Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg revealed some major investments from the company in Ireland to come in 2019, including 1,000 new jobs.
Today (21 January), Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg announced that the company aims to add 1,000 new jobs in Dublin in this year alone, bringing the total figure to approximately 5,000.
Sandberg was in Dublin at Facebook’s Gather event for small businesses, where more than 500 SMEs from Ireland and across the EMEA region were in attendance. In her keynote, Sandberg reiterated the company’s continued commitment to its Irish operation, which is its largest outside of its California headquarters.
Speaking to attendees, Sandberg noted the growth that Facebook has undergone in Ireland, from an initial 30 people in 2009 to now employing approximately 4,000 in locations around the country in Cork, Meath and Dublin, on projects from Instagram to Oculus.
Speaking to Siliconrepublic.com, head of Facebook in Ireland, Gareth Lambe, said the new hires will span across the 60 teams working in the country, including the engineering, safety, legal, policy, marketing and sales teams. He added that the largest team in Facebook’s Irish base deals with content and platform integrity and security.
The company is also in the process of creating its Ballsbridge campus, which Lambe said will be a project that will take some time to complete in its entirety. In November of 2018, Facebook announced it was taking over the the Bank Centre, formerly occupied by AIB. Discussing the campus, Lambe added that there is room for “7,000 employees in time”.
Looking at the company strategy for the year, Sandberg said that Facebook is a “very different company to what it was in 2016 or even a year ago”. She went on to speak about Facebook’s commitment to earn the trust of its user base in the face of a series of issues, from Cambridge Analytica in March of last year to a separate bug in September 2018. She added that it is up to the company “to make itself more publicly accountable”.
Sandberg also revealed that the social media giant plans to triple its investment in online safety programmes run by the National Anti-Bullying Centre (ABC) and SpunOut.ie, bringing the total investment to €1m. This money will go towards supporting important research conducted by ABC, expanding the nationwide online safety training programme for teachers and parents of secondary school students, and creating online safety resources for teens in partnership with SpunOut.ie.
Facebook open on a laptop. Image: bernardojbp/Depositphotos
