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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

#41
post #2

Heard this has affected engineering too, not just or mostly sales as people were thinking or happened before. (I remember a hiring manager years ago telling me once that there hadn't ever been any layoffs, all I could think was "yet".) For those affected, typical full systems cut-off as well, not very ohana of them to just terminate with no notice... Still, not unexpected given everything else going on. Glad I'm not…

The quote below is from the email sent to employees, which was also filed with the SEC: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1108524/000110852423...

> In the U.S., affected employees will receive a minimum of nearly five months of pay, health insurance, career resources, and other benefits to help with their transition.

That minimum seems to be better than the best package I've seen so far in this layoff cycle. I got two months of garden leave plus an additional 3 months of COBRA. The garden leave was mandated by WARN act (or they would have to notify me and have me work for 60 days), so the only real severance was the 3 months of COBRA.

Of all the "big" companies I've worked for, Salesforce was the top in terms of seeming to actually care about its employees and the world.

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

#42
post #5

> Stock rises after company announces broad restructuring plan focused on driving ‘profitable growth’ Could someone explain how layoffs lead to stock rises in layman terms?

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.

I've never seen the market react negatively to layoffs themselves. As far as I can tell most traders and fund managers believe all employees are interchangeable widgets.

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

#44

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).

My company is currently undergoing this and I have the same feeling. But I think the business model behind it is you hire a "Salesforce consultant" to steer your integration with the understanding that you can replace a small team of developers doing a home-rolled solution with a single developer who runs your SF integration. And Salesforce slurps up 60% of the labor cost savings and you keep the 40% and declare succ…

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

#45
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well sounds like we can expect them next year. What I don’t understand is why they don’t stretch it out over the whole year - less than 1% a month could be relatively easily “hidden” even if people kinda know what is going on. Average churn might be lower than that, even. Which makes me think it’s performative and they WANT the shareholders to see it.

How would that work? Identify the 10% in December and then slowly remove them? Or have your management go through a 1% low performers identification process every single month? The logistics of both options are difficult to pull off. It is especially hard to keep the layoff list secret.

Department A, in January we need you to cut the lowest performing 10% of your employees because we're raising the bar of excellence.

Department B, in February we need you to cancel the lowest-ROI 10% of your projects as part of a strategic realignment to focus on our core goals.

Department C, in March we need you to lower your ongoing costs by 10% by whatever means you think is best, to ensure we're on a stable footing financially.

Department D, in April we need you to chase the last Widget Classic users onto Widget Cloud and wind up the team working on Classic.

Department E....

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

#47

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…

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

#48
post #16

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…

well sounds like we can expect them next year. What I don’t understand is why they don’t stretch it out over the whole year - less than 1% a month could be relatively easily “hidden” even if people kinda know what is going on. Average churn might be lower than that, even. Which makes me think it’s performative and they WANT the shareholders to see it.

A lot of people still love the idea of rank and yank even if you can't do it overtly.
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