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 The Internet social networking company aims to add nearly 1,200 new
employees, the outgrowth of aggressive investments that executives
have said will define the coming year.
Oculus Rift, the maker of virtual reality headsets that Facebook
acquired in a $2 billion deal last year, is among the key areas
slated for growth, with 54 jobs listed on its website, according to
a review by Reuters of listings.
Among the roles that Facebook needs to fill for the Oculus business
are managers to oversee logistics, procurement and global supply
chain planning - a sign, some analysts say, that the product is
nearing its commercial release.
The market for virtual reality headsets is still nascent. But if
virtual reality takes off for entertainment, gaming, communications
or computing, Facebook could be at the center of the new platform
with Oculus.
Facebook’s ambitious effort to build its own satellites and drones
capable of delivering Internet service to remote regions of the
world is another important area for hiring: the program has Facebook
searching for specialists in areas such as avionics, radio frequency
communications and thermal engineering.
“We are an ambitious company run by an ambitious CEO,” Facebook
Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg told Reuters in an
interview. “Our users are growing and our business is growing and we
want to support that,” she said, noting that Facebook’s business is
much more expansive today than a few years ago, with offices
throughout the world.
The jobs run a gamut from sales people to software engineers for
Facebook's 1.35-billion-member social network.
Facebook's growth spurt comes as the company expands into new
markets and faces stiffening competition from Web rivals Google Inc,
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and well-capitalized start-ups such as
Snapchat.
“There’s a fairly direct correlation between their investment in
people and servers and infrastructure, and their ability to remain
competitive,” said Robert Baird & Co analyst Colin Sebastian.
Facebook had 8,348 full-time employees at the end of September, far
fewer than Google’s roughly 55,000 employees or Microsoft Corp’s
roughly 127,000 (Microsoft announced in the summer that it plans to
cut 18,000 jobs).
At the same time, Facebook gets more out of each employee, according
to calculations using company revenue figures. Facebook’s revenue
works out to roughly $384,000 per employee in the third quarter of
2014, versus $300,000 for Google and $183,000 for Microsoft.
That efficiency has helped Facebook enjoy rich profit margins. And
the company's relatively small headcount provides an important
talking point in the battle to attract the most talented computer
programmers.
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Facebook has long touted to potential recruits their ability to work
directly on products used by hundreds of millions of people, a
marked contrast to some larger tech companies.
"We're growing as fast as we can, where the 'can' part is really a
factor of how many people we can absorb while maintaining a strong
culture," Paul Carduner, an engineering manager who runs Facebook's
Seattle office, told Reuters at one of the company's famed 'Hackathon'
events last week.
The hackathons feature Facebook programmers hunched over their
computers and working through the night on personal projects that
could eventually become Facebook products.
Facebook is growing exponentially in Seattle, a tech hub with a
rich, and relatively cheap, talent pool created by local tech
companies Microsoft and Amazon.com Inc Facebook currently has
more than 400 employees in Seattle, and is looking for a larger site
close to the center of the city that could hold as many as 2,000
people, according to a person familiar with the matter.
At Facebook’s Menlo Park, California, headquarters, construction is
expected to be completed this year on a new, roughly 500,000 square
foot building designed by architect Frank Gehry that can accommodate
3,000 employees.
Atlas, the online advertising technology that Facebook acquired in
2013, is another big area of hiring, with more than 20 open
positions listed.
The many opportunities Facebook is chasing could lift the company’s
annual revenue to $30 billion within a few years, estimates Arvind
Bhatia, an analyst with Sterne, Agee & Leach.
“To get to that level, they’re going to have to get people now,”
Bhatia said.
(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic in San Francisco and Bill Riby in
Seattle; Editing by Peter Henderson and Ken Wills)
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