Salesforce layoffs have been confirmed with the company stating that the employee headcount has been reduced from 9000 to 5000. Marc Benioff, CEO, Salesforce confirmed the development on the Logan Bartlett Podcast, and revealed that the support team at the company had been reduced. This would mean that nearly half of Salesforce’s support division has been asked to leave.
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“I was able to rebalance my headcount on my support. I reduced it from 9,000 heads to about 5,000 because I needed fewer heads,” said Benioff on the podcast. This strategic move is likely aimed at streamlining operations by integrating ‘agentic’ AI technologies, such as the omnichannel supervisor at http://help.salesforce.com, which balances interactions between human and digital agents.
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Benioff further emphasized that the current round of Salesforce layoffs allows the company to redeploy talent to areas where it’s most needed. He added that this move aligns with Salesforce’s focus on defining the next generation of enterprise solutions. He also noted that Salesforce’s AI capabilities are now central to its data cloud, contributing to its fastest-growing product segment, which has surpassed $1 billion in revenue.
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Initially, the company had allayed fears of layoffs. Benioff had stated that human employees would not be replaced. However, the fear of artificial intelligence taking away human jobs seems to be taking shape. If statistics are to be believed. 30% of current US jobs could be fully automated, while 60% will see significant task-level changes due to AI integration. The report published on National University also states that 300 million jobs could be lost to AI globally, which accounts to 9.1% of all jobs worldwide.
Jobs That Could be Hit Due to AI
Some of the jobs that are likely to be eliminated over a course of time are as follows:
- Clerical and administrative roles.
- Bank tellers and cashiers.
- Manufacturing jobs.
- Telemarketers and call center agents.
- Customer service representatives.
