Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

marketwatch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 355 posts

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

#101

Post by steveBK123 »

yojo wrote: post #93
andsoitis wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Co-heads is always a subtext for executive disfunction. I don't think I've ever heard of it working out long term at any level from division co-head to co-CEO Don’t VC’s generally prefer that a startup has co-founders? Having such a team mate fosters better decisions, acts as cheerleader when one person is feeling down, etc. I don’t see a material difference between that and having a co-CEO setup… What do you think…

Even with co-founders, one of you is still the CEO. You need an executive function to set direction and unblock stupid territory squabbles. Someone whose decisions are final. If you have two actual CEOs, you don’t have that.

Someone has to be 51+% either way..

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

#102

Post by grantsch »

corry wrote: post #10

I forget which podcast I heard it on (so forgive me if my memory is sloppy), but after their latest quarterly report didn't CAC payback go from 24 months to something wild like 10 years? Meaning their new ARR add rapidly fell off so quickly, before they adjusted their Sales and Marketing salaries and spending, that it immediately put their unit economics way way way way underwater. So I'd expect at least a big chunk…

Many many software companies end up spending more money to acquire a customer than a customer will ever pay them. I tend to think this is because the demand and need for many tools is not significant enough to justify the amount of capital allocated to promote them.

Finance spreadsheet alchemists last 10 years saw big gross margins in software (overinflated by not taking into account cost to acquire user), bought into long-term incumbent dominance narrative from founders, and now they're stuck with companies that are willing to spend 10x+ lifetime customer value to acquire a user.

Everyone with a vested interest in these companies/investments always seems to say the real returns are 10 years+ once they are in a dominant position in their industry and have monopolistic pricing power.

How are we supposed to know what happens in 5 years, let alone 10+? Seems like a big carnival trick to me. What's interesting is that this mentality is so engrained that the people promoting it don't seem to even get that they're in on an act.

You could have the best tool on the planet, but if the cost to distribute it is greater than what those customers acquired will ultimately pay you, you don't have a company.

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

#103

Post by dan-0 »

Maybe it's just the segment I'm in, but I feel like Salesforce was hiring pretty hard up until recently. They wouldn't be the only company to go from a hiring spree to layoffs that quickly over the last quarter.

We really need to lock this absurdity down and increase severance requirements for large companies heavily. It's one thing to gamble risk for the company, it's something completely different to gamble employee livelihood when you're signaling job security by hiring.

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

#104

Post by tiffanyh »

Scubabear68 wrote: post #27

Whenever I look at client’s Salesforce setups, I always wonder in the back of my mind what they will do if Salesforce has a significant down-turn? The lock-in to the platform appears to be very fierce. Are there viable routes to exit Salesforce if anyone ever needed to? (Note: I’m not saying Salesforce is doomed or anything, just the layoffs got me thinking in that direction theorically).

> The lock-in to the platform

How is this different than any other SaaS?

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

#105

Post by tiffanyh »

steveBK123 wrote: post #71
ubertaco wrote: post #14

Last time they did this, it was _right_ after the window that they had grandstanded and asked other companies to pledge no pandemic layoffs. 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…

Co-heads is always a subtext for executive disfunction. I don't think I've ever heard of it working out long term at any level from division co-head to co-CEO. It's also fascinating the opposite direction is also allowed to persist - the guy who is CEO of 4 companies at once. As a lowly high income IC, I am prohibited from almost any outside business activity and in some cases forced to divest when joining a new firm…

> Co-heads is always a subtext for executive disfunction

It's actually worked quite well at Oracle over the decades.

Benioff, who is former Oracle, hasn't perfected it like Larry has.

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

#106

Post by steveBK123 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #88
steveBK123 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Co-heads is always a subtext for executive disfunction. I don't think I've ever heard of it working out long term at any level from division co-head to co-CEO. It's also fascinating the opposite direction is also allowed to persist - the guy who is CEO of 4 companies at once. As a lowly high income IC, I am prohibited from almost any outside business activity and in some cases forced to divest when joining a new firm…

> It's also fascinating the opposite direction is also allowed to persist - the guy who is CEO of 4 companies at once. That amount is, I think, only applicable to Elon Musk and it looks like this is going to crash sooner or later anyway - the big Tesla investors are all furious about how much wealth Elon's shitposting has cost them and I would not be surprised if they threaten him with the choice of continuing to twe…

Sure, and Jack Dorsey was Block/Square & Twitter at same time and we see how that worked out. Also Bluesky which is like a Decentralized Twitter, the thing he just helped sell to Elon? All while being a big BTC pumper..

So, I think you can replace "4" with "N where N>1"

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

#107

Post by kasey_junk »

robertlagrant wrote: post #73
kasey_junk wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Revenue multiple per employee.

Wouldn't that have the same problem? You'd need to break either down by cost of living area to solve it.

No because the revenue per employee multiple has the employee costs scaled on both sides of the ratio.

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

#108

Post by fundad »

willcipriano wrote: post #46

Know what's odd to me? It seems like every company that did layoffs over the past 3 months overhired by 8% - 12% somehow. Why was it such a narrow range?

No Collusion! But if I was hiring a lot to keep people from joining my competitors, I’d also pay attention to competitors’ layoffs and take the opportunity to soften the labor market.

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

#109

Post by fugazithehaxoar »

willcipriano wrote: post #46

Know what's odd to me? It seems like every company that did layoffs over the past 3 months overhired by 8% - 12% somehow. Why was it such a narrow range?

The "we over hired" line is mostly made up. Many of these companies did not substantially increase their head count. This has more to do with improving P&L numbers to get their stock up, since most companies' revenue is tanking currently.

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

#110

Post by steveBK123 »

tiffanyh wrote: post #105
steveBK123 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Co-heads is always a subtext for executive disfunction. I don't think I've ever heard of it working out long term at any level from division co-head to co-CEO. It's also fascinating the opposite direction is also allowed to persist - the guy who is CEO of 4 companies at once. As a lowly high income IC, I am prohibited from almost any outside business activity and in some cases forced to divest when joining a new firm…

> Co-heads is always a subtext for executive disfunction It's actually worked quite well at Oracle over the decades. Benioff, who is former Oracle, hasn't perfected it like Larry has.

Every rule has an exception, and maybe Larry has perfected something there or has a very well managed ego.

Most Co-head situations I see are either higher-ups setting up a power struggle between 2 newly appointed co-heads, or an existing head pretending to step back by appointing someone as their co-head who they can sabotage in real-time.

Post reply on HN