Salesforce To Cut Staff by 10% in Latest Tech Layoffs (cnbc.com) 21
Salesforce said on Wednesday it would lay off about 10% of its employees and close some offices, becoming the latest tech firm to undertake cost cuts amid an economic slowdown. From a report: The company expects the move to lead to about $1.4 billion to $2.1 billion in charges, of which about $800 million to $1 billion will be recorded in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023. "The environment remains challenging and our customers are taking a more measured approach to their purchasing decisions," co-Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff said in a letter to employees.
Companies from Meta Platforms to Amazon.com have in the past year taken steps to prepare for a deep downturn as global central banks have aggressively raised interest rates to tame decades-high inflation. Businesses that relied on cloud services during the pandemic are now trying to reduce expenses through job cuts or delaying new projects, which has hurt companies such as Salesforce, which owns office messaging app Slack, and Teams parent Microsoft. "As our revenue accelerated through the pandemic, we hired too many people leading into this economic downturn we're now facing, and I take responsibility for that," Benioff said.
Conspiracy to kill unions (Score:2)
I'm of mixed feelings when it comes to unions. (Score:2)
Do they make it difficult to eject the unproductive and useless?
Do they restrict the compensation potential of the talented?
Do they act as a defense against shitty employers?
Do they provide mechanisms to smooth out the rough edges of employee/employer relations?
Do they siphon more money from their members than they should?
Do they provide promotion paths for those with potential but the inability to market themselves appropriately?
Yep. All true. It's a mixed bag.
Do they make a company better for their presen
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The only thing worse than unions is no unions
What we really need is a government that protects the interests and rights of all citizens equally, including all workers. But since we don't have that, we need unions.
Re:I'm of mixed feelings when it comes to unions. (Score:5, Interesting)
What we really need is a government that protects the interests and rights of all citizens equally
Indeed, we do. Nonetheless, we never will, nor will anyone. Government positions will always attract the already-corrupted, and will corrupt any pure hearts that manage to get the job. There is no system by which the moral purity of government officials can be ensured.
The same goes for unions, incidentally. Young unions have a job to do, and the union leaders lose their jobs if they fail, so they are motivated to represent the best interests of the union members. But, once the union has a foothold and is "established," it invariably becomes self-serving. The union leaders like their jobs and don't want to say "ok, goals met, time to pack it in." They need to justify the union dues that their members must pay, so they wind up pushing unreasonable demands on the corporations. And of course they are vulnerable to bribery and collusion too, so they wind up putting on a dog-and-pony show of supporting their member's interests while simultaneously selling out to the corporations. They further lobby to get laws passed to require membership into their union in order for workers to work in the field, thus growing like a bad rash.
I do agree, the only thing worse than unions is no unions. Without them, worker exploitation is rampant. But I also agree with corporate claims that unions turn sour and cause harm.
ALL humans with power turn sour and cause harm. There is never a point where we can relax in the knowledge that our leaders have our best interests at heart. Eternal conflict is our only option.
Re: I'm of mixed feelings when it comes to unions. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes it does: by making a safer and non-toxic production environment
Re: (Score:3)
In Germany the relationship between management and unions is usually less confrontational. US should find a way to learn from them.
Re: (Score:3)
In Germany the relationship between management and unions is usually less confrontational. US should find a way to learn from them.
That's true in quite a number of European countries. The Unions, being mostly made up of employees in the company, care at least as much about the future and the investment in the company as the management. Often they have been the ones who stop short term profit taking which would cause much bigger long term losses. In the UK, on the other hand, both the unions and successive governments have deliberately set out to make the whole relationship as combative and problematic as it can be.
The current strikes i
Re: (Score:2)
Prediction: as long as there is a recession, organizing will continue.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Until the employee market stops.
Right now we're still in a work market where there is a lot of power on the employee side. Companies are still quite eager to hire staff and people are reluctant to accept sub-par offers.
This cannot be. We need to be able to oppress our workers into adhesion contracts that squeeze the blood out of them!
