Salesforce announces hundreds of job cuts

Cloud-based CRM software provider Salesforce has become the latest technology company to announce mass layoffs, cutting at least hundreds of jobs from its 73,000-person workforce.

“Our sales performance process drives accountability. Unfortunately, that can lead to some leaving the business, and we support them through their transition,” Salesforce said in a statement confirming the layoffs.

Salesforce has experienced a relatively successful year financially, with the company’s second quarter revenue rising 22% year on year, driven by rapid adoption of its cloud-based CRM and other sales management tools. The company is facing pressure to cut costs since last month when activist hedge fund Starboard Value took a stake in the company and immediately called for Salesforce to increase its margins, although Starboard didn’t explicitly call for a workforce reduction.

Salesforce is not the only tech company to announce job cuts this month. Last week, Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, fired almost half of the social media platform’s workforce in addition to the company’s senior leadership team.

Meta has also announced it is reducing the size of its workforce by 13%, leading to 11,000 employees losing their jobs. In a statement, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerburg said that the company would also be taking a number of additional steps to become a “leaner and more efficient company,” by cutting discretionary spending and extending our hiring freeze through Q1.