Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg Photograph by Stuart Isett/Fortune Global Forum

In a statement to Bloomberg, a Facebook spokesman said the social networking giant aims to hire more than 3,000 people in New York City over the next three to five years, with poaching from the finance sector being a “quite common” way of doing that, according to the spokesman. Facebook aims to double its headcount in the city, which is a hotbed of tech talent, although lesser in comparison to the Bay Area (Palo Alto, San Francisco and San Jose).

Such expansion could set Facebook for a battle with some of the biggest finance firms, for example Goldman Sachs, which plans to hire 100 coders for its trading business as part of its biggest hiring spree in years. Goldman has said it plans to poach from rivals in technology and finance. Facebook’s expansion plan further boosts NYC’s status as a leading tech hub. Other tech giants like Google, Apple and Amazon already employ thousands in the city and are still adding more roles. In November, Google announced plans to spend more than $1 billion to build a 1.7 million square-foot campus. Apple is also reportedly looking for NYC office space that could be as large as 750,000 square-foot. Amazon had plans to establish a second headquarters in the city, but scrapped that after widespread backlash concerning $1.5 billion in incentives the state of New York offered to lure the e-commerce giant.

According to job site Indeed.com, job postings for technology roles in the New York metro area has grown almost 10% in the last three years. Several educational institutions, such as New York University, Columbia University and Cornell University, that are present in New York also aid the growing job rate, with new tech courses and research institutes that churn out graduates employers actively seek to hire.

Tech giants like Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon often pay top dollar for talent, giving them an advantage over several finance firms in the hiring process.