When CEO Mark Zuckerberg first decided to open offices for his social networking firm Facebook in Ireland back in 2009, they started with just 30 people. That number quickly doubled. Soon, after realizing just how perfect a location the country was for a European HQ, the social media behemoths started investing heavily in Ireland and hiring more and more employees there. That number currently stands at around 2,200. And it’s about to hit 3,000.
In a recent announcement, the San Francisco-based company revealed that they would be hiring 800 more staff across their Dublin, Cork and Meath locations. It’s all part of Facebook’s operations expansion and comes as further proof of their commitment to Ireland and an extra assurance that it’s still very much the place to be for them. Facebook’s set-up in Eire is their biggest outside of California. And it looks all set to keep on growing.
The head of Facebook Ireland, Gareth Lambe, said after the announcement that the social networking giant was 'delighted' to be expanding their operations, going on to say that Ireland was “an important part of Facebook’s story and one of the most vibrant tech communities in the world."
“We are delighted that our Irish operations will be growing in 2018 with hundreds of more jobs across all our teams," he said.
"Over the next number of years, if the business and platform continue to grow, we expect to continue to grow pretty substantially in Ireland," he went on. "It's by far our largest footprint of any country in the world outside our Silicon Valley headquarters."
Lambe continued by saying that Facebook is growing, as a business, at a fairly exponential rate, with a continued growth of more than 50%, year on year.
"When you're growing users and business as fast as that, we in Ireland need to scale up. We've been very successful here in Ireland at delivering results for Facebook. So we continue to get investment."
The recruitment is underway now, having been confirmed during the Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar’s trade mission to the United States at the end part of last year. Varadkar has, understandably, welcomed the news.
Facebook like being in Ireland. And Ireland likes Facebook being there. Careers website Glassdoor recently compiled a list of Ireland’s top ten tech companies to work for, as voted for by current and previous employees. Zuckerberg’s firm came out the top, with 96% of people recommending them as a great place to work. They beat off stiff competition from the likes of Salesforce, Hubspot, Airbnb, Google, LinkedIn and SAP.
EMEA Director of Glassdoor Lauren Wright said this about the results: “You wouldn’t eat in a poorly rated restaurant or stay in a hotel that didn’t have good customer endorsements, so why apply for a job at a company that isn’t strongly recommended by the people that already work there?”
“The battle for tech talent in Ireland is fierce, so the employers that have the best employer brand are going to be the ones that win out in the end. The recommend to a friend rating is a bit like a net promoter score, but for employees, so it can make a big difference to recruiting. Facebook is the boss in a tough category here,” she added.
It sounds like the Irish expansion of Facebook is good news all around, doesn’t it...?
