Interview with DCW Keynote Speaker Kian Gohar | Five Data Points

Interview with DCW Keynote Speaker Kian Gohar | Five Data Points

Kian Gohar, keynote speaker featured on CNBC and Axios, author of Wall Street Journal and USA Today-bestselling book Competing in the New World of Work, began our interview with a slight caveat. “I’m not a data center expert by any means,” he explained to me. “I’m a bit more of a generalist when it comes to tech.”

The caveat was, if I may say so respectfully, a tad unnecessary: Gohar’s advice and insights throughout our interview proved he has a keen eye aimed not only towards improving the data center industry’s issues with labor retention, sustainability, and workplace diversity, but also fixed on transforming the world of tech as a whole. Indeed, it’s become clear that these issues aren’t solely relegated to the data center space; globally, for example, there’s an urgent demand to improve sustainability initiatives for all companies across all sectors. It’s that global, all-encompassing view that Gohar brought to our conversation, and which Gohar will surely bring to his keynote speech at Data Center World 2023.

In Kian Gohar’s DCW keynote speech, he’s slated to introduce our data center audience to the future of technology a decade from now, including the expected implementation and growing adoption of technologies like AI, robotics, and sensors, and will instruct DCW’s audience of data center leaders on how to become adequately prepared to seize on the revolutionary potential of these emerging technologies. Check out AFCOM’s interview with Gohar to get a sneak peek on what we can do now to get ready for the technological breakthroughs that are poised to arrive soon.

AFCOM: How would you describe the current state of the talent gap that has impacted the data center industry? What steps can data centers take now to mitigate this labor crunch?

Kian Gohar: Well, I think there's probably two different approaches to answering this question. I think tech as a whole is going through a bit of a reassessment on the needs that they have. I think the tech industry, especially the consumer-facing tech industry, really grew very rapidly in response to COVID-19 and lockdowns. And as a result, from 2020 to 2022, tech companies hired tremendous amounts of people to meet that kind of digital need, and we're now seeing some of that retrenchment and reassessment of their labor needs as a result of that very fast growth.

I think specifically as it applies to data centers I see this is a growing field for a variety of reasons. We are constantly having to increase access to data centers because everything is becoming increasingly digitized over the last couple years. And, while I think part of the challenge is that data center operators are struggling to recruit and retain talent, this might actually be an opportunity, given that there is some retrenchment happening in other parts of the tech industry in '23, to potentially transition some of those workers’ tech experiences from non-data centers to data centers.

I think one of the other big challenges is that the largest demographic of people that I've seen in the data center world are predominantly men in their mid-to-late 40s to 60s. It’s an aging workforce. And so the industry is facing a significant demographic shift as a large proportion of the workforce approaches retirement age. And I think this has challenges because potentially there's a lot of significant loss of institutional knowledge and experience, as well as a shortage of skilled workers to fill those critical roles. So I think there is this big transition that needs to happen. There is a labor shortage in the data center industry and there potentially is an opportunity to get some of those workers who were in broader tech over the last couple years to migrate to data centers. But in order to do that, I think data centers need to make these kinds of jobs more appealing than what these workers may have been used to in the past at other places. And one of the things that I would recommend is to think about how they can attract talent by leaning into innovation and technology to make these kinds of careers attractive for individuals to have long-term careers in them.

So how do you think about using different technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and virtual reality to facilitate the training process and make it a desirable place to really want to invest in your career? Rather than just being the back office warehouse that stores thousands of servers, how can data centers lean into innovation and technology to make these aspiring careers and places to wanna work at? And so I think leaning into that is really important to attract a younger subset of tech employees who would be attracted to that kind of workplace. And the second thing I'd say is you need to attract a more diverse workforce. We're now seeing Generation Z, which is the most diverse workforce in American history. And as they age increasingly into the workforce, they're looking for places where they want to see role models. And so thinking about how you can attract a more diverse skill set by offering more diverse role models and career paths would do well for the data center industry to attract talent.

AFCOM: What emerging trends should data center operators pay closer attention to in 2023?

