Salesforce will lay off 10% of staff as part of restructuring

Company lays off 7500 people, saving ~$1.5B / year in payroll / benefits / office space / etc.

Company takes one-time ~$1.5B charge for severance and other layoff costs.

Investors believe company will see ~$1B more net profit in subsequent years, assuming 10% staff reduction can be absorbed with little profit impact.

Share price reflects NPV of future profits, so stock rises.

Benioff did a whole media tour talking about how Salesforce would do no pandemic layoffs to set some kind of example, and said that they didn't expect other companies to follow their example, but asked them to just pledge no layoffs for 90 days, even though Salesforce was going to do better than that.

Around 91 says later, Salesforce laid off 10% of the company, with no prior warning to the employees who were laid off. The atmosphere internally from the top down was outrage that any of the employees who were laid off would mention that they got laid off to their family/friends/coworkers, and that doing so was somehow a betrayal of "trust".

Brett Taylor, who was then the "co-CEO" (read: Benioff's cleanup crew and babysitter), led an all-hands a month or so later where they took no questions and referred to this as a "one-time reshaping exercise". Benioff slipped up and told MSNBC that this was an annual thing. Brett Taylor pretended not to know Benioff had said that, and acted like it never happened.

This all-hands was a full month after the all-hands that took place the same week as the layoffs. In that one, they took questions, but since all the questions were about the layoffs, they acted like nobody had submitted any questions and the Q&A host came up with some softball "what projects are you excited about"/"what's the biggest challenge with being a market leader" ego questions instead.

I didn't believe that it was "one-time" then, and today I've learned that I was right not to. I left before it became a habit, and have only been relieved to have left.

I wonder when the next annual 10% layoffs will happen at Salesforce? Because it's pretty much the only thing I'd trust them to do reliably at this point.

What I don’t understand is why they don’t stretch it out over the whole year - less than 1% a month could be relatively easily “hidden” even if people kinda know what is going on. Average churn might be lower than that, even.

Which makes me think it’s performative and they WANT the shareholders to see it.

But often it’s just boardroom machinations for various reasons that can change as quickly as the weather.

I know people who made a good living being the layoff/callback dude for years. Basically considered it a 3-6 mo vacation every couple years. “Oh you want me to come in to consult? I’m in the Bahamas- it’s gonna costya”