While Brown and top Dell executives did a ribbon-cutting outside, recruiters were busy inside talking to job applicants. Dell just opened a new research and development center in Santa Clara, and it needs to fill 200 positions. Competition is tight for engineers, but Dell chairman and CEO Michael Dell thinks he entice them.
"We're one of the few companies in the world that has the scale to be able to take on some fairly big projects in terms of R&D, and we're doing exactly that. So it's exciting for our engineers," said Dell.
Dell is spending $1 billion this year to propel its enterprise business -- large scale servers, data storage and networking for companies. Job seekers are hoping for an opportunity.
Tyler Hunsaker: I'm kind of hoping to at least get my foot in the door in the company. David Louie: What's your feeling so far based on the contacts you've made? Hunsaker: It's a little discouraging at the moment, but at the same time, I'm also keeping myself positive.
"Well, the people seem really nice and they really want to talk to you. It's a big deal," said San Jose resident Dwayne Dumalanta.
Dell hopes to capitalize on uncertainty at Yahoo! and at HP where employees might be searching for a job change. Dell has hired 10,000 people in the past year, 4,000 of them in the U.S. While Dell has its roots in Texas, the new Santa Clara facility gives it a strong Silicon Valley presence.
"Well, Dell Computer is a California company because they have a lot of California jobs, and we're happy to have jobs from any company anywhere in the world come to California," said Assm. Jim Beall, D-San Jose.
Brown said he welcomes Dell for doing what the state's economy really needs.
"What is needed is investment, boldness, and risk taking," said Gov. Brown.
Dell has also been spending millions to acquire several Silicon Valley tech companies. By consolidating them here under one roof Michael Dell hopes to create synergy among the engineers to keep innovating.
