Salesforce.com Officially Opens Bigger Seattle Office, Says Aggressive Hiring of Top Talent Will Continue

Salesforce.com, the cloud-computing provider that has been in an extended battle with Microsoft for market share and talent, plans to hire as aggressively as possible to fill its new 11,000 square-foot space in South Lake Union.

And the pace apparently won’t be slowed by a recent court battle over Salesforce.com’s (NYSE: [[ticker:CRM]]) hiring of a manager from Microsoft (NASDAQ: [[ticker:MSFT]]).

“We’re after the best talent in the industry, wherever we can find them—and not all of those people are at one company,” Salesforce.com’s Woodson Martin says. “The truth of the matter is, a lot of people want to work on the next generation of technology. They want to be out on the cutting edge and innovating, and not maintaining the status quo.”

Martin, a senior vice president for San Francisco-based Salesforce.com, spoke to reporters this morning while joining some colleagues at an event to celebrate the official opening of the company’s new Seattle office.

Salesforce.com’s Seattle team—which includes new and existing employees working on its major products—moved into the new office over the weekend and had a little shindig Monday night, Martin says.

It must not have been too crazy, because several people made the 9 a.m. call at Operation Sack Lunch, a local charity.

Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn welcomed Salesforce.com’s larger presence here, part of

Author: Curt Woodward

Curt covered technology and innovation in the Boston area for Xconomy. He previously worked in Xconomy’s Seattle bureau and continued some coverage of Seattle-area tech companies, including Amazon and Microsoft. Curt joined Xconomy in February 2011 after nearly nine years with The Associated Press, the world's largest news organization. He worked in three states and covered a wide variety of beats for the AP, including business, law, politics, government, and general mayhem. A native Washingtonian, Curt earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA. As a past president of the state's Capitol Correspondents Association, he led efforts to expand statehouse press credentialing to online news outlets for the first time.