Here’s Google’s full announcement. The Durham site gets a call-out, but they are investing in a lot of locations. Hard for me to tell where Durham is in the pecking order.
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So it’s cloud engineering in Durham. Anyone know what that means? 
Hopefully similar to their engineering office building in Reston…
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Fujifilm picks Holly Springs for $1.5 billion, 725 job facility! What a day for business expansion in the Triangle!
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Interesting. I had heard rumors they were expanding and looking at NC and Texas. I figured their location here was in RTP where they already have a facility. Wonder what Holly Springs threw at them.
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]
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If anyone wants a good laugh, charlotte business journal has a headline touting ‘charlottes 1st 4 year medical school’…as if people don’t know Wake Forest University’s school of medicine is in Winston-Salem.
Are they claiming that Wake Forest’s Med School is in Charlotte? I’m confused.
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basically. charlotte usa has been obsessed with the fact they don’t have a medical school, law school, etc. Somehow they feel this makes them a ‘lesser city’. The fact is they don’t have a well recognized university and that’s not changing so what they have done is get the hospital system (Atrium) to basically bribe Wake Forest to open a ‘4 year medical program’ in charlotte so the napoleon complex crowd can run around claiming they have a ‘medical school’. My understanding is Atrium is giving WFU a crapload of money so I can kind of understand why WFU would have agreed to this setup but I can’t be understand how they will have 2 distinct classes (one in Winston & one in charlotte). Doesn’t seem very efficient.
They (Atrium, formerly Carolinas medical) tried to pull a fast one on UNC’s school of medicine, effectively trying to take over a publicly supported medical school…and were effectively trying to structure the deal so a private hospital system ‘owned’ UNC’s school of medicine…when the legislature stepped in and said 'Uh…I don’t think so"
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I’ve been following this one closely. Atrium has pledged to invest $3.4 Billion over 10 years at Wake Forest and in the Winston-Salem area. While they claim that Wake Forest and Atrium will remain separate legal entities that are overseen by a new organization in Charlotte, and that WFU will maintain authority over academic and research matters, there is legit concern in the W-S community that WFU’s school of medicine will relocate to Charlotte.
Similar to Durham, W-S’s new economy has found itself on the back of its medical enterprise, heavily associated with a research institution. WFU’s health system is W-S’s largest employer by a landslide and it would be a huge blow to their pride if it answered to Charlotte. That napoleon complex has poached so many corporations from the Triad as of late, with Wachovia-Wells Fargo, BB&T, Krispy Kreme and so many others.
Bringing this back to the Triangle, the CEO of Atrium Health envisions a “Silicon Valley” of health research between W-S and Charlotte. and their billionaire Tepper wants to see a high speed rail between the two. But tbh, I don’t see that happening without the inclusion of the Triangle, which is already one of the most important medical research regions in the country. A concentration of medical research stretching along I-85 would be phenomenal, and really isn’t that far out of reach.
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If anyone from charlotte usa is vocally claiming they want a ‘corridor’…what they really mean is that they want to try to pull any company they can to charlotte. they could give a rats ass about the ‘corridor’ or Winston, Greensboro, and definitely not their much smarter neighbor Raleigh.
“medical research” companies are not going to Kannapolis…period. charlotte is trying to play a game thinking they can lure RTP type companies down their way.
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guess their pride got really hurt when they lost a big bank HQ’s and came close to losing the last one. Another stretch of truth is that their chest beating about airport is bigger than RDU. List I checked origin and arriving passengers numbers that are for charlotte are slightly smaller than RDU, it’s all connecting flights. Even thought ctl is an hour closer than RDU for me, I go to RDU being flights and parking are a lot cheaper than ctl. All in all I think triangle is a much better place that ctl. Seems that a lot of high Tech company’s agree.
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I’m doing clinical research at UNC, and some doctors and nurses can sometimes be VERY territorial… Even with existing staff, it can already be a pain to do research and grad student training (y’know, the whole job of a teaching hospital!?). If all of these for-profit people came in and suddenly started getting in the way of our work too, I would’ve raised holy hell. I’m so glad those negotiations didn’t get anywhere.
