Facebook announced that its final wave of employees have moved into the company’s new campus in Menlo Park from its previous Palo Alto location.
The campus consists of 10 buildings. There are 2,000 employees in the East Campus, with a vacant lot next door for “further developments”. The company says it is hoping to accommodate a lot more in the years to come.
A blog post from John Tenanes, Facebook’s Global Director of Real Estate, says:
Some features of the campus might be familiar. We’ve always believed in “hacking out” our space—putting up posters and scribbling ideas on the walls—so we lined the hallways with chalkboard paint and put a box of chalk on everyone’s desk. Everywhere you go is stimulating and different. We’ve exposed the ductwork along the high-ceilinged corridors to give the place an unfinished feel and remind us that our work is never done.
There are no private offices or cubicles. We tore down those unnecessary walls so that everyone could sit out in the open with their teams. We’ve scattered hundreds of conference rooms and “cozies”—little breakaway spaces filled with couches and brightly colored chairs—throughout the buildings. As people run into each other in hallways or at the micro-kitchens, it’s important that they can quickly duck away somewhere if they want to chat or hash out ideas. Every conference room features a glass wall or panel so that you can quickly see what’s going on inside. This is because we believe transparency and openness help us move fast, even as we grow.
The whole campus is connected through a central courtyard. Right now it’s still filled with bulldozers and dirt, but when it’s finished, we’ll have two full-service cafes, two coffee shops, on-site doctors, a fitness center, and much more. And as always, we still offer other perks like free dry cleaning and endless snacks in our micro-kitchens.
Facebook has donated laptops to Meno Park’s Belle Haven Middle School, is running safety workshops, and has sponsored Zimride to come to the city.
Tenanes says Facebook will soon launch “Facebucks,” which is described as a program that incentivizes employees to “get out, enjoy and spend money in downtown Menlo Park.”
He adds that the company is “relentlessly focused” on minimizing its impact on the environment, and is pursuing a LEED Gold certification, offering recycling and composting bins everywhere for employees.
He says the company has reused as much of the existing structure as possible, and is offering a transportation program to provide alternatives to single-car commuting (including free shuttles from the surrounding areas, vanpools, bicycles, and a partnership with Zimride).
The company says it doesn’t plan to add a single new parking space to the existing campus as it grows.