SUNNYVALE -- Metaphorically speaking, the size of the workforce about to occupy Twitter's first-ever Silicon Valley outpost in Sunnyvale is quite a few characters shy of a full tweet.
The 8,000-square-foot office, which was first reported in May, can accommodate 40 or 50 employees, a drop in the bucket for a company that employed more than 900 as of 2012. Now some of those staffers may soon be on the premises.
"I can confirm that we have begun to hire for our Sunnyvale office,'' Twitter spokeswoman Christina Thiry said Tuesday, declining to offer any more details. The San Francisco micro-blogging site agreed in May to lease the space at Sunnyvale Business
(FILES) The Twitter logo is displayed at the entrance of Twitter headquarters in San Francisco in this March 11, 2011 file photo. KIMIHIRO HOSHINO/AFP/Getty Images (KIMIHIRO HOSHINO)
Park at 400 W. California Ave. near the Caltrain station in downtown Sunnyvale, according to brokers with Colliers International and Jones Lang LaSalle, the commercial realty firms that arranged the lease.
"This is a big deal for this area, a tech company from San Francisco opening an office in Silicon Valley," Kevin Moul, a broker with Colliers, told this newspaper at the time. "It's good to see some movement from San Francisco to Silicon Valley."
Sunnyvale's economic development manager Connie Verceles did not immediately return a phone call Tuesday for comment..
Twitter's albeit humble foray into the South Bay not only helps boost tech hiring in an already red-hot area of job growth, but it's also one more factor to weigh in the emerging debate between San Francisco and San Jose over what Silicon Valley really means anymore.
As of Tuesday afternoon, a single job posting appeared under listings for the Sunnyvale office on Twitter's website. It said Twitter was in the market for a "Software Engineer, Core Runtime Diagnostics," adding that the perfect candidate should be "obsessed with root causing complex systems issues and helping others do the same.''
Included in the list of job requirements, the ad
said applicants must be "proficient with one or more: gdb, perf, oprofile, wireshark" and other developer tools for Linux, a computer operating system.
But that's not all. Along with seeking someone with Linux experience, Twitter said it wanted this from its prospective employees:
"You are awesome, passionate, and nice."
Staff writer George Avalos contributed to this story. Contact Patrick May at 408-920-5689; follow him at Twitter.com/patmaymerc.