Salesforce Halts Engineering Hires as AI Boosts Productivity by 30%
Brook.X
Marc Benioff, CEO of the globally renowned Customer Relationship Management (CRM) provider Salesforce, recently revealed in an interview that the company will not be hiring any new software engineers throughout 2025.
Salesforce is currently developing its business plan for 2025, with a significant focus on its flagship artificial intelligence product, Agentforce. This product leverages AI to build business solutions.
When asked whether Salesforce's workforce would increase or decrease over the next five years, Benioff said he expects the number of employees to grow. However, he immediately added that there would be no increase in software engineers in 2025.
The decision not to hire new software engineers stems from Salesforce's use of Agentforce and other AI technologies, which have increased team productivity by over 30%, significantly accelerating the engineering team's speed.
Given this productivity boost, Salesforce sees no need to hire more software engineers. Instead, with the Agentforce tool, the focus shifts toward recruiting more sales personnel to explain the precise value of Salesforce's AI technology to customers. Accordingly, Salesforce plans to hire an additional 1,000 to 2,000 sales staff in the short term.
With the aid of artificial intelligence technology, Salesforce is rapidly optimizing its team composition, meaning that the number of sales personnel will gradually increase to attract more customers to its products, while no further engineering hires will be made, and future layoffs could be possible. After all, Salesforce has already conducted two rounds of layoffs in 2023 and 2024.
In January 2023, Salesforce laid off 7,000 employees, representing 10% of its workforce; in January 2024, 700 employees were laid off, representing 1% of the workforce. Currently, Salesforce still employs 70,000 people worldwide.
The rationale provided for the layoffs was an overhiring during the pandemic, a period of significantly increased demand for business. However, as demand decreased post-pandemic, Salesforce had to reduce its workforce accordingly.
