As the layoffs rocked Salesforce, its CEO, Marc Benioff, took a 10-day “digital detox” trip to French Polynesia, he told The New York Times.
A digital detox is a fad that involves giving up the use of digital devices, such as phones or computers, for a period of time, often with the intention of feeling more conscious and less dependent on social media.
“We are so addicted to our devices (at least I am) that it is very liberating to leave them behind for a while,” he explained to the NYT in a series of interviews.
Benioff’s digital detox is an interesting example of how a technology CEO has faced a time of change in the company, looking for a temporary period of tranquility, free of digital communication.
At the beginning of the year, Salesforce workers knew that thousands of job cuts were in the offing. On January 4, Benioff announced that Salesforce planned to cut about 10% of its 84,000-strong headcount in the coming weeks.
In a letter to employees, Benioff blamed the layoffs on the company hiring too many people during the pandemic by “accelerating revenue,” taking “responsibility” for the hiring that led to the current “economic downturn.” .
The news led to confusion and questions for Benioff from employees, but the executive did not respond to questions about the layoffs in a two-hour general meeting with employees the next day, the report said. Business Insider. Most Salesforce employees were confused about when the layoffs would take place and who they would affect, according to Slack messages reviewed by Business Insider.
At the meeting the day after the layoffs, Benioff compared the loss of employees due to the layoffs to mourning the death of a person. Business Insider posted that he showed up around 18 minutes late to a company general meeting the day after announcing the layoffs, and then, as The Times reported, quipped: “Did I miss something?”
Salesforce did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
The manager has declared NYT who now thinks the two-hour meeting was a bad idea.
“We were trying to explain the inexplicable,” Benioff explained to NYT. “It’s hard to do a meeting like that with such a large group and make it effective, and we pay a heavy price.”
After Salesforce began laying off workers, more than 500 employees sent a letter to management expressing their “discomfort with the lack of information,” asking questions such as why some managers weren’t involved in or informed about the first round of layoffs, and whether the cuts had anything to do with Salesforce’s activist investors.
Salesforce continued its planned layoffs in February, with one person telling Business Insider that it was a “bloodbath” for sales and marketing employees. It is not clear how many people have been laid off to date, but one person told Business Insider that 4,000 people were missing from the Slack company after January 31, but this could include contract workers who were laid off after the fiscal year ended.
The cuts at Salesforce come at the same time that many tech companies, from Google to Meta and Microsoft, have cut their employee base by thousands, with the possibility of more cuts on the horizon, as executives look to reduce costs after the pandemic boom in the sector.
