Salesforce Cutting 1,000 Roles While Hiring Salespeople for AI

Salesforce is cutting jobs as its latest fiscal year gets underway, Bloomberg reported Monday, citing a person familiar with the matter, even as the company simultaneously hires workers to sell new artificial intelligence products. From the report: More than 1,000 roles will be affected, according to the person, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Displaced workers will be able to apply for other jobs internally, the person added. Salesforce had nearly 73,000 workers as of January 2024, when that fiscal year ended.

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[backslashdot]

You left out stripping US citizens of citizenship. Make no mistake, as Elon Musk has stated they "need to shift the Overton window" (what's acceptable as reasonable to the public). The argument will be made why should someone who "proves by their words that they hate America" have rights of a citizen? Before that, the argument will be made why should rapists and murderers have US citizenship even if they are born here to American parents? Mark my words, there'll be a time Americans will be stripped of their

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[drinkypoo]

Trump and team are deporting violent, criminals, rapist, etc...

That's what they claim, but Trump is a bigger criminal than an immigrant on average, and ICE is not known for being discriminating when they decide who's going in general. They are also conducting unconstitutional spot checks for ID without cause which are affecting native Americans, who are getting shaken down for papers. It's not enough we broke every treaty we ever signed with them, now we have to treat them like criminal immigrants? Fuck ICE, fuck Trump, etc etc.

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[misexistentialist]

The denial of birthright citizenship and mass deportations are all parts of efforts to shift the Overton window. To make harsh measures and cruelty acceptable.

While it's common the Americas there is no birthright citizenship most of the world. The opponents of Trump usually have a high opinion of Europe so what is so harsh?

but people who have proven they aren't violent or dangerous (that is, they have not been convicted of felonies) should not be deported.

What Overton Window is this? Do think you when you go on vacation if instead of waiting in line you decide to run past the border control in France or New Zealand that means you're no longer a tourist but a resident? And people are of course imprisoned for non-violent crimes, you probably would have been cheering if Trump was sent to jail for

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[gtall]

El Bunko’s Bunks: Grifts from the Oval Office (imagine any a real President doing this in the past). These are only the most obvious I've collected with 5 minutes effort, there's plenty more from which that came.

1. Shitcoins
2. Sneakers
3. NFTs with him doing stupid shit
4. Watches
5. Fragrances

The next contestant on low morale & enshi'ion

[sinkskinkshrieks]

If one ever has to do layoffs, the correct pattern is to cut deep and once only. Rounds and rounds of layoffs demonstrate management and business cluelessness, and a blithe unconcern for productivity or morale. The best talent will leave first and the remaining business with atrophy. The preferred human capital strategy is to never be placed in a position to have to bend to the whims of short-term investors. Wiser white-collar workers would abandon the mercurial instability of megacorps and form functionally nearly-equivalent worker-owned co-ops to both capture the value of their labor and prioritize business fundamentals, lifestyle stability, and morale of coworkers. There's just an unwillingness of employee worker bees to take a risk and a pattern of learned helplessness where the abuse victims do the same thing and expect a different result. This is insanity that cannot continue.

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[CommunityMember]

If one ever has to do layoffs, the correct pattern is to cut deep and once only.

That, of course, presumes a somewhat mature company with a well understood market that is not rapidly changing. Even doing the correct thing based on the current understandings is no assurance that another unforeseeable event causing additional disruption will not occur. And some people join a new company knowing it will be a wild ride, hoping to make it rich (or exciting).

Salespeople for AI?

[Roger W Moore]

Surely AI is the first product that should literally be capable of selling itself...

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[drinkypoo]

Food and sex both self-advertise more successfully than AI

Why keep any humans?

[Required Snark]

Since AI is already more cost effective then those pesky humans that need paychecks and health care and offices with plumbing/HVAC, and desks, and chairs, and office supplies etc, why not use the AI you are pushing instead?

Unless it's a scam and you know it doesn't work like you claim it does and the company would crash and burn if it depended on it's own over-hyped bullshit product.

Just asking.

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[backslashdot]

The mad push for meritocracy, like all pursuits of "greater good" (and yes that includes extreme DEI), will lead to man's descent into evil.

Not every decision has to be about profit and benefit. Sometimes charity and helping a faulty human is needed. If you start making rule-based decisions on a mass scale .. YOU will be replaced by AI. There has to be room for human judgement and some weight given to circumstance. If you think like a robot, then you're replaceable by a robot.

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[nightflameauto]

Not every decision has to be about profit and benefit.

From everything I've seen of this world over the last fifty years? That statement doesn't hold up. I wish it were true, but I see zero sign that it holds any place at all in our society.

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[kurkosdr]

Because AI won't replace every human (after all, someone has to be legally liable), it will replace the low-hanging fruit, aka the people who do the jobs AI can do fairly well. Remember the old joke "our entire department was replaced by a regular expression"? Well, those people managed to sneak back in by getting hired in pseudo-decision-making roles (that aren't actually decision-making), pseudo-analyst roles, or report-writing roles. These are the kind of people AI is going to replace.

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[jbengt]

AI still needs plumbing/HVAC, and probably more A/C and electricity than those pesky humans it's replacing.

Not a huge surprise.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

This seems like a short-term move(unless they managed to have a thousand people on payroll who were doing nothing for their product; and those are the ones they are getting rid of); but, especially with sales often being partially or wholly commission-based, a combination of layoffs and bringing on more people to push product harder could well make the glorious line go up; for a time; and unless they let recruitment and onboarding costs get out of hand or have the new sales people on relatively generous bas

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[HiThere]

Maybe. I'm not really clear on what their business is. But I can well imagine that much of what they do can be "assisted" by AI to be more productive, so fewer folks are needed...but those needed are still needed.

Consider designing a sales brochure. It's quite plausible that the AI could design a bunch of candidates a lot more quickly than the usual art department, but choosing between them might well still be beyond it...or at least doing a good job of choosing between them.

Why Would Anyone Buy This?

[GlennC]

If the Matthew McConaughey Salesforce ads are an example of what they're thinking, I expect their effort to backfire. The ads seem to imply that the average person is too stupid to do the basic functions of their job.

One of the ads shows a clothing shop associate making loud and unfashoinable choices for McConaughey to wear without even asking what style of clothing he is seeking.

The other shows him in the outdoor dining section of a restaurant during a torrential rain being served a dish that he apparently does not want to eat, with the implication that the restaurant's staff is too incompetent to move him to an indoor table or ask him what he wants to eat.

Videos here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc95GVEY9lk [youtube.com]

It makes sense

[RUs1729]

A company that took the name Salesforce immediately reveals that its interest is in selling. Period. For such a company, more than for any other company, employees are nothing but a (regrettably) necessary overhead, to be jettisoned as soon as the opportunity to do so arrives.