The company founder goes through one of the most difficult phases in the company’s history with Facebook.
(Photo: imago images / photothek)
The technology group Facebook has seldom needed positive news as urgently as it does now. Several server failures at the company, which was once celebrated for its technological reliability, caused a great loss of trust among customers. Regulators in the European Union and the USA want to limit the power of the network anyway and feel confirmed in their course by the revelations of the former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen.
Now the group is taking the initiative. On Monday, Facebook announced that it wanted to create 10,000 new jobs in the European Union over the next five years. Currently more than 63,000 employees work for the group, significantly less than ten percent of them are likely to be in the EU. With the promise of new jobs, Facebook would multiply its representation in Europe.
Of course, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is following a political agenda with the announcement. Because Brussels could make future business much more difficult for the group. With the “Digital Service Act”, the EU Commission is preparing a digital law that could prohibit personalized advertising. For politicians and decision-makers in Brussels, the fear of abuse of power is too great. If a ban were to come, Facebook’s business model would be severely curtailed.
The job offensive is not enough
By announcing the creation of thousands of new jobs in Europe, Facebook wants to steer the debate in a different direction. Look here, the future of our group is also being developed in Europe, is one of the messages. However, new jobs won’t be enough to fix Facebook’s damaged reputation.
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It also remains to be seen what role the employees in the European Union will really play on Facebook in the future. 10,000 new jobs is a huge number. The company’s largest development center outside the United States is currently located in London. But Great Britain is no longer part of the EU. The group still leaves it open where exactly the future employees are to be located.
Competition for talent is intensifying
In the European Union, the struggle for promising specialists from the technology sector is likely to become much more intense. In addition to established European software houses such as SAP or Atos, US corporations such as Apple and Google are also expanding their representative offices. Facebook is now joining the competition for talent in Europe.
This development is to be welcomed. In a number of regions in Europe there are clusters of pioneering technology companies. A stronger representation of Facebook can support this trend. It is not for nothing that Apple decided to locate its future center for chip development in Munich. Facebook, on the other hand, is still keeping a low profile on exact locations for the new jobs.
More: Facebook’s flight forward: Tech group wants to create 10,000 new jobs in the EU