There I was thinking I was such a trendsetter by moving to Seattle. But apparently other people had the same idea, because Facebook is opening an office up here, too. A handful of engineers, led by Ari Steinberg, are making the move up here to open an engineering office, says Facebook. They are looking for office space now and expect to have 30 engineers here within a year.
Also of note – Seattle-based Hadi Partovi, the cofounder of iLike and a former MySpace executive, is joining Facebook as an advisor and will help the office recruit new talent. I can imagine MySpace Seattle engineers will be working on their resumes this morning.
Two weeks ago Facebook announced the opening of an office in Austin focusing on sales and operations. Other than a small engineering team based in Tokyo this is Facebook’s first engineering office outside of their Palo Alto headquarters.
Welcome to the frozen north, Facebook. I look forward to stalking your offices.
Update: Facebook’s blog post on this is here: “Ari Steinberg, an engineering manager at Facebook, is moving to Seattle because he couldn’t bear to be 800 miles away from Michael Arrington.”