every day and they come in and enjoy themselves, but you know, they might not actually be challenged. So keep your eye on the people you've got and also retention is one of the best ways to attract people as well because if employer, potential employees know that you retain the staff, they're much more likely to join you than those companies that we all know in all our areas where you see a high turnover, you think there must be a reason for that high turnover. Maybe it's not for me. So I guess that's probably my main bit of advice. Don't forget the people that work for you already. Yeah, creative advice across industries. I've really enjoyed this conversation. Thanks so much for taking the time to be on the show. Any day of a director of DataX Connect and host of Inside Data Center podcasts, appreciate you. Thanks for having me. Enjoyed it. We'll get it. Thank you for listening to UpTime now. If this episode sparked an idea, pass it along to someone who knew Network and leave a comment. I'd love to hear your thoughts, ideas, and recommendations for guests. 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