Salesforce sacrifices 4,000 support jobs on the altar of AI Speaking ahead of Labor Day – celebrated in the US to recognize the nation's labor movement – Salesforce CEO and co-founder Marc Benioff said the company had slashed 4,000 customer support roles through the application of AI agents. "I've reduced it from 9,000 heads to about 5,000 because I need less heads," he told The Logan …
Sociopathic CEO steals child's signed tennis cap and makes up pathetic excuse later when caught out.
If they're not stealing tennis caps, they're stealing people's livelihoods.
Does this expensive software you are paying for really mean an increase in sales and profits or were you just conned by fake promises and shiny toys? Could you use much simpler/cheaper software, reduce your costs, your training bill, your energy use, your tech risk and actually bank more of a profit? Most corporate cubicle-dwellers could still be using Office 95.
Wages have to be budgeted for today while the costs associated with AI can be pushed off into the future, especially as those shiny AI toys are likely to be initially priced as loss leaders to attract the business. Like with other computing products the real costs will only become apparent once the business is locked in.
Never mind, the accounting shell game continues. Short term boost in profits means short term boost in C-Suite bonuses. Let the future take care of itself.....
So will I be getting a nice big discount on my expensive support subscription?
Well ...
I don't think that is the right question to ask.
How about this:
So will I be getting a proper and reliable service on my expensive support subscription?
I seriously doubt it.
And then ...
Guess who you will end up chatting to when you need to complain about your expensive support subscription being utter bollocks?
.
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Every tech company is laying off workers and reducing quality support for lessor customers through a combination layoffs, outsourcing, and AI. I wouldn't even blame AI, just it's usage - it's the combination. This goes hand in hand with the wealth of everyman's retirement being in an indexed fund which invests according to rules giving preference to the biggest companies, which hold the economy hostage to their exclusive success, the huge role of lobbyists, decades of deficit funded stimulus, US bond sales, QE, psuedo-QE, and finally currently high interest rates meaning no fear of competition so no reason for the largest companies to spoil their lessor customers.
So let's say your wish came true and Mr Benioff was tarred, feathered, and placed in stocks with a live feed on Reddit, his 10 billion wealth seized and distributed as $40 gift card to every adult American, or $33 dollars if children get an equal share. Nothing would in the greater picture would change. Though there might be a large uptick in layoffs from Salesforce due to the resulting internal chaos as opportunist hedge funds smell blood.
In fact even if 5.7 trillion WSJ estimated wealth of the current 1,331 US billionares were divided evenly it would only be a one time ~16K for every US person including children. A big chunk but not life changing. Not even enough to buy a new car.
Personally I think more direct Democracy could help - Federal referendums on issues like stock trading by congress persons, the role of money in elections, also budget issues.
> "I've reduced it from 9,000 heads to about 5,000 because I need less heads," he told The Logan Bartlett Show podcast on Friday...
The language he used is so disgusting, he has zero empathy, just numbers/more money for the investors. I'm sorry, but I'd like to see this CEO "head" in a guillotine right now.
Notice this is in customer support roles. They don't care about the customers either. This will be coming soon for a lot of people 'working from home'. It proves to the bosses that they don't need expensive staff in expensive offices. Instead they will hire Bob in India for a few rupees.
"Notice this is in customer support roles. They don't care about the customers either. This will be coming soon for a lot of people 'working from home'. It proves to the bosses that they don't need expensive staff in expensive offices. Instead they will hire Bob in India for a few rupees."
It's sad that they haven't figured out that they could hire Sara in Leeds who has mobility issues to work from home at a very reasonable price. I know a couple of people that are on disability since they would have too hard of a time getting to and from an office that would need to have aids installed for them that they already have at home. Of course, they might lose their disability benefits if they get a job and the benefits might pay more than what they could earn less the costs of getting to and from. If Walmart can pay so little that their employees qualify for public assistance, why not have a program for people that are disabled so they can work while taking less of a subsidy rather than an all or nothing lash up?
> just numbers/more money for the investors
You could be wrong here: a smaller head count could translate to lower prices for their products/services.
Even you (or your boss) could profit from those staff reductions. It has happened before, the robots and other industrial automation brought consumer products' prices down to the point that it is now often cheaper to replace stuff than to repair it.
Ι'm not saying that salesforce will slash its prices (I'm not privy to their plans), they may just keep the cost reduction for themselves.
We could replace Benioff with an LLM. We might get intelligible grammar out of it. Occasionally. Or salesfarce should be piping Benioff through an AI autocorrect (now there's a use case).
Acksherley, if journalists can interview an AI for the views of a dead person, why can't they interview an AI for the views of a living ass hat? Seems like a gap in the market. Or at least the market i'm aware of.