You want to work for a public sector union (Score:2)
So that probably won't work out very well...
However, public sector unions are a whole different beast because they have the power of government/tax base to provide incredible benefits.
When's the last time you've heard of a mass public sector union layoff?
So, if you're looking for a union job then join a government IT shop.
It could be quite lucrative!
Re: (Score:2)
haha that's part of it (Score:2)
Businesses that relied on cloud services during the pandemic are now trying to reduce expenses through job cuts or delaying new projects, which has hurt companies such as Salesforce
Salesforce is overpriced and slow. The only thing their product does relatively well is reporting, and making reports is still a PITA that requires you to go into several different modules of the product in order to set things up. To do the same things you can do with e.g. Crystal Reports and database access takes less understanding of the database, but just as much knowledge of the software, and it takes longer for anything non-trivial. (Though... do you still have to write your own sort function in CR to
Re: (Score:2)
Why don't such co's give customers direct SQL access so they can script up their own custom reporting? Have a web service interface that sends SQL via HTTP and gets CSV, JSON, and/or XML data back?
It would probably have to be threasholded to limit mis-coded queries from hogging the servers. Then again, the vendor would love to charge for resources on costomers' mis-coded queries, comparable what AT&T was known to do on butt-dials to Australia. They probably wouldn't mention the threasholding feature, wa
Re: (Score:3)
Why don't such co's give customers direct SQL access so they can script up their own custom reporting?
Salesforce's main job is providing live dashboards and reports, and trapping customers with lock-in, so it's not really in their best interest. You can get your data out through the API, though obviously not any of your business logic. (SF has an ECA framework but doesn't allow export to BPMN, though you can import it.)
Re: (Score:1)
I understand, a walled-garden is how they make you dependent. But a plucky startup can offer a more minimalistic system and let customers roll-their-own, offering a portfolio of sample scripts that customers can copy, paste, and tweak. Perhaps make it JavaScript-based because most IT shops have to know JS. If you write in say Python, then C# shops will be ticked and vice versa. Their sales pitch would be less lock-in
> though obviously not [export] any of your business logic
That's kind of a tall order. Al
Re: (Score:2)
Welp there are workflow standards these days specifically for defining business logic and then making sure it shows up in your application. With Drupal I can use their ECA framework with one of two BPMN modelers (I am using BPMN.io) to define process logic, then I can supposedly export it and bring it to some other system... like Salesforce. Have not yet tried, but it's on my list.
Re: (Score:3)
Why don't such co's give customers direct SQL access so they can script up their own custom reporting? Have a web service interface that sends SQL via HTTP and gets CSV, JSON, and/or XML data back?
Salesforce does provide APIs OOTB which allow customers to send queries to the database. And third party reporting tools exist to use them. Salesforce even buys some of those companies from time to time to roll it into their offerings (Tableau). There are governor limits on these APIs but they are generous enough to allow most external reporting needs you may need.
Salesforce top reporting tools today are through Tableau and Einstein, but they cost extra. Most people complaining about Salesforce reporting pr
Re: (Score:3)
Salesforce is overpriced and slow. The only thing their product does relatively well is reporting [...]
One of Salesforce's main selling point is as a low-code platform which can be heavily customized. It provides a company a fully built CRM / Service / Marketing application in which 90%+ of the functionality can be modified with low-code tools or a Java-like development language. It isn't going to be as performant as a well built custom application, but most custom applications aren't well built. Being a low-code and highly customizable platform it also allows companies to shoot themselves in the foot with v
Re: (Score:2)
Almost nothing you do on Salesforce is as good as a well built custom coded implementation, but that isn't its selling point.
You can do 90% of what you can do with Salesforce with Drupal, plus tons of stuff Salesforce doesn't do. It's a lot harder to do reporting, though, or even to make dashboards. It's also quite performant. Salesforce just simply doesn't do the things they claim they do in many cases. For example they claim they offer automatic performance throttling, but you also have to contact them before you conduct a performance test so that you don't take down other customers. IOW, their throttling doesn't actually work,
Context (Score:3)