February 3, 2023
Some Salesforce employees have only recently discovered that they are among those affected by the 10% layoff announced last month. A Salesforce representative confirmed that the most recent round was part of the previously announced reductions.
More layoffs have recently occurred, adding to the sad parade of tech workers laid off in recent months. According to sources, the company has held multiple all-hands meetings in countries such as Germany, Ireland, and the United Kingdom, but none of them have been recorded.
According to one Salesforce employee, the company’s “all-salesforce” Slack channel went from approximately 82,500 members on Feb. 1 to approximately 80,600, indicating that 1,900 workers may have been laid off. The timing of the layoffs could be related to a sales team fiscal year kickoff event at Salesforce’s headquarters in San Francisco.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff reportedly hinted that the sales team might be targeted, telling employees at a company meeting last month that remote workers weren’t as productive as those in the office, and that half of the sales team accounted for 96% of revenue, implying that the other half accounted for only 4%.
“They would want as many loose ends in this shitty process wrapped up by then as they can muster,” a Salesforce employee told Fortune. “Kickoff is basically a sales pep rally. Need to not have people feel like the sword of Damocles is hanging over them.”
According to multiple sources, Salesforce is waiting until the end of the fiscal year to complete layoffs so that sales staff could close fourth-quarter deals.
The sources for this piece include an article in TechCrunch.
