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Salesforce will hire no more software engineers in 2025, says Marc Benioff

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Re: Salesforce will hire no more software engineers in 2025, says Marc Benioff

#101

Post by mullingitover »

hatefulmoron wrote: post #84
brandon272 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a point that seems to get lost in the hype (or fear) of AI replacing software engineers. If we take at face value that AI can “replace” a software engineer, it can most certainly replace most of the managers and executives above that role.

Right. When many jobs could be reduced to interacting with a keyboard and a camera/microphone connected to a computer, I would suggest that software engineers are not at the front of the queue to be automated away. In the AI vision we're definitely there, but we have lots of company.

The thing that will create the real-life Butlerian Jihad against AI agents will be when they come for the lawyers' jobs.

Re: Salesforce will hire no more software engineers in 2025, says Marc Benioff

#102

Post by crabmusket »

briga wrote: post #37

If there are productivity gains of 30% per engineer, doesn't it stand to reason that hiring more engineers would make the org even more productive? This is like the opposite of 2021 where every tech company went on a wild hiring spree (remember how well that went?). Now in 2025 tech companies are just going to stop hiring anyone. I suspect by 2026 they will have a bunch of slop AI spaghetti code that no one can maint…

What are you referring to as "this field"?

Re: Salesforce will hire no more software engineers in 2025, says Marc Benioff

#103

Post by mullingitover »

bee_rider wrote: post #86
mullingitover wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He's selling AI hype AI hype is exactly what I'm talking about. I imagine if you demonstrate that you can have AI agents as viciously competitive COOs, CFOs, and CTOs, who never need time off, never sleep, it would be something that would set Wall Street on fire.

That seems like it might actually work though. A company as a something like a collection of guilds coordinated by AI facilitators would be really fascinating.

From there it only follows: (camera pans to board of directors) "What would you say… ya' do here?"

We can have a funding agent provision an agent-based board as well. What's the point of a board that can't react to real-time market information 24x7x365?

Re: Salesforce will hire no more software engineers in 2025, says Marc Benioff

#104

Post by actuallyalys »

briga wrote: post #37

If there are productivity gains of 30% per engineer, doesn't it stand to reason that hiring more engineers would make the org even more productive? This is like the opposite of 2021 where every tech company went on a wild hiring spree (remember how well that went?). Now in 2025 tech companies are just going to stop hiring anyone. I suspect by 2026 they will have a bunch of slop AI spaghetti code that no one can maint…

I don’t find the claim of 30 percent improvement plausible, but it actually does track to me that you might pause hiring for a time if your employees were suddenly more productive in order to catch up in other parts of the business or figure out what markets to put your new productivity toward.

Re: Salesforce will hire no more software engineers in 2025, says Marc Benioff

#105

Post by gregw2 »

brandon272 wrote: post #63
mullingitover wrote: post #25

If I were on the Salesforce BoD I wouldn't be impressed. Let's see Benioff put his money where his mouth is, replace some C-suite seats with AI agents. Those are the really expensive salaries, and if AI is as smart as he claims it's downright reckless and negligent not to do this.

That is a point that seems to get lost in the hype (or fear) of AI replacing software engineers. If we take at face value that AI can “replace” a software engineer, it can most certainly replace most of the managers and executives above that role.

I might take it one step further... AI might /better/ at mimicking the lying and hallucinations of management than at mimicking engineering.

Re: Salesforce will hire no more software engineers in 2025, says Marc Benioff

#106

Post by cyanydeez »

ethbr1 wrote: post #88
risyachka wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like it. The only other explanation is they just stopped investing in other products and focused on Agents, thus no need for loads more of engineering. No way in the world they got 30% gains. 5 maybe realistically

Their ultimate agent product strategy feels like reducing cost of sales... by automating salespeople. I have doubts that will ever happen, but who knows? Sales folks are highly-compensated, so even making a few of them redundant (or making existing salespeople more efficient) would be a big win for companies (Salesforce's customers).

There's probably space for AI secretaries to screen contacts and to drop AI sales.

Re: Salesforce will hire no more software engineers in 2025, says Marc Benioff

#107

Post by briga »

crabmusket wrote: post #102
briga wrote: post #37

If there are productivity gains of 30% per engineer, doesn't it stand to reason that hiring more engineers would make the org even more productive? This is like the opposite of 2021 where every tech company went on a wild hiring spree (remember how well that went?). Now in 2025 tech companies are just going to stop hiring anyone. I suspect by 2026 they will have a bunch of slop AI spaghetti code that no one can maint…

What are you referring to as "this field"?

Software engineering, or at least the Silicon Valley style tech sector

Re: Salesforce will hire no more software engineers in 2025, says Marc Benioff

#108

Post by bee_rider »

mullingitover wrote: post #103
bee_rider wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like it might actually work though. A company as a something like a collection of guilds coordinated by AI facilitators would be really fascinating.

From there it only follows: (camera pans to board of directors) "What would you say… ya' do here?" We can have a funding agent provision an agent-based board as well. What's the point of a board that can't react to real-time market information 24x7x365?

I guess an LLM probably can legally own things or be legally responsible for decisions. We’ll need one person at the top as a money-holder/sin-eater.

Re: Salesforce will hire no more software engineers in 2025, says Marc Benioff

#109

Post by dvsfish »

bionhoward wrote: post #24

Salesforce seemed way slow and over engineered to me, like it was the result of double exponential feature creep over many years

bloat, feature creep, insistence upon itself, are all tantamount to this economic system. Without them, there isn't enough for everyone to do. True innovation is rare or prohibitively expensive these day since most of the low hanging fruit has already been picked.

Currently many efforts are driven by some level of leadership trying to justify their continued employment. This isn't just a salesforce problem.

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