The TBJ article’s implying that this Google Cloud expansion will be a pretty big thing!
The article says they’ll start off in Durham’s Innovation District, though. I wonder if it means this is one of those jobs that would continue to be (semi-)remote even after the pandemic?
Cloud computing means you’re doing math, processing data etc. across bunches of servers at some remote location, as opposed to running code on your own computer or phone. Managing the servers, making sure they all work together like they’re supposed to, and keeping them safe is hard. Google needs tons of programmers to make that happen, and those people are called “cloud engineers” since they work specifically on cloud-based applications.
From @JFG’s article, it’s also interesting to note that Google didn’t ask for any incentives to do this.
[EDIT: portions of my original post moved here, into a more relevant thread]