Earlier this week, Salesforce announced they would officially be laying off 90 employees and implement a hiring freeze through January 2023. These layoffs are mostly focused on temporary Contractors across Internal Recruitment and Talent Acquisition teams with Salesforce citing that most teams have hit their hiring targets for 2022.
These 2022 hiring goals were already a bit muted since Salesforce had implemented a hiring freeze back in May 2022 during the initial periods of economic uncertainty, a move made by most tech companies across Silicon Valley.
Signs the Salesforce layoffs were coming
Unfortunately, nobody should be surprised that Salesforce laid off staff in the U.S. market, especially since it was the very team members responsible for hiring throughout North America. Why? Because a few weeks ago, they announced their plans to accelerate hiring within Salesforce India, planning to add another 2,500 employees by the end of January 2023, a 25% net increase.
So, the sequence of events was essentially:
- May 2022: Salesforce slows hiring throughout North America
- September 2022: Salesforce announces plans to ramp up hiring in India, bringing total headcount in the Region to 10,000 employees by Feb 1, 2023
- October 2022: Salesforce announce plans to freeze hiring in North America, lays off parts of the Internal Recruitment team covering this Region.
The biggest question is what the next 2-3 years will hold for hiring at Salesforce (and across the broader technology ecosystem).
Factors influencing Global Hiring
As companies continue adopting remote work and building distributed teams, we could see a massive paradigm shift in where the core Product and Engineering teams are based for massive companies like Salesforce. The norm in the 2010s was for these teams to work in-office. However, multiple factors are colliding and could result in fundamental changes in where and how companies hire.
First, companies are better equipped to manage distributed, geographically diverse teams.
Second, the Salesforce skills shortage isn't getting any better and limiting hiring to a single country (the U.S.) is a poor way to address that problem for any company.
Finally, the political climate in the United States continues to make high-skilled work visas a challenge but tapping into a global talent pool is an easy way to access the talent needed without the constraints that come with requiring those individuals to be in the U.S.
