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Salesforce.com To Cut 200 Jobs Despite Its Expectations To Make More Money

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the all-about-the-benjamins dept.

Dawn Kawamoto writes "Sometimes, making more money is not enough. Just ask Salesforce.com. The SaaS company announced it would cut 200 jobs, during its second quarter earnings call. The cuts are coming, despite the company raising its revenue forecast for its fiscal year. Salesforce.com says it's initiating the cuts to reduce overlapping roles and to (you guessed it) gain 'synergy', following its effort to meld its cloud marketing platform company ExactTarget with its social media market suite Marketing Cloud. And apparently this isn't the first time Salesforce has tried to squeeze out those nebulous 'synergies.' It reportedly cut 100 jobs in October, when it merged its social media platform companies Radian6 and Buddy Media."

4 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. Corporate Welfare by Tridus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This has been making a lot of news in Eastern Canada, because Salesforce (who bought local company Radian6) got a payroll grant from the government to go out and create 300 jobs with. ...

    So naturally they cut a bunch of other jobs. The government has been scrambling ever since to not look like total morons for giving them money at all. Which is good, because corporate welfare schemes are always a ripoff for taxpayers and the only way it'll ever stop is if politicians start to get embarrassed for doing it.

    --
    -- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
    1. Re:Corporate Welfare by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      This has been making a lot of news in Eastern Canada, because Salesforce (who bought local company Radian6) got a payroll grant from the government to go out and create 300 jobs with. ...

      I so dearly love when people (especially politicians) immediately make statements like that, implying that a company received a ton of money, without actually checking, you know, facts? If one bothers to read the news, it will become clear that _no money_ has been given at all. This is a grant based on various conditions, the essence of which appears to be that 300 long term jobs are created (and maintained) in New Brunswick over the next five years. It is actually still likely that those goals will be met, but if they are not, no government money will be spent. Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/story/2013/08/29/nb-salesforce-radian6-job-cuts-1111.html

      Disclosure: This is my personal comment, I work for Radian6 as a techie, but I have no actual knowledge of any financial details, beyond what I can read in the news like everyone else.

  2. Re:Go ahead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    How many of the 200 chosen will be the ones with higher salaries and only 2 years to go until retirement?

  3. Re:Go ahead by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1, Interesting

    1. Whenever a company uses the word "synergy" it make me believe they are using marketing hype and really don't have a clue if what they are going to try is the right thing or not.

    In a large company, the person that makes a decision, and the person that justifies the decision to the public, are two different people.

    If they really did not need them then why did they hire them in the first place?

    I have hired, and later fired, plenty of people over the years. Hiring good people is hard, and some mistakes are unavoidable. So periodic pruning is needed. This is good for the company, and, in the long run, better for the employees as well because they will find a new job that is a better fit to their abilities and offers a greater potential for career growth. Some countries, including many in Southern Europe, have passed laws to discourage this employee churn, and the result is economic stagnation as profits and productivity fall.