Microsoft’s Wisconsin Pumpkin🎃 Farm is a Tech Warning

Photo by Marius Ciocirlan on Unsplash

A Wisconsin family just sold 407 acres of land to Microsoft for $76 million. The initial plan is to hire 200 employees, with prospects to add over 460 jobs. It’s bad news though as this tech plan offers fewer jobs than planned in 2017 as Foxconn sought to take over the land.

“Right here is the issue. There are fewer and fewer jobs in tech. Not only that it seems here they are taking away job opportunities from pumpkin farmers, the most maligned farmers in the USA (probably).”

Holding out

The Wisconsin family who agreed to sell their land were initially offered around a third of the money from Foxconn Technology Group which they refused. They refused the offer of a $10 billion investment in a state-of-the-art manufacturing plant to see if they could obtain a better offer.

The 13,000 jobs Foxconn initially promised were destroyed, like a pumpkin rotting after Halloween.

“They might have accepted an offer that would have supported the whole community in terms of jobs and investment. Unfortunately, that wasn’t good enough.”

A low job offer

Enter Microsoft with their strategic bid for the pumpkin farm. This strategic purchase is just the tip of the iceberg in Microsoft’s grand plan to invest over $1 billion in a data center campus.

“The modern Tech investment starts to offer less and less in terms of jobs. With the advent of AI perhaps we will see data centers that require no real human intervention.

The problem here is that those in control (of power, land or whatever scarce resource) are looking at the short-term picture. 

That cuts out the opportunity for high-value high-wage jobs and keeps people from fulfilling their potential.

That is before the true intervention of AI. Scary stuff!”

Conclusion

The Bigger Picture is that this tale of two tech titans — Foxconn’s fumble and Microsoft’s gain — is a microcosm of the ever-evolving tech landscape. It highlights the profound impact such corporate decisions have on small communities, reshaping their economic, social, and technological fabric. Who knows what the future holds, but it does seem to be scary for all concerned.

”Time to retire? If only I had enough money to do so…”