Salesforce has announced its intention to hire 3,300 new employees.
The new recruits will work across its sales, engineering, and data cloud product departments.
That news marks a significant shift in Salesforce’s thinking, considering the company has laid off 8,000 employees since the turn of the year.
Layoffs were continuing even last month, with the total redundancy figure crossing the ten percent mark initially touted in January.
Yet, in the past couple of weeks, Salesforce’s CEO, Marc Benioff, has looked to draw a line under the sand. During the business’s latest earnings call, he stated:
We’re not planning any other major restructuring efforts in the company today like what we saw earlier this year. We hope that that is one and done and behind us.
Now, Salesforce’s CEO, Marc Benioff, told Bloomberg:
Our job is to grow the company and to continue to achieve great margins. We know we have to hire thousands of people.
This includes bringing back former employees, with the CEO stating how former employees were being welcomed back.
However, he did not rule out further layoffs altogether – just not on the same scale as earlier this year.
That may concern some, who interpret these stories as Salesforce adopting more of a ‘hire and fire’ culture.
Whether that mindset is real remains to be seen, yet recent internal survey results – leaked to the press – do suggest significant worries among Salesforce staff.
Yet, these came after a period of significant restructuring. Now, with the threat of further mass layoffs pushed to the side, Salesforce will likely hope to breathe new life into its Ohana culture.
What Will the New Hires Do?
Brian Millham, President & COO at Salesforce, told Bloomberg that the CRM leader would split the new hires between sales, engineering, and its Data Cloud product.
Those moves perhaps emphasize that Salesforce is looking to put its foot back on the growth pedal to build momentum around its newly-announced Einstein 1 platform – where Data Cloud plays a central role.
Yet, it may surprise some that Salesforce is not pumping more people into customer success teams as its price hikes come into effect.
These price hikes represent the first Salesforce has made in seven years, yet industry analysts have raised issues in regard to the move.
A beefed-up customer success team could help to retain customers.
Yet, Salesforce seems likely to assign the bulk of its new hires to engineer, developer, and system architect roles.
One of Salesforce’s rivals, Pegasystems, did this recently. In spite of needing to make job cuts, it simultaneously advertised 49 jobs relating to engineers, developers, and system architects to strengthen the company’s product offering.
