Salesforce slashes 700 jobs, adding to brutal string of 2024 tech layoffs

Less than 1% of workers will be cut, according to a person familiar with the plans who wasn’t authorized to discuss them publicly and asked not to be identified. A Salesforce representative declined to comment.

A year ago Salesforce reduced headcount by 10%. The San Francisco-based company had 70,843 workers as of the end of October, according to a securities filing.

The new cuts show how the tech industry remains focused on trimming costs. Other tech companies, such as Microsoft Corp., Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Amazon.com Inc., also signaled layoffs this month. The Wall Street Journal reported the cuts at Salesforce earlier Friday.

The company, which sells software to other businesses, has focused on expanding profit margins over the last year in response to shareholder pressure, including from activist investors like Elliott Investment Management. Salesforce Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff focused on reducing expenses in the company’s notoriously large sales and marketing division, with 2023 hiring focused on engineering and promoting new artificial intelligence-focused products.