Salesforce hiring – Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff told investors that engineering headcount has been largely flat for two years at about 15,000, while the company is adding workers in sales—an approach that comes as Silicon Valley cuts jobs amid AI-driven productivity gains.
When Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff talked about headcount on Wednesday’s quarterly earnings call. the message landed hard: the company is not leaning on engineers for its next growth wave. Benioff said Salesforce’s engineering team has “been mostly flat” over the past two years. hovering around 15. 000 people. even as he pointed to “new coding agents” with “dramatic capabilities.”.
The hiring focus, he said, is elsewhere. Benioff said the growth is “mostly growing in Miguel’s area. in sales. ” referring to Miguel Milano. Salesforce’s president and chief revenue officer. Benioff tied the strategy directly to what agents can—and can’t—do in the day-to-day work Salesforce sells and delivers.
“Because, I think we all realize the one thing that we are doing here with you, selling and communicating, the agents are not exactly doing that,” he said, adding that sales will be a critical arm of the company’s expansion.
That framing matters because it runs counter to the broad mood across Silicon Valley: job reductions that executives attribute to AI’s productivity impact. Benioff’s comments arrive after he previously said Salesforce cut about 4. 000 support roles in September—roles he said AI agents would handle. The implication is clear: some functions are being squeezed by automation, while others are being staffed for expansion.
Benioff has also been unusually direct about Salesforce’s scale of AI spending. Earlier this month, in an interview, he said Salesforce is projected to spend $300 million on Anthropic tokens on projects this year.
Across the industry, the cost-cutting and AI shift is already visible in company actions. Cloudflare cut roughly 20% of its workforce in May. citing “massive productivity gains” from AI usage. according to CEO Matthew Prince during the company’s first-quarter earnings call. Fintech firm Block slashed nearly half its workforce earlier this year. with CEO Jack Dorsey writing in a shareholders’ letter that “intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company.”.
Executives have not all landed the message cleanly. Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters went viral last week for saying he was replacing “lower-value human capital”—and then apologized for the comment.
Not every leader is making the same promise about replacement. Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn said in a podcast interview this month that AI can’t match the work of his artists and designers. and that he won’t lower the quality of his app just to use AI. Benjamin Todd. president of the career research nonprofit 80. 000 Hours. told Business Insider that many key tasks in jobs aren’t automatable and that workers should focus on “safe skills” rather than “safe jobs.”.
The sequence is difficult to ignore: while coding work at Salesforce has been described as stable at around 15. 000 engineers and support roles were cut about 4. 000 in September. Benioff is publicly steering growth toward sales—positioning AI agents as tools that can help. but not replace. the work of selling and communicating.
For Salesforce. the bet is that AI will change what gets built and handled internally. freeing the company to invest headcount where it believes human performance still drives revenue. For the wider market. Benioff’s message is another datapoint in a sector wrestling with one question: whether AI is eliminating jobs across the board—or reshuffling where the work is. and who it belongs to.
Salesforce Marc Benioff Miguel Milano engineering headcount AI agents Anthropic tokens job cuts Cloudflare Block Standard Chartered Duolingo 80 000 Hours workforce reduction
So basically engineers are paused but sales people get hired? seems backwards.
I swear this “AI agents” thing just means they’ll hire less and pretend it’s progress. 300 million on tokens?? that sounds like a lot for something “dramatic” lol. Also Miguel’s area?? who even is Miguel Milano.
Wait, didn’t they cut support roles already? I saw a clip that said AI would replace them, but now they’re “adding” somewhere else. Doesn’t Benioff always say AI is gonna do stuff in the background, so why are we still hiring sales? Feels like they’re just moving layoffs around.
This is one of those articles where half the words are missing or weird spacing and then people act like it’s clear. “Flat at 15,000” like that’s good, but then they cut 4,000 support, so what, are those jobs back? And the token spend… I don’t even know what Anthropic tokens are but $300 million sounds like they’re paying for hype. The AI productivity thing always comes with layoffs right after, so I’m not impressed.