Facebook Opens New Boston Office

Facebook, which is headquartered in Menlo Park, California, opened a new office this week in Boston. The social media company invited some journalists along for a tour of the facilities, giving them a rare inside look at one of the world’s biggest companies and how it treats employees.

The space, located in Cambridge, is a 130,000-square-foot area on three floors, according to a reporter for Fortune who took the tour. Although the company is based in California, Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg famously attended Harvard and started the site there.

The company had kept a small presence in Boston, in a small space by a Dunkin Donuts in South Station, and grew to about 200 employees working on projects like a Wi-Fi finder and the safety check feature. The new office has room for about 400 more employees.

The office is full of amenities – like La Spaziale espresso machines on every floor, free meals in a cafeteria and an IT help desk that’s not just a call center. The kitchen has a pizza oven and a meat smoker.

Employees were polled to choose names for the conference rooms, which is why one room is called “The Third Rail Shorts When It Floods” and another called “Where Everybody Knows Your Name.” There are even rooms named after the popular singalong tune “Sweet Caroline.” Other conference room names include local pronunciations of cities, like Wusstah, and local celebrities, including one called “Matt Damon Never Dies.”

One conference room, called “Smuggler’s Cove,” is even hidden behind a bookshelf, and has comfortable chairs and a hammock, not to mention a lot of alcohol.

Facebook also has other offices in cities all around the country, like Washington, D.C., Seattle, Miami, New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Atlanta, Austin, Chicago and Dallas, in addition to 40 locations around the world.