As for Charlotte and Raleigh being a part of a biotech corridor? I have a crazy opinion: I’m totally fine with that!
Instead of being butthurt about Charlotte trying to take the spotlight, why not let them scream and market and propagandize all they want? We’re all growing into one big megaregion with Atlanta, anyways. So if it’s anything like Dallas and Houston, I’m pretty sure both NC cities can make a name for themselves that the rest of the country will come to recognize in the coming decades.
Besides, if Charlotte ends up becoming a practical magnet for reasons beyond banks, concerts, NASCAR, and certain pro sports teams, we could start advertising about how we’re a short train or car ride away from Charlotte. Whoopdy-freaking-doo. We have a hockey team, March Madness, concerts and music festivals of our own, amazing museums, and a whole lot more, too, so it’s not like we’re missing out on much.
If you really think Raleigh and the Triangle is smarter, better planned, and just better to live in, the people who know (and are cultured enough to read beyond the headlines) will know. That has been a winning formula according to our growth in the past several decades; why doubt it now?
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Raleigh is an acquired taste like under the radar music in the radio days and Charlotte is top 40.
Argue or try to persuade someone in that camp as you see fit but it’s better to just turn on your own playlist and enjoy while occasionally inviting people over to make their own opinion…
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Here is the article on the new medical school in today’s Charlotte Axios:
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AAMC says 1/3 of medical schools operate satellite campuses. Most seem to be state universities, including UNC; there’s long been a tension between America’s tendency to isolate state universities in college towns, having clinics that see sufficient numbers of patients with teachable ailments, and state governments’ desire to equitably distribute health care resources. (The most spread-out med school is UW’s, which is in five states.)
It’s funny that WFU is building out an entire satellite grad campus in Charlotte (also business and professional degrees), having already left behind not just Wake Forest but also now Winston-Salem for greener pastures.
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Wake Forest abandoned its namesake town when it followed the money. Who’s to say that it won’t do it again?
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Not following you. Wake Forest University is very much in Winton-Salem. WFU; along with other universities have learned they can bring in more money thru opening of ‘satellite campuses’. Wake Forest’s business, law, medicine, & undergraduate ‘main campus’ is in Winston-Salem and there’s no reason to believe they will go anywhere.
The point here is the napoleon complex charlotte usa crowd continuing to claim they have a ‘4 year medical school’ as if it is the only location and not really a satellite of Wake Forest’s main campus…which it is.
charlotte usa has zero reputable universities. UNC-Southwest is a commuter college. They know this and it drives them nuts…especially with Raleigh & RTP up the road with 3 world recognized institutions not to mention several other smaller higher education institutions.
When Amazon shortlisted Raleigh and charlotte didn’t come close to making the cut…because Amazon cited our ‘higher education’…the civic folks down there nearly lost their minds.
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Wake Forest WAS in the town of Wake Forest until R.J. Reynolds Tobacco gave Wake Forest collage, lots of money and built them a new (current) campus to move to Winston-Salem. This happened sometime around 1960 +/- a few years.
++EDIT++LOL did a little digging and found this:
Wake Forest University is a private research university in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Founded in 1834, the university received its name from its original location in Wake Forest, north of Raleigh, North Carolina. The Reynolda Campus, the university’s main campus, has been located north of downtown Winston-Salem since the university moved there in 1956.
You can just imagine the basketball rivalry when 4 or the then 8 ACC teams where within shouting distance of each other (State, Duke, Wake Forest, and that one in Chapel Hill)
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That’s correct. The seminary up in Wake Forest (the town) is the original campus.
Would have been cool to have all 4 of the ‘Big 4’ here…but WFU was a small seminary back then and RJR was a giant corporation. Winston-Salem wanted a strong academic institution and basically gave WFU the land the university campus now sits along with funding to grow.
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