Kian Gohar: I think everybody's aware that generative AI has tremendous capabilities to transform many different kinds of tasks. I believe that many tasks that an individual does can be better and more quickly and productively done using a generative AI as an assistant. I don't believe in the replacement theory of jobs. I think that's gonna be a longer term issue. But these are the very early days of thinking about how generative AI can be used for a variety of tasks inside companies, whether it's from marketing to writing to ideation to all sorts of other activities. So I think that's a space that's blossoming. And it's just ground zero for the next few years.

Right now, I think the user interface is one that is a little bit clunky. People have to go through ChatGPT or openAI and type in their prompts. But I think very soon we're gonna have a lot of APIs that will allow us to actually integrate a lot of the same kind of technology into the existing systems that we have. That’s what's happening in the AI world since 2022. It's pretty interesting.

Another area I think that is interesting is around edge computing. This idea of moving the data processing and storage closer to the end user. And this has the effect of making it faster to actually give an end user an answer rather than having to ping a server in a server form or data center to get the answer. You can actually have that done increasingly at the edge, which basically means at the tip of your hands. So wherever you are, whether it's your phone or whether you are in an IoT enterprise system, basically being able to do the computing at the point where the user is, rather than moving it to the cloud and then pinging it back and having that kind of latency, should accelerate more in 2023. In order to do that, we're gonna need to see more advanced AI chip sets that are coming out in the future.

AFCOM: What should the data center industry do to encourage and bolster a more diverse workforce?

Kian Gohar: I think data centers have to rethink how they communicate with the target audience that they want to attract. Given that the current workforce is slightly older, I'd say in Gen X and above, they have a particular way of communicating differently, as well as different channels of communicating, and that doesn't necessarily translate intergenerationally. I was just speaking with a Gen Z individual, and I said, "What recommendation do you have to a future boss?" And he said, "Get your message across to me in five seconds or less. 'Cause that's my attention span." And so thinking about how to use different kinds of communication messages and mediums like short-form video or other things to really capture the younger generation's attention is critical.

The second part is role modeling some of the people that you want to attract. So for example, if you're trying to attract a more diverse workforce who happens to be younger, they're gonna ask you, "Well, who else like me is in positions of leadership?" And so you should think about how you can bring to the forefront people that already exist in your workforce who have a diverse background and share their message about, for example, why they joined. And really provide an experience where younger, diverse workers can see a longer-term career and then also a purpose for why they're there.

AFCOM: What recent sustainability trends have made you the most excited?

Kian Gohar: Well, I was just in Europe for some client work and basically every building you see that is a manufacturing facility or even in agriculture is covered in solar panels. And I think that is a trend that is easy to implement. Obviously you need to figure out the financing, but being able to attach solar panels to every single manufacturing facility or data center facility is something that is, I think, an easy, low-hanging fruit that can be accomplished. And I'm pretty excited by that. Another thing that I'm excited about is how we can re-integrate some of the emissions that we have already developed through energy manufacturing and capture those emissions and turn them into products that have a circular life. So, for example, capturing emissions and putting those emissions into concrete and using that concrete to then manufacture new buildings and new data centers. That’s a circular economy that adds to these green building initiatives, in which we all contribute a little bit to sustainability that eventually will add up to a large-scale impact.

The other thing I'd say is that there's a very long, large, interest in aspects of sustainability amongst investors and also amongst stakeholders and employees. More and more people are asking, how is the company being more sustainable? How are they thinking about the environment? How are they thinking about the workforce? And your leadership team needs to really have good answers to those questions, to attract talent, to retain talent, and to build an industry that is capable of meeting the demand.

AFCOM: What are you the most excited to see or do at DCW?

Kian Gohar: I'm very excited to be in Austin, to spend some time having some barbecue. I lived in Austin a couple years ago, but unfortunately back then I was vegan, so I didn't have barbecue. [Laughs.]

And I’m also looking forward to just sitting in on some of the other events and learning about how this industry is changing. I'm not an expert in data centers. But I know there will be lots of conversations about how to make the industry more sustainable and more innovative. And I'm always looking forward to learning. So, yeah, I'm very excited.