from Hacker News

Salesforce cut hundreds of employees Monday

by Bhurn00985 on 11/8/22, 8:58 PM with 46 comments

• by cs702 on 11/8/22, 9:20 PM

  Every company wants to cut spending on people, services, and facilities, because revenues are slowing down, costs are rising, and there's more uncertainty about the near term future.

  The people who lose their jobs, in turn, are forced to cut their spending, contributing even more to the ongoing revenue slowdown at companies that sell to consumers.

  The service providers who see their billing examined with a microscope and who are told that new projects are now on hold, in turn, find themselves forced to cut their own spending on people, services, and facilities, contributing even more to the ongoing revenue slowdown at other companies.

  The office buildings who are given notice of lease terminations, in turn, find themselves forced to cut their own spending, contributing as well to the ongoing revenue slowdown at other companies.

  The more every company and consumer cuts spending, the less money all companies and consumers earn. This unpleasant state of affairs is called a "recession." When it's really bad, it's called a "depression." It's no fun. Many unprofitable companies and many consumers without savings are at risk of financial ruin.

• by throwawaynov on 11/8/22, 9:46 PM

  Salesforce employee here. These were mostly the account executives who couldn't meet their quota. It's unfortunate that this is happening to AEs, who are usually the hardworking people at Salesforce struggling to close deals in a tough economy. It will be interesting to see what will happen to the random 'strategy', product and engineering folks who build over engineered, over priced, marketing bullock that doesn't sell.

• by tootie on 11/8/22, 9:39 PM

  This is pretty small adjustment for a company their size and comes on the heels of several large acquisitions and a huge hiring spree. I'm not sure this is actually a headcount reduction or just a restructuring. They have over 3000 job openings listed on LinkedIn right now.

• by JDEW on 11/8/22, 9:40 PM

  > Salesforce let go of fewer than 1,000 employees Monday, according to a person familiar with the move.

  > At the end of January it employed 73,541 people.

  “…employees Monday”,

  “…January”

  Is this grammatical? Is it coherent? Or was this generated with GPT-3?

• by radiojasper on 11/9/22, 12:24 AM

  They couldn't keep their sales force.