[HN Gopher] Salesforce cut hundreds of employees Monday
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Salesforce cut hundreds of employees Monday
Author : Bhurn00985
Score : 41 points
Date : 2022-11-08 20:58 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
| throwawaynov wrote:
| 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.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > These were mostly the account executives who couldn't meet
| their quota.
|
| > account executives
|
| ...you mean "sales", right?
| throwawaynov wrote:
| Yes - Sales is a function/dept/team. Account executives are
| part of sales teams.
| tootie wrote:
| 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.
| JDEW wrote:
| > 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?
| pwinnski wrote:
| The author was last aware of the Salesforce headcount on or
| near January 31.
|
| Yesterday, Salesforce reduced their headcount.
|
| It doesn't seem difficult to parse at all.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| I'm not picking up on what you're implying is the confusing
| part.
| cs702 wrote:
| 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.
| avereveard wrote:
| a lot of skilled workers enter the job market at a reduced
| price, they have the know how to compete in the same or
| adjacent sector, medium company can acquire the competences at
| a reduced price, their profit increase their spending, etc etc
|
| economics is not a single company
|
| this is the tail of feds interest rate raise cutting down
| investment. it will last a while, but the economy doesn't yet
| seem unhealthy (well except some specific bubbles, but those
| have been there a while and if they pop will pop because they
| were bubbles, not because the secondary trigger)
| cs702 wrote:
| Agree on everything :-)
|
| The only thing I'm not so sure about is the health of the
| economy. While all macro stats look great so far, they don't
| yet reflect the wave of layoffs we're seeing in sector after
| sector.
|
| We may be going through a mild recession overall and a brutal
| one in bubble-land. Regardless, it will feel horrible to
| anyone younger than 35, who has _never_ experienced a
| recession since joining the workforce at most ~15 years ago.
| avereveard wrote:
| well there was the subprime thing, it hit harshly on south
| europe. heck italy was still trying to climb out of that
| when covid hit, and it's like still down significant % from
| 2008 gdp levels
| cheriot wrote:
| > many consumers without savings are at risk of financial ruin
|
| Yes. This is the reason for having a better social safety net.
| There's no reason a normal business cycle should "ruin" normal
| people that did not take excessive risks.
| joshstrange wrote:
| _pulls out soapbox_
|
| > There's no reason a normal business cycle should "ruin"
| normal people that did not take excessive risks.
|
| And this is why I get so frustrated when I hear things like
| "Well business owner(s) take all the risk so that's why they
| get all the reward (profits, or most of it)". Bullshit. For
| smaller companies this is more-so true but not even then is
| it always true. I'm not sure how many downturns or mistakes
| have to happen followed by layoffs for the general public to
| grasp this but I don't anticipate people wising up anytime
| soon. In a number of these layoffs we hear about "Well we
| misjudged the market" or "The trends didn't continue the way
| we thought and we over-hired". Instead of tightening their
| belts (less profit for owners/shareholders) the answer is
| always to just jettison people until the books "balance".
|
| I own my own (side) business and I have family members who
| own full-time businesses, I'm well aware of the risk (and
| debt) we have taken on but for larger companies the top brass
| (and shareholders) seem nearly completely insulated from any
| pain. Compare that to places that have profit sharing with
| employees which can go down if there is a downturn/etc, this
| is a much better way to handle it. I'm fine sharing in the
| risk (which I'm doing just by working for someone, they could
| fire/lay me off tomorrow without warning, that's a risk) if
| I'm also sharing in the reward. I'm also fine with the
| "reward" (profit share) decreases in "bad" times versus
| laying off a bunch of people. Some companies do this much
| better than others but I really wish companies were either
| forced to share the rewards and/or actually feel some pain
| when they make bad decisions. I think we all know the people
| responsible for over-hiring don't actually face any
| repercussions for their mistakes, instead it's the people
| they hired then laid off. And no, paying severance or feeling
| bad about having to lay off people isn't really "pain" in my
| book.
|
| Having a "better social safety net" is sort of a way to force
| "profit sharing" in a roundabout way and I would greatly
| appreciate it if losing a job didn't mean loss of healthcare
| and/or a way to put food on the table, pay rent, etc. I know
| from personal experience that having a good safety net (aka,
| my parents) makes a huge difference. Not that I play fast and
| loose with my money (I have an emergency fund that I could
| run on for 6-9+ months that I've built up) but you always
| have a little voice in the back of your head saying "You
| aren't going to end up on the streets". Not everyone has that
| and I'd love nothing more than for everyone to experience and
| have that confidence, it's what allows you to take risks
| (sane ones ideally, like starting your own business) knowing
| that failure will not ruin you.
|
| _puts up soapbox_
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Having no savings is not taking a risk?
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| The relative cost of health care and other benefits makes
| savings a lost cause for the unemployed. You live one trip
| to the ER away from bankruptcy and homelessness every
| minute of every day. It's foolish to blame savings rates
| for that situation, almost no one make enough to save at a
| rate that prevents medical bankruptcy.
| piva00 wrote:
| Don't victim blame. Not every person or family is able to
| save, think about it a bit deeper than your personal
| bubble...
| theshrike79 wrote:
| It takes a _long_ time to save up enough to manage through
| a year of unemployment.
|
| A social safety net is always there.
| AshleyGrant wrote:
| It's absolutely taking a risk, but for many people it is an
| unavoidable risk, and thus would not be considered taking
| "excessive" risk, as OP mentioned.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Is it though? The social safety net usually doesn't reach up
| to help people earning SV tech job salaries. I would prefer
| to see more friction when it comes to layoffs so we'd see
| less of tech giants doubling and halving their headcounts in
| a period of just a couple of years.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Indeed! Such a strong case for more social systems like
| employment insurance.
|
| Not to oversimplify but I find "government programs" to be a
| good answer to basically any "tragedy of the commons" problem
| such as spending less during a recession.
| Retric wrote:
| In theory sure, but in practice a great deal of this is driven
| by earlier over investments by tech companies who saw a huge
| surge in profits during COVID lockdowns.
|
| It wasn't just online companies that benefited by changing
| consumer habits as people where stuck at home with little to do
| browsed social media and ordered food delivery etc. Setting up
| remote options across many industries had many similarities
| with the pre Y2K investments and a wave of modernization
| efforts. That followed by supply shortages which pushed massive
| investments to build more robust supply chains etc.
| cs702 wrote:
| Although it will be endlessly debated, it doesn't matter that
| much how a recession got started, nor who deserves the most
| blame. Once the spending-slowdown spiral gets going, it can
| become self-sustaining on its own, beyond anyone's control,
| affecting both the guilty and the innocent.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Well - artificially inducing a recession to make people
| poorer so they can't afford to buy things as a way of
| reducing shipping container rates and backlogs is a pretty
| ass backwards way to run a society.
|
| Food prices are inflating, so if we get enough people
| unable to afford food, prices go down.
|
| "Victory"
|
| I think you can apportion blame for stuff like that. And
| the guilty are insulated from the consequences of their
| actions, so I don't agree they share in the pain.
| manachar wrote:
| As many of these companies base their projections on a
| relatively small number of outside sources, it often strikes me
| as a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
|
| Big business and financial firms have been signaling a belief
| in a downturn for a while now -- including while posting about
| record profits.
| redwood wrote:
| It's all related to taming inflation
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