Two Years Later: Fun Facts About Facebook's New York Office

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Facebook opened its new NYC office just a few months before the company hit the public markets in May 2012.

Image: Spencer Platt/Getty Images News/Getty Images

By Kurt Wagner2014-02-05 23:00:21 UTC

Facebook celebrated its 10th birthday on Tuesday, but a smaller part of the Facebook team also celebrated a milestone: The company's New York office turned 2 years old this week.

In 2012, Facebook moved into a new office in New York to accommodate the addition of software engineers to its existing team of sales and marketing staff. While Facebook has 35 offices worldwide, only five of them (Boston, Seattle, London and Menlo Park, Calif.) boast software engineers that are building out products.

Like all things Facebook, the office has had its fair share of excitement over the past two years, including celebrity visits, team-building exercises and, of course, rapid growth.

While Facebook's New York office may not get the same amount of attention as company headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. does, there's more happening in the Big Apple than you might expect.

Mashable checked in with Facebook's NYC office in honor of its second birthday. Here's what we found out:

Facebook's New York staff speak 29 different languages. The list includes some of the world's most common languages, including Mandarin, Spanish and Portuguese, but also slightly rarer languages like Greek.

Facebook has 100 software engineers in New York City. Serkan Piantino, who heads the NYC office, shared the news in a Facebook post on Monday. The company has thousands of engineers globally, but the NYC office only started with a "handful of engineers," according to a spokesperson.

Piantino said the NYC team works on everything from check-ins to News Feed and mobile apps.

New York's "Facebook Wall" has 16,576 signatures.

Of those 16,000-plus signatures, a handful are from celebrities and professional athletes. Madonna and Jimmy Fallon stopped by the NYC office in March 2012 for an exclusive Q&A for Facebook employees. The duo signed the wall while visiting.

Before last week's Super Bowl in nearby New Jersey, a pair of NFL players — Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Andre Roberts and New York Jets tight end Zack Sudfeld — stopped by to eat lunch with the engineering team, and sign the wall.

Jimmy Fallon and Madonna stopped by Facebook's NY office in March 2012; Zack Sudfeld (L) of the NY Jets and Andre Roberts of the Arizona Cardinals stopped by before the recent Super Bowl.

The engineering team in New York has more fun than you might think. The team knows how to party — just check out the following photo of one poor engineer's desk following a birthday celebration. In a separate event, an Elvis impersonator surprised the office.

One employee found their desk covered following a birthday celebration; at another event, Elvis made a surprise appearance at Facebook's NY engineering office.

Facebook's NYC-based engineering team has 33 board games, and the record for the longest game stands at five hours: a marathon version of the game Power Grid , a strategy game that requires users to build out power supplies to cities using resources collected throughout the contest. Sounds like a perfect game for engineers.