Facebook Announces Plans For New York Engineering Office

Facebook's engineering team is branching out to the Big Apple.

During an event at Facebook's New York City office on Friday, the company's COO Sheryl Sandberg joined Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Facebook engineering heads and other New York politicians to announce the social network's new move.

The Palo Alto-based company plans to establish its first engineering office in New York by early 2012 and is currently accepting applications for local talent.

“Building an engineering presence outside the West Coast is a big step for us, one we would take only if we found the right combination of talent and community support,” said Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer, according to a press release.

"Silicon Valley companies are realizing that New York is the place that they have to be," Mayor Bloomberg said, as quoted by Business Insider. "We are home to success stories like Etsy, Gilt Groupe, Foursquare, and more... We want the next Facebook to start in New York City."

Venture Beat notes that the social network maintains two other engineering offices, both on the west coast of the U.S., one in Palo Alto, California, and the other in Seattle, Washington.

"It's a smart move on Facebook’s part," TechCrunch wrote of Facebook's plan. "The company will have competition for engineering — including the financial sector, Google (which has a large office in NYC) and the growing startup scene. But it shouldn’t have any trouble attracting top talent, as it still has its valuable pre-IPO stock to give out. In the longer term, it’s also good news for the New York tech scene as a whole."

Facebook is expected to file for an initial public offering before the end of 2011. According to a recent report, the company could seek to raise as much as $10 billion and may be valued as high as $100 billion.

Check out our slideshow (below) to see how a Facebook IPO might stack up to IPOs from Netflix, LinkedIn, Dream Works and other notable companies that went public in the last decade.

Comments

[Doda deWolf]

08:53 AM on 12/24/2011

She looks pleasant :(

[Doda deWolf]

08:52 AM on 12/24/2011

Disgracebook!

[NoBlueDogs]

08:54 PM on 12/23/2011

Hooray for opening an engineering office in the United States!

[karen lyons kalmenson]

12:37 PM on 12/05/2011

thank you FB for friending the big apple;-D

[darlenebonny]

12:17 PM on 12/04/2011

Just what New York City needs, more rats in the city from yuckbook.

[empress trudy]

09:13 AM on 12/03/2011

People want to work for fb so that can say they work for fb.

[wonderYrednow]

10:23 PM on 12/03/2011

Ya think.....

[SuperBenFranklin]

09:03 AM on 12/03/2011

New York city is not a great place for tech talent. Or rather, there are much better places.

[BruntLIVE]

09:02 AM on 12/03/2011

She looks bipolar

[frank day]

10:33 AM on 12/04/2011

"Who farted" is what she's thinking.

[AxisV]

03:29 PM on 12/22/2011

I met her a few times when she was at Google. She was very personable and actually listened to us low level stiffs and even implemented some of the advice we gave her on a couple of projects.

[Mister Grumpy]

03:01 AM on 12/03/2011

Qualifications are that you must be willing to stalk people anomalously without reservations.

[badunion]

10:04 PM on 12/02/2011

This kid that owns facebook is a tool for Obama, so who cares, they're in kahootz.

[wonderYrednow]

10:24 PM on 12/03/2011

1 d 1 0 t !

[Layman23]

09:04 PM on 12/02/2011

I saw her talk with Mark Zuckerberg on some show the other day. While the interviewer was more interested in asking questions to Mark, she kept interrupting constantly to let her presence be known and she came off as a very self absorbed woman. But i could be wrong. Either way, cant imagine working for this woman !

[Sam Zekarias]

05:10 AM on 12/03/2011

Agreed. I felt the same way.

[speedntktz]

08:32 AM on 12/03/2011

She makes it easier for him to talk less. But yes I got the same impression of her. She has a certain amount of stock in the company and she has clearly already counted her chickens while staring at those Pre-IPO eggs.

[wonderYrednow]

10:25 PM on 12/03/2011

She has more money than she will ever need, she was an early hire at The Googler.

[jonesengr]

08:09 PM on 12/02/2011

Something very wrong with people who want to hang their lifes out in public like FB does. One can easily send e'mails to groups of people with pictures and whatever they want in privacy...so why FB.

[Intelligentia]

06:56 PM on 12/02/2011

FB is launching an IPO. NY is the best place to manage that IPO. NY judges will offer more protection than CA judges if FB screws with people's money with the IPO. It's about the IPO, nothing about Engineering.

[speedntktz]

08:38 AM on 12/03/2011

Wall Streets financial sector is one of the largest vacuums of engineering talent. It is a lucrative yet dead end career path for them. While it would be a more attractive option for many of these engineers, none of them are serious coders and I have to agree with you. They are setting the stage for the IPO. It will be interesting to see what it trades at post-IPO but what I am more interested in, is how many newly minted millionaires leave to start something else.

[wonderYrednow]

10:26 PM on 12/03/2011

That must be why all the Corporations incorporate in Delaware.

[Intelligentia]

10:41 PM on 12/03/2011

This is not incorporation issue; it's venue/consolidation/foreign non convenience issue/strategic positioning. FB is already an existing corporation; so the Delaware thing does not follow.

[Texan POd]

06:33 PM on 12/02/2011

Facebook is a joke.
If it weren't for addons and plugins that make it bearable, it would have already been done.

[PickOneTwoThree]

05:24 PM on 12/02/2011

Welcome - there are LOTS of talented high-tech people on the East Coast!