Facebook to recruit 100 new staff for Dublin base
Facebook is to recruit another 100 staff in its Europe, the Middle East and Africa headquarters in Dublin over the next 12 months, the Guardian has learned, expanding the current team of 200 international sales, finance and developer management staff.
In contrast to Ireland’s dire financial straits, Facebook’s investment in its Irish operation – which is the main centre for all business outside of the US – casts a clear vote of confidence for the future of its tech economy.
The social networking giant has been keen to steer clear of the controversy about Ireland’s low corporate tax regime, instead emphasising its outreach work with universities, mentoring initiatives for local startups and its developer garages.
Ireland’s low corporate tax rate has helped attract around 75 major international tech corporations including Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Hewlett Packard and Intel. Despite pressure from Germany and other countries backing Ireland’s €67.5bn bailout package, Ireland has refused to increase corporation tax from the current rate of 12.5%.
Colm Long, Facebook’s director of online operations based in Dublin, acknowledged the sensitivity around the issue but would not comment directly. But he explained that Facebook’s executive team had also been “very encouraged” by the collaborative nature and commercial focus of the Irish government and its agencies.
“This is not a very popular thing to say, but we’ve seen time and time again that we can go in and have conversations with the Irish government to solve problems … there’s often more bureaucracy in other countries,” he said.
“Ireland is very business friendly – you can get talent quickly not just from Ireland but from abroad. Other countries are tightening up on immigration and that’s understandable. The Irish government’s approach, though they are cognisant of that, is that they understand you are a growing business … they know that to help our business we’ll need more people and the government will need to be flexible and forward thinking.”
“If we continue to execute well we can create really meaningful employment opportunities for graduates. The should be some sense of optimism that they don’t have to emigrate for opportunities.”
Of Facebook’s 200 Dublin staff the majority work on advertising, multi-lingual sales and account management with a small finance and HR team. Less than 20 work on backend engineering and “platform operations”, the team that liaises with external app developers. The company is currently advertising for 85 new staff across all these areas.
Long denied that Facebook – which had 633 million unique users in October, according to comScore – is taking local development talent out of native startups at a time when engineering talent is in short supply. During Ireland’s property boom, many students opted for property-related degrees instead of computer science.
“If we are then I’m worried about the local talent pool – we haven’t hired that many people on the technical side,” said Long, who said the Irish office had “built a reputation internally as a group that can solve complex problems and drive online revenue”.
Read the full interview with Colm Long
Technology news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk
Facebook facing lawsuit as New Yorker claims 84% of firm
Facebook is in court to defend yet another claim to ownership, this time from a web designer cum wood pellet distributor who says a previous contract entitles him to 84% of the company.
Filed in the Supreme Court in New York’s Allegany County last month, the lawsuit details how Paul Ceglia signed a contract with Facebook in April 2003 to design and develop the website TheFacebook.com for an agreed ,000 (£665) fee and a 50% stake in the site.
The contract stipulated, Ceglia claims, a further 1% stake for each day until the site was finished on 4 February 2004. Facebook is valued at an estimated .5bn, so an 84% share would be worth around .46bn.
Following Ceglia’s lawsuit, acting New York Supreme Court justice Thomas Brown issued a temporary restraining order that blocks Facebook from transfering assets. The case has now transferred to a federal court and Facebook is trying to have it annulled.
Facebook dimissed the case as “frivolous” and “outlandish”, said it will fight it vigorously and pointed out that a lawsuit over a contract broken in 2003 is “almost certainly barred” by the statute of limitation.
There are a number of reasons that success for Ceglia sounds unlikely – not least waiting until the site reaches 500 million global users before bringing his case, waiting until the outcome of the (successful) Winklevoss claim and the rather bizarre sidenote that a restraining order was granted against him in 2009 by an attorney who alleged Ceglia had defrauded customers of his wood-pellet fuel business to the tune of 0,000.
But imagine, for a minute, that Ceglia succeeded, and moved in to take 84% of Facebook. We might have a new entrant in the MediaGuardian 100…
