Salesforce layoffs continue as high-ranking executives leave

Is Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff fiddling while Rome burns?

Recent happenings at the company make observers wonder:

• Like many tech companies, Salesforce is laying off employees by the thousands; another roughly 1,000 were let go this week, with many outlets reporting that across-the-board reductions are hitting marketing, product management, analytics and Agentforce teams.
• Also affected in the layoffs was the Heroku platform as a service team. Salesforce said this week that Heroku will be sunsetted -- no new features will be developed, no new Enterprise Account contracts will be signed, but current customers will be able to continue using Heroku.
• There's also been a shakeup in the upper echelons of Salesforce leadership: Agentforce executive vice president and general manager Adam Evans departed earlier this week, following recent exits by chief marketing officer Ariel Kelman, who went to chipmaker AMD, Tableau president and CEO Ryan Aytay after 19 years with Salesforce, and Slack CEO Denise Dresser, who left for OpenAI last December.

While all this is going on, Benioff has maintained his political about-face that started last year. The latest was an awkward joke about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers present "in the building" after asking international employees to stand at an internal Salesforce event in Las Vegas last Monday. He reportedly doubled down by repeating the joke in his keynote. Multiple industry reports said that his comments lit up employee Slack channels with angry reactions.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which ICE falls under, is a well-established Salesforce customer and has long been a sore spot among employees, prompting protests dating back to 2018. Last October, an open letter to Benioff signed by employees and others took things further.

CNBC reported that another letter circulating within Salesforce this week has been signed by 1,400 employees as of Tuesday. Its authors plan to send it to Benioff on Friday. It raises concerns that Agentforce, in the hands of ICE, could automate processes such as handling tipline reports and violate Salesforce's policies on the ethical and humane use of technology.

At least 32 people died in ICE custody last year, and at least nine so far this year, including the high-profile shootings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

Salesforce's principles dictate that "we work to ensure the direct use of our technologies upholds equal and inalienable protections for all individuals."

While it's not a crime to enter President Trump's orbit, or to get chummy at parties with people such as Trump attorney general Pam Bondi and crow about it on X, Benioff appears to have made a 180-degree turn from just seven years ago, when in his book Trailblazer and in an op-ed in The New York Times he laid a blueprint for corporate responsibility he called "stakeholder capitalism."

Back then, he made the case that companies can create competitive advantages by adopting values that, at least for Salesforce, support LGBTQ rights, equal pay, the fight against climate change, and address social inequality.

"Like a growing child, culture needs to be continuously nurtured as the company gets bigger and ages," Benioff wrote in Trailblazer. "I consider this to be one of my most important jobs at Salesforce."

The company he keeps now in D.C. is the very tribe working to reverse the progress he and his $183 billion company have made on their bedrock causes over the years.

Later this month, Salesforce will announce its earnings for its most recent quarter and for the full fiscal year that ended January 31. Other tech companies have seen their stocks battered by Wall Street despite earnings beats. One example is Oracle, down more than 18% this year after a rosy earnings call last December 10.

Who knows, maybe an amazing quarter can stop the bleeding for Benioff and Salesforce. At the moment, however, it's not looking that great. As the tech world wobbles amid AI disruption, Salesforce -- the original SaaS monolith -- is among the companies with the most to lose. Its CEO is not helping matters as the company hemorrhages talent and its user base watches him turn his back on the values that once made Salesforce worthy of their loyalty.

Don Fluckinger is a senior news writer for Informa TechTarget. He covers customer experience, digital experience management and end-user computing. Got a tip? Email him.