Facebook Won’t Hire You for Its Data Center

In 2010, Facebook Inc. announced it would build a $450 million data center in Forest City, N.C., on the site of a razed textile mill in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The isolated rural town of 7,500, where 1 in 3 residents lived below the poverty line, had hit a recession-era unemployment peak of 19.8 percent, and local officials were eager to trade hefty tax breaks for the promise of 21 full-time jobs with Facebook and 21 with its outside contractors.

Since the data center opened in 2012, helping to store and manage Facebook’s vast supply of friend requests and likes, the company has paid $13.9 million in taxes into the local Rutherford County coffers but received $13.5 million back in grants. That’s a lot of money for a struggling rural county with an annual budget of $64 million, especially compared with a company worth half a trillion dollars that spends about $15.2 billion a year. There were also untold millions in incentives from the state, which waived sales taxes on the center’s principal costs: computer equipment and electricity.