Facebook to Add 500 Employees In Cambridge

Photo via AP

Cambridge’s booming tech scene is getting another boost. Facebook has announced plans to add 500 employees to its Cambridge office, according to the Boston Globe. The office currently employs more than 100 people, but this influx of staffers means they’ll be moving. The company plans to move staffers into the new building at 100 Binney St. designed by Elkus Manfredi, which is set to be completed next year. The company Bristol-Myers Squibb had already been announced as tenants for the building, where they’ll be opening a drug-discovery center to study genetic diseases.

The update means the company will now have 650 employees in the area, up from the original quite small number of employees working out of a Harvard dorm room back in the day. Aside from Mark Zuckerberg’s brief university days, the company first opened an office in the area four years ago. Ryan Mack, who heads the Cambridge office, told the Globe that the office will be “a hub for the company’s machine-learning efforts, as the company attempts to understand how Facebook’s data, hardware, and software can be optimized to serve users.”

But the office will also have a more altruistic side, with an announced “Connectivity Lab” that will be “focused on delivering technology and Internet access to the 4 billion people worldwide who currently live without the Internet.” Oh, and they’ll be working on building partnerships with telecom companies and developing new products with hardware manufacturers. So if any of those things sound like your area of expertise, you probably want to get to work on polishing up that résumé.