Salesforce revenue growth has decelerated from ~24% in FY 2021 to just over 8% for the trailing 12 months.
A company that was tuned to double revenue in 3 years transforming in one expecting to double in 9 years is definitely carrying too many people. It made sense for them to reduce headcount to align with their much slower growth curve.
Side note: Benioff also said earlier this year that they were done hiring programmers because AI. I'll let their careers page put the lie to that.
Companies can choose to reduce costs by firing people, or to improve outcomes using both humans and AI. When they fire people they are saying they have no idea what to do with them. But people have AI too, we are no worse than AI.
Salesforce has a DX problem, putting the AI conversation aside, they probably should have developers so they know how to address this.
Benioff is making the same bet uber did with self driving cars, maybe this time it will be different?