Tech company with strong Canadian presence laying off 10% of its workforce
Last year was a big year for tech layoffs and the trend appears to be continuing. Salesforce just announced that it would be laying off 10% of its staff.
While Salesforce is an American software company out of San Fransico, California, it has a significant presence in Canada with offices in Halifax, Toronto, and Vancouver.
In a letter to employees, Co-Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff said that “the environment remains challenging” as Salesforce customers “are taking a more measured approach to their purchasing decisions.”
“With this in mind, weāve made the very difficult decision to reduce our workforce by about 10%, mostly over the coming weeks,” said Benioff.
According to Benioff, the company’s revenue accelerated during the pandemic. “We hired too many people leading into this economic downturn weāre now facing and I take responsibility for that,” said Benioff.
Employees affected by the change are already receiving emails. According to LinkedIn posts, Canadian workers are not exempt from the mass layoffs.
Salesforce workers at the Vancouver office
“Not a great way to wake up, that’s for sure,” said a now-former full-stack engineer at Salesforce in their LinkedIn post announcing their layoff.
“Like so many dear friends and colleagues, I was impacted by the layoffs at Salesforce this morning,” they wrote.
Last year, Salesforce reported that it employed more than 73,000 folks globally, so it’s possible that close to 7,300 people will be out of a job soon as a result of the layoffs.
Laid-off workers in the US (workers in other countries can expect similar benefits) are set to get close to five months of pay and other benefits to “help with their transition.”
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