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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

#111

Post by chuckwfinley »

nitwit005 wrote: post #79
sureglymop wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Einstein" references are always incredibly ironic considering how much of a socialist the guy was.

They apparently paid $20 million for the use of Einstein's image: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-27/salesforc...

TIL that the likeness of Einstein was licensed. Proceeds go to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which is fitting considering his support and investment:

"Albert Einstein is one of the founders of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. To him, the university represented a combination of the commitment to his Jewish identity and his belief in the universal values of the pursuit of truth and respect for every human being."

No paywall link: https://archive.is/2024.03.27-141124/https://www.bloomberg.c...

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

#113

Post by hatefulmoron »

dimgl wrote: post #38
segasaturn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is already happening, the monthly HN "Who's Hiring" threads have felt like attending a funeral since Microsoft-Google-Twitter mega-layoffs two years ago.

How bad is the job market right now? Is it as bad as everyone says it is? Makes me pretty scared for the future, tbh.

It's definitely bad, although attributing the state of the job market to AI is a mistake. As a result of wider economic conditions, money is expensive and companies can't justify borrowing money to have massive headcount, driving down the number of software engineers in demand. This caused a big glut of qualified software developers seeking employment, only to find that the music had stopped and there weren't any chairs left. This coincides with an ever growing number of new graduates in CS who are seeking to find their place in the market. In other words, the market is very competitive. This is especially true for fresh graduates.

To make matters worse, the big investment opportunity right now is AI/AGI/LLM/Agents and so forth. As money flows toward AI focused firms, they are spending their money on GPUs and electricity. Or, alternatively, they're paying for NVIDIA/OpenAI/.. to do that for them. Some jobs have opened up in this space, but a relatively small percentage is spent on labour.

All of that is my opinion from what I've read!

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

#114

Post by Eumenes »

paxys wrote: post #58
didgeoridoo wrote: post #48

I was at Salesforce for 4 years, and during those years the company made a massive deal about: 2020: the first AI craze, introducing “Einstein” as their name for their analytics platform, and officially changing the corporate vision to being the “No. 1 AI CRM company”. 2021: Now it’s all about “Customer 360”, i.e. account-based marketing, i.e. what basically everyone else does without such a memeable name. You wouldn…

Let's not forget pre-2020 when the company released "Salesforce Blockchain", "NFT Cloud" and "Salesforce Web3 Platform". This is how they operate. Just one marketing hype moment after another. The actual product doesn't really matter (and in a lot of cases doesn't even launch). They just need to keep making pretty slide decks filled with meaningless buzzwords so their customers get distracted from the fact that they…

You're just mad you didn't invent it first!

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

#115

Post by somanyphotons »

epolanski wrote: post #97
didgeoridoo wrote: post #48

I was at Salesforce for 4 years, and during those years the company made a massive deal about: 2020: the first AI craze, introducing “Einstein” as their name for their analytics platform, and officially changing the corporate vision to being the “No. 1 AI CRM company”. 2021: Now it’s all about “Customer 360”, i.e. account-based marketing, i.e. what basically everyone else does without such a memeable name. You wouldn…

Big orgs have plenty of people that need to justify their salaries, I mean it, I'm 100% convinced you could fire half the staff of a big organization, going heavy with the management roles and lighter on operational ones and the company would become more productive and efficient. And the higher the people in the pyramid are the better they are at selling their ideas in their neverending quest for recognition, fat bon…

Twitter as an example, showed us that the staff really do matter

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

#116

Post by mullingitover »

riku_iki wrote: post #56
darth_avocado wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am yet to have Google, Microsoft, Amazon or Facebook suggest that they’ve achieved 30% productivity gains from AI. Those are companies at the forefront of AI investment and if they haven’t achieved that kind of increased engineering productivity, I am ready to bet money on the fact that any other company claiming so hasn’t either. Even if 30% productivity gains are true, they are probably not because of AI. They co…

It depends on vertical. Large corps likely have some huge codebases of overengineered spagetti code, which are hardly comprehendable by LLMs. But if you want to build for example some new/smaller web/mobile apps talking to various API, LLM can boost your productivity significantly, because it will easily generate ready to use code snippets.

> Large corps likely have some huge codebases of overengineered spagetti code, which are hardly comprehendable by LLMs.

I think it's the other way around, though.

Those code monstrosities aren't comprehendible by humans, especially after the wanton RIFs that have happened in the past couple years that have cut loose a lot of people who know where the bodies are buried.

However, with copilot you can just figuratively walk up to any repo and ask "@workspace what's going on in this codebase" and it'll tell you. From experience I can say this can deliver results. Downright rotten code that would've taken me a good week to figure out can be figured out in an hour. It's damn near witchcraft.

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

#117

Post by zmmmmm »

> We will have more salespeople next year because we really need to explain to people exactly the value that we can achieve with AI. So, we will probably add another 1,000 to 2,000 salespeople in the short term

Sounds like a nightmare. Replacing engineers with sales people trying to sell the AI. The pressure to sell is going to be tremendous, they hype will be incredible. And at the same time they are at a huge risk of sailing into the winds of the AI valley of disillusionment. Studies have shown that so far customers already find AI sales pitches a significant turnoff. They better hope customers really want whatever their AI actually does or their competitors are going to skate right past them with real actual products and features.

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

#118

Post by spac »

taurath wrote: post #91
riku_iki wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on vertical. Large corps likely have some huge codebases of overengineered spagetti code, which are hardly comprehendable by LLMs. But if you want to build for example some new/smaller web/mobile apps talking to various API, LLM can boost your productivity significantly, because it will easily generate ready to use code snippets.

But the second those smaller prototype apps become big enough to need to scale or be maintained, you’re back at the same problem. The whole thing it gets you then is “faster experimentation”, which was something that was /already fast/ if you use modern tools of the day. 1 week vs 2 weeks for a prototype app may build you more prototypes but it doesn’t help when you can’t scale them. It does smooth some of the proces…

while I agree with the sentiment that it's hard to evaluate the real gains, it's definitely not just about code generation. Debugging is a a big part of the value, IMO.

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

#120

Post by herval »

didgeoridoo wrote: post #48

I was at Salesforce for 4 years, and during those years the company made a massive deal about: 2020: the first AI craze, introducing “Einstein” as their name for their analytics platform, and officially changing the corporate vision to being the “No. 1 AI CRM company”. 2021: Now it’s all about “Customer 360”, i.e. account-based marketing, i.e. what basically everyone else does without such a memeable name. You wouldn…

The little github-styled Einstein was unforgettably cringe
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