Slack is laying off 10% of its product and engineering organization, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Insider could not confirm if all impacted employees have been notified yet, but at least some have, according to one of the people.
The cuts are part of a broader restructuring plan announced on Wednesday by Slack's corporate parent Salesforce. The software giant intends to lay off 10% of its full workforce, which adds up to about 7,000 jobs based on Salesforce's last published workforce numbers for its fiscal 2022 when it reported 73,461 employees. Salesforce also intends to close some of its office locations in a further effort to cut costs.
The cuts at Slack come just one month after Slack cofounder and CEO Stewart Butterfield announced his plans to leave the company, along with chief product officer Tamar Yehoshua, who had worked at Slack for three years. Butterfield said at the time that his exit had been planned in advance.
Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor, who had championed the Slack acquisition when he was Salesforce's chief operating officer — and was seen as CEO Marc Benioff's heir apparent — also resigned last month.
Salesforce closed its acquisition of the workplace messaging platform Slack for $27.7 billion in July 2021. The deal was seen as a way for Salesforce to make an aggressive foray into workplace communications during the pandemic's rise in remote work. And it put Salesforce into another area of direct competition with its longtime rival Microsoft with its Microsoft Teams. It was Salesforce's largest acquisition to date, second to its $15 billion purchase of Tableau in 2019.
As Insider previously reported, Salesforce asked some managers to rank their lowest 10% of employees in December, and Benioff warned employees last month in an all-hands meeting to expect "changes." So employees have been bracing for word of layoffs. While they began on Wednesday, they will continue for weeks, Benioff warned in an email sent to the whole company.
Yet some Salesforce managers, even senior managers and senior vice presidents, were blindsided yesterday as they had no forewarning when the layoffs would commence, Salesforce employees told Insider. In five Slack exchanges viewed by Insider, managers told direct reports they had learned of the layoffs from Benioff's company-wide email. At least one learned about it from an employee after that person was let go, according to a Slack message viewed by Insider.
Insider confirmed that roughly 1,000 Salesforce employees were notified on Wednesday of their terminations. In addition to Slack, others impacted areas include recruiters and roles at MuleSoft, the data integration platform Salesforce acquired for $6.5 billion in 2018. The company also cut hundreds of sales jobs in November. Salesforce declined to provide additional comments beyond its SEC filing made public on Wednesday.
Do you work at Salesforce or have insight to share? Contact Ellen Thomas via email (ethomas@insider.com) or on Signal: (+1-646-847-9416), using a nonwork device.
