Salesforce's AI push slows hiring; piles pressure on engineers, customer service roles
Salesforce has acknowledged that its adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) tools has enabled the company to scale back on recruitment, according to a report by Bloomberg.
During an analyst call, chief financial and operations officer Robin Washington said the company is reducing hiring, with 500 customer service staff to be moved into other roles—an adjustment expected to save $50 million. She attributed this to the implementation of AI.
Meanwhile, in an interview, Washington also said that the company is recruiting fewer engineers thanks to AI-driven productivity boosts. 'We view these as assistants, but they are going to allow us to have to hire less and hopefully make our existing folks more productive.'
As of January 31, Salesforce had a workforce of around 76,500.
Despite the reduced hiring in technical roles, the company is ramping up its sales team. Chief revenue officer Miguel Milano stated that the salesforce now numbers 13,000 and is expected to grow by 22% over the coming year.
In February, Salesforce announced plans to cut over 1,000 jobs, while simultaneously hiring staff to support the sale of its new AI products.
Other major tech companies are also using AI to cut costs associated with staffing.
Earlier this month, Microsoft laid off approximately 6,000 employees, with software engineers bearing the brunt of the cuts.
At Meta's LlamaCon conference in April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed that AI now writes between 20% and 30% of the code within the company's repositories.
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