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Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has revealed that the social networking giant plans to hire 1,000 people across 60 teams in Ireland in 2019.
Sandberg was in Dublin on Monday to attend a number of events, including Facebook’s ‘Gather’ in Croke Park, at which she delivered the keynote address and announced investments in Ireland in 2019.
Sandberg announced plans to hire 1,000 people across 60 teams, spanning Facebook’s engineering, safety, legal, policy, marketing and sales teams in Ireland, while affirming Facebook’s continued commitment to its Irish operation, the largest outside of its headquarters in California.
Sandberg also revealed Facebook’s 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 €1 million. The 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 an online safety resource for teens in partnership with SpunOut.ie.
Commenting on Ireland’s strategic importance to Facebook, Sandberg talked about her pride in the growth that the company has undergone in the country; from an initial 30 people in 2009 to now employing over 4,000 in four locations around the country in Cork, Meath and Dublin.
Outlining Facebook’s priorities in 2019 and the need to earn users’ trust in light of revelations over the use of personal data and the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Sandberg said: “Facebook is a very different company to what it was in 2016 or even a year ago.”
She detailed the steps the company has taken, and will be taking, in key priority areas including “the safety and security of Facebook’s users; the commitment to cracking down on fake accounts and false news; strengthening defences against election interference; and being even more transparent in how it operates and makes decisions, to make itself more publicly accountable”.
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