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

151–160 of 355 posts

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

#151

Post by steveBK123 »

tiffanyh wrote: post #113
steveBK123 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wonder if the dynamic is simply ownership. Larry is still the largest single stockholder of Oracle (~27%). So everyone knows he still runs the company at the end of the day. Benioff only owns ~2% of Salesforce. There's institutional investors who own more of Salesforce than even Marc.

Another fun example is Deutsche Bank.

Their first non-German leader (Anshu Jain, who didn't speak German) was made Co-CEO with an older German hand Jürgen Fitschen from the board.

They pushed out Jain after 3 years, brought in a Brit John Cryan (who spoke German!) to co-CEO with Fitschen. Fitschen stayed on another year after which they finally let the non-German, Cryan run the place as sole CEO for 2 years before replacing him with another German as sole CEO.

So in total there were 4 years of non-German co-CEOing with a German, 2 years of a non-German actually being sole CEO, and then back to a German again like the rest of their 153 year history.

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

#152

Post by mensetmanusman »

12345hn6789 wrote: post #112
mensetmanusman wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies without slack can’t respond effectively to emergencies. see: Southwest.

Do you have any further news around SW collapse? From what I read (the news) slack would not have helped at all. #air issues > hey guys my luggage software crashed With 50 same emojis attached. SW was a systemic failure

Ha, I should have noted that I used the term ‘slack’ to mean % of free time available to workers who are waiting for the next crisis. Not ‘slack’ the software to hashtag issues, aha.

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

#153

Post by jmharvey »

LanceH wrote: post #134
akiselev wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go ahead, name a country that doesn't have two presidents. A boat that sets sail without two captains. Where would Catholicism be without the popes.

Buffet/Munger seems to be the biggest exception to the trend.

If anything, Buffett/Munger proves the rule: on the org chart, there's no question that Munger reports to Buffett. In practice Buffett isn't trying to call shots day to day, so Munger is functionally in charge of the org, and when he succeeds to the Chairman & CEO title, nothing will really change, but the fact that he's not fighting for a Co-CEO title is a positive sign.

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

#154

Post by neon_electro »

csbingel wrote: post #58
mensetmanusman wrote: post #57

There are over two jobs open for every layoff. People haven’t realized how crazy the labor market is about to get with a collapsing workforce population over the next many decades.

There are, but the people aren't necessarily where the jobs are. I've got positions in Huntsville, AL that aren't remote-capable, and we cannot get people to even apply.

Do you publicly display your pay (range)?

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

#155

Post by robertlagrant »

dshah wrote: post #117
zippergz wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but Salesforce didn't start out that way, and I'm willing to bet that Hubspot wants to be like Salesforce when they grow up.

I'm Co-founder/CTO of HubSpot. There are many things I admire about Salesforce. But, we decidedly don't want to become like Salesforce when we grow up. We have been committed to SMBs for 16+ years now, and not planning to change that anytime soon. They have grown through a lot of M&A, we built our platform from the ground-up for SMBs. There is room in the market for both Salesforce and HubSpot to succeed. Salesforce…

I forget where I am sometimes! Of course you're on here. Good job on the product - at my last place the sales people were very keen on it, and kept it extremely up to date. At some point IT forced them to transition to Dynamics, and they were not happy :)

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

#156

Post by neon_electro »

bajirao wrote: post #53
danielfoster wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stockholders likely think Salesforce had too much fluff and can get the same results with fewer staff. For example I believe they were working on some sort of solution for managing NFTs.

Ex employee here. Salesforce was the most laid back, rest and vest, coasting culture in my experience. Generous employee benefits, absolutely no work pressure. They took pride in their work life balance. Many employees (in product and marketing) were just focusing on (flavor of the day) activism - BLM, AAPI, GLBT, Homelessness in SFO. I always wondered if these employees had any 'actual job' in the company or their m…

Can you describe what changes you think should be made to that culture? How do you balance what sounds like great work/life balance and awareness of Salesforce's impact outside of strictly its business activities, which is something I'd expect from a "good" employer, with the potential downsides of (paraphrasing your words) "employees focusing on [not an "actual job"]"?

Do you think those colleagues didn't contribute anything as far as their job title?

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

#157

Post by aiisjustanif »

fundad wrote: post #95
mensetmanusman wrote: post #57

There are over two jobs open for every layoff. People haven’t realized how crazy the labor market is about to get with a collapsing workforce population over the next many decades.

We haven’t been preparing for the massive retirement of the boomers. It’s tough in many cases where they spend their careers keeping younger people out of leadership. Then they complain to national papers that workers aren’t hustling enough to get into leadership. There will be volatility as a new generation takes over at companies. Each generation is larger and more educated than the last so demand will keep up.

Who says they are all retiring?

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

#158

Post by mikeryan »

The frustrating part of bad economic times is that bloated companies use it as an opportunity to clean house while projecting a positive signal to Wall Street.

This move probably would have been just as needed two years ago but would have tanked the stock at the time.

It’s sucks when real people get caught up in companies just virtue signaling to Wall Street

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

#159

Post by davely »

VincentEvans wrote: post #99

I propose the title should be changed to “Salesforce decimates staff as part of restructuring”. :)

My wife woke up this morning to an email sent at 3:16AM informing her that she was laid off as part of this restructuring. It's a blessing in disguise, IMHO -- the work-life boundaries expected as part of her org were non-existent (calls with India every night at 8PM or 7AM, our time in California, on top of the normal 9-5 hours).

It's definitely hard to process. Lots of feelings of anger, sadness, relief, etc.

Fortunately for her, the severance is pretty generous (paid through March, then 6 months on top). But there's also anxiety about the job market right now with so many tech workers being let go.

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

#160

Post by gedy »

bajirao wrote: post #55
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…

As an ex trailblazer I can confirm this. That all hands was unreal. Everyone was asking about layoffs on all-hands slack channel, and Mark/Brett were demoing upcoming new features in their Work.com product.

Yeah I really don't understand that style of "leadership". I'm no CEO, but even a simple blow off like this would be more effective: "I know everyone has a lot of questions and concerns about the recent layoffs, but since emotions are strong right now, we'll collect these and discuss them next time"
Post reply on HN