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

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

#161

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…

I too am wondering why Elon is only running a single digit count of companies. Think of how much faster the singularity would arrive if he was running 10+ corporations!

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

#162
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

#163
post #159

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. Fortu…

Is this 9 months of full pay? How long was your wife's tenure if I may ask?

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

#164
post #159

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. Fortu…

Why would anyone wake up to an email at 3AM?

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

#165

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.

Didn’t Salesforce nearly double headcount since 2019 though?

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

#166
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have personal experience with other ERPs and Salesforce is the best of the lot in my opinion. With my current company, we have employees in Singapore, Europe, USA, and South Africa etc. who all interact with Salesforce on a daily basis. We use it for CRM, service support (VOIP with call tracking), marketing, financials (questionable decision), and analytics (Tableau). Where it shines in my opinion is that does auto…

How do you run financials in SF?

SF doesn’t do ERP level financials natively, but there is an industry of apps built on top of SF. Some try to turn SF into an ERP. Examples I’ve worked with in the last year:

-Rootstock -Accounting Seed -FinancialForce

That said, I design ERP integrations for a living. SF based ERPs are consistently the lowest quality and most limited ERPs we deal with. I would highly recommend that any finance professional seriously considering implementing a SF based ERP take the following steps:

-Burn a large pile of money -Tell 2-5 of your finance employees to waste 30% of their work hours for 3-6 months -Implement an non-SF based ERP

The end results will be identical.

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

#167
post #93

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.

HBR has an interesting, recent article about why, in some cases, it might be better to have two CEOs: https://hbr.org/2022/07/is-it-time-to-consider-co-ceos

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

#168

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

Absolutely, in Roman times 'decimatio' was the punishment for a poor result in battle. The soldiers were obliged to choose one of ten, and kill him.

Seems like the low performers would have been taken care of already from the battle.

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

#169
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Fortu…

Why would anyone wake up to an email at 3AM?

I sometimes just wake up randomly in the middle of the night and use the restroom and check my email in the process. I know it’s dumb but I feel like punishing myself.

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

#170
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Fortu…

Why would anyone wake up to an email at 3AM?

It sounds like their job was pretty toxic and pushing through their work-life boundary. (This has happened to me before).

When that happens regularly, and you get used to being woken up in the middle of the night to respond to a technical outage or needy management, the lightest phone buzz can shock you awake.

Given the described situation, I'm not surprised they woke up to an unexpected phone notification :(

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