Is Salesforce Layoff-Proofing Its Employees?

In just the first few months of 2026, more than 70,000 tech employees have been laid off. Some of the most recognized companies in the industry have cut employees in the thousands, including Oracle, Amazon, Meta, and Salesforce. 

Restructuring has become an increasingly normalized part of a tech business’s calendar, but some companies are beginning to consider how to redeploy their staff rather than reduce – Salesforce being one of them.

Heavy-Handed Layoffs

Over the last five years, Salesforce has laid off an estimated 13,000-14,000 employees. The company let go of roughly 1,000 in late 2022, over 7,000 in early 2023, 1,000 in 2024, and approximately 4,000-5,000 in 2025 (although some of these were redeployed). 

2023 was undoubtedly the worst year for Salesforce when it comes to layoffs, with CEO Marc Benioff recently calling them a “complete dumpster fire”. 

“If I had a thick skin, it got a lot thicker during that moment because it’s never going to go well no matter what, and it didn’t go well,” he admitted on the Behind the Founder podcast. 

The following year was unquestionably better for the SaaS leader, with 1,000 cuts rather than 7,000+. However, it was around this time that the conversation surrounding how regular mass layoffs were becoming had started escalating. 

2025’s “AI Layoffs” 

Come 2025, which saw over 124,000 people laid off across twelve months, quickly became the year of the “AI layoff” – or at least it seemed that way. 

Tech leaders were pinning job cuts on artificial intelligence left, right, and center. Analysts and critics went from incredulously reporting on the fact that AI had seemingly allowed companies to wipe out entire teams to peeling back the layers and questioning whether that was even possible.

So when the shock surrounding Marc Benioff’s comments on allegedly cutting 4,000 customer support jobs was mounting toward the end of last year, it appeared that the CEO had fully gone over to the dark side, embracing agent automation over human capabilities. 

“I need less heads”, he had said at the time, just weeks after he had assured naysayers that AI would not cause white-collar layoffs – something he would go on to maintain, despite the circumstances. 

Salesforce has since said that Benioff did not explicitly mean that the company had cut 4,000 people from its customer support arm, but that some people and teams were redeployed to growth areas of the business. Some roles were not backfilled, but this change occurred quietly over the course of the year. 

But what does redeploying actually mean, and does this mean that Salesforce has been “layoff-proofing” its employees?

Redeploying at Salesforce

In an era where tech layoffs have almost become expected, Salesforce’s redeployment efforts are certainly something to watch. 

Like with most things at Salesforce, focus is laser-trained on AI and the company’s position within what it calls the “Agentic Enterprise”. This means that Salesforce has been doing a lot of string-pulling behind the scenes to ensure that every employee is actively working towards its agentic goals. AI skills are no longer a nice-to-have – at least at Salesforce, they’re mandatory.

“Over the last year, the company has redesigned workflows, reskilled its workforce, and redeployed and rebalanced its people to optimize human-AI collaboration,” Salesforce wrote in January.  

It insists that a reshaping effort has been underway rather than a reducing effort, perhaps learning from its bloodbath year of 2023. This includes redeploying hundreds of employees to different business areas, and adding thousands of roles in sales and professional services, including forward-deployed engineers (FDEs). 

In March, the company’s FDE team, which is responsible for helping customers deploy artificial intelligence solutions, was at least 1,000 people strong, and is quickly becoming an integral team as part of Salesforce’s AI mission.

Another example is Salesforce’s “AI Operations” unit, led by Zachary Stauber, Head of the Digital Success Data & AI Team. He needed to double the size of his Evaluations unit – a group tasked with analyzing the answer quality and conversation quality of AI agents – and chose to do so by taking on internal candidates. 

Stauber worked to identify support engineers who were good candidates for redeployment from reactive troubleshooting into forward-deployed engineer roles. 

“Redeployment has been such a great opportunity,” he said. “These are candidates who have deep Salesforce knowledge, understanding of AI, and are willing to lean into a new and meaningful space for the business.”

How Has Salesforce Been Supporting Redeployed Employees?

One of the ways the redeployment process has been facilitated is through Career Connect, an internal talent marketplace for current Salesforce employees. 

This platform has been helping employees and internal recruiters identify transferable skills and new opportunities within the company, allowing them to explore roles or paths they may not have considered before. 

Salesforce also works on its own AI Fluency Playbook, consistently evaluating how humans and AI can work together.

Final Thoughts: Does This Mean No More Layoffs?

Although it is very good news that Salesforce is actively working to reshape its workforce with the “redeploy, not reduce” methodology, this does not necessarily mean that no more layoffs are coming for the SaaS leader.

Salesforce still faces mounting pressure from activist investors and is fighting head-to-head with some of the most significant AI players in the game in the AI race. It is a for-profit company; it will do what it needs to do.

Have you been part of Salesforce’s redeployment program? Reach out to us at tips@salesforceben.com.