Cantillon: New Relic jobs – no jerks need apply

The Dublin offices of New Relic, the San Francisco-headquartered software analytics company that played host yesterday to Richard Bruton at IDA Ireland latest jobs press conference, are another addition to Ireland's Silicon Valley on the Liffey subculture.

Founded six years ago and now with 350 employees working in offices in a number of US locations, the company is a perfect example of the kind of new, fast-growing enterprise that the IDA has been targeting in the hope that one of them will explode into the Google/Facebook/Microsoft of tomorrow while already being firmly embedded on this wind-swept Atlantic isle.

Patrick Moran, chief marketing officer of New Relic, said the company was growing at a “wildly fast rate” and had decided to set up in Dublin because it needed “access to good people with a wide range of skills”. Already with 12 employees, it hopes to grow that number to 50 by the end of the year, and “probably more”. The Irish office will be New Relic’s European, Middle Eastern and African headquarters and will provide sales and customer support services. It is looking for employees with European language skills.

Fast-growing US technology companies tend to come with their own, unique take on the English language and New Relic is no exception. It’s hiring policy, Moran said, was “no jerks”, and that in part explained why it had chosen Dublin. The press release distributed at yesterday’s event spoke of the Dublin staff providing an “awesome experience” for the existing and new customers they will deal with.

The company's name is an anagram of Lew Cirne, the Canadian software expert who founded Wily Technology in 1998. Wily was sold to CA Inc in 2006 for $375 million in an all-cash transaction, and Cirne worked for a time with CA before leaving to start up New Relic.

In December New Relic was in the news in the US when it was widely reported that the operators of the system used for US president Obama’s healthcare initiative had turned to Cirne’s company when the glitches in the system became a cause of political controversy.

The company raised $80 million in venture capital funding in 2013, bringing to $115 million the total raised since its foundation.