This past week my daughter dropped her phone one to many times. I ordered one through Verizon for her. It didn't come with a sim, so i swapped in the one form the previous phone.
Fraud prevention kicked in. easy enough, just call India and get it sorted. Except that didn't quite work.
The subsequent calls to Verizon were a nightmare. They have a new clanker answering the phones. So i tried it.
It verified my number. Took a couple tries, but not too bad.
Then, it went through a list of common support call types 'Are you trying to activate a new phone, please answer yes or no' Less efficient than a push button system doing the same, but voice systems have been around for a while. So far it's just a more expensive way of doing the same thing...
C - "In one or two sentences, please briefly describe the reason for your call."
Me - " I ordered one through Verizon for her. It didn't come with a sim, so i swapped in the one form the previous phone and it doesn't work"
C - "I'm sorry could you please repeat that"
Repeat above X2
C - "Are you trying to set up a phone"
Me - "Sure" (just hoping to speak to a person)
C - "Ok, Please use your Verizon app and select setting up a new phone to receive support for setting up a new phone"
Go to app.......ANOTHER CLANKER...."I'm sorry, we are unable to help with this problem. Please call <Verizon support number> to speak to a representative"
At this point I am beyond irritated and cruising right through angry. Another attempt.
It verified my number. Took a couple tried, but not too bad.
Then, it went through a list of common support call types 'Are you trying to activate a new phone, please answer yes or no' Less efficient than a push button system doing the same, but voice systems have been around for a while. So far it's just a more expensive way of doing the same thing...
C - "In one or two sentences, please briefly describe the reason for your call."
Me - " I ordered one through Verizon for her. It didn't come with a sim, so i swapped in the one form the previous phone and it doesn't work"
C - "I'm sorry could you please repeat that"
Repeat above X2
C - "Are you trying to set up a phone"
Me - "No"
C - "Please repeat your reason for calling"
Me - 'Human, I need speak to a human'
C - 'In order to direct you to the right representative, in one or two sentences, please briefly describe the reason for your call."
Me - 'HUMAN. I WANT TO SPEAK TO A HUMAN YOU DIGITAL <the rest of this conversation has been redacted....cause of the children and such>
Eventually I reached support, but they couldn't find the answer in here flowchart, but, eventually they failed to fix the problem and sent me on my merry way.
Except they didn't fix the problem.
Four more calls, but I wasn't getting sucked in again. As soon as the call was answered I basically just kept repeating 'I need to speak to a person' over and over again.' For more failures to fix the issue (though each time they assured me they had)
Eventually I just got a new sim card cause why not. Problem solved.
I never thought Verizon support could actually get worse, but here we are. I will never buy another Verizon product for the rest of my days.
After all of that wasted time, you could have transferred the number to another provider and been up and running.
Another tactic is to say you want to cancel service and get a transfer-out code for your number and you might be connected to a "customer retention representative" more quickly. They realize that it might take a 1/2 hour to get set up with a different provider and once you've done that, they won't be getting you back for at least a year. If they don't convince you to stay, it's another lost customer and a bad review. So far, my VMNO that resells T-Mobile service has been fine as I haven't needed any customer service. I like their billing as I can pay in 3, 6 or 12 month increments for a fairly low price. If the fiber internet mob would do that, I'd sign up with them in a hurry. Their only payment option is a month at a time in arrears so they want too much information to "establish credit". If they had any creative accountants, they'd offer payment in advance as an option.
Obviously you hire those 4000 people back at 60% of their original salary then fire the more expensive "old timers" that survived the previous round of terminations. Then repeat.
This is what all the big tech companies have been doing for years. The COVID unemployment blip was what they needed to get it started. A government that favors wealth inequality keeps it going. AI is the social excuse to justify it.
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The actual impact is retirement investment accounts of ordinary people becoming worthless. 401K plans tend to be scams because there's no guarantee of any money being made or returned. They're essentially a huge amount of play money for investment firms to manipulate the stock market with.
I had a job inquiry today at 6pm and I didn't recognize the number so I let it go to VM since I was elbows deep in making dinner. I checked the message and while the phone number lookup showed the carrier as one of those unknown LLC's the spammers use, I called the person back and got a Google Voice screening machine and hung up. I don't play those games especially when I'm returning calls outside of normal business hours. I'll see if they call back, but I won't go out of my way as it's looks like a one-off job from an out of area company rather than a chance at a new steady client. I'm fine with taking that work, but I don't go out of my way to get those jobs. There a time cost to getting new customers set up so I'm considering raising my rates when it looks like a one time deal.
