Salesforce under investor pressure to dump more staff

Job losses at Salesforce appear to be far from over as the CRM specialist sets out its plan to appease a gang of circling activist investors that are influencing its strategy. In January, Salesforce announced a drastic restructuring plan to cut 10 percent of its workforce at a cost of around $1.4 billion to $2.1 billion. The …

[elsergiovolador]

Asset stripping

That looks like investors are preparing for exit.

Maximise margins at a cost of the quality and hindering future development by letting go of people who made it happen.

Get the cash out of the company and then sell of remaining assets.

I wonder what they know that we don't know.

Preparation for agenda 2030?

[Enn Dee]

Good ol' Billionaires

I love it when they decide to make thousands of people lose their jobs.

Gives me a nice, warm cozy feeling inside knowing that a company might then make them even more billions from it, on top of the billions they already made.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: Good ol' Billionaires

I bet they all have those sweaty dreams when they think of someone figuring out the way how to get those pesky employees out of the way.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's go back to calling these "corporate raiders"

You know, my boss's decision three months ago to move of Heroku this year instead of next is making more sense by the week...

[Potemkine!]

"Activist investors" is not the right terminology. They act more like terrorists: "fire people, or else..."

Mr. Christopher Hohn seems to be a nice guy. He would gladly throw up thousands people in the bin to get more billions, because he doesn't seem having enough. May he get one day the return for his good deeds.

[Anonymous Coward]

locusts

They're not "activist investors", they're locusts.

It's a playbook at least decades old, probably much much older:

1) get enough control over a company (shares held, board membership, paid-for executives, etc.) to direct and enact policy

2) reduce costs by any means -- e.g. cut bonuses, benefits, and salaries; hiring freeze, layoffs, painful reorgs, restructures and sell-offs as employee resignation incentives; slash budgets and spending, anything that might allow money out of the company coffers; none of it is sustainable but merely contributes to ....

3) sort-term spike in share price

At that point the locust investors declare "job well done", sell and cash out, leaving behind a stripped and shattered husk and usually a demoralized, probably damaged and much smaller workforce, and in all likelihood a company which isn't a going concern much longer. Any executives left behind take their pre-planned golden parachutes, "spend some time with family", eventually score Board of Director seats elsewhere, maybe a consultancy with an activist investor group, and the cycle repeats.