Salesforce cut 10% of staff to reset after overhiring

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 46:23

   a story, and let me ask you this, is there a story you could share when it was a big struggle for you when you're struggling, when something went super wrong that you work through and learn something from? Sure. Well, I mean, I'll just give this example. About two years ago, we went through this huge transformation in our company and there were a lot of crazy things that were happening, but it was a little bit like we're all on this airplane and everything is going really well.

2. 46:48

   and then something seems to be going really wrong and we look up front and the two pilots seem to be missing and then the one guy with the parachute jumped out of the plane and then we're all like whoa what are we going to do and we had to do some really crazy and somewhat destructive things at the moment to basically get the regeneration of the company one of those things that we did two years ago was we had to architect a layoff and we had never done a scaled layoff before we had to lay off 10% of the company to save the company. And I didn't want to do it. I mean, it's the last thing I want to do as an entrepreneur, which is to kind of adjust our headcount. But we were coming out of the pandemic and we had just hired too many people. Now it turned out that a lot of companies in Silicon Valley all did that same maneuver during the pandemic. Things were so robust in

3. 47:40

   the pandemic that we were over hiring. And by the time the pandemic was over, we had too many people. I mean, what did I know? It was my first pandemic. And all of a sudden, you know, my next pandemic, I'll know, you know, that it's like there's an economic cycle associated with it and an inflation cycle too. So I learned a lot in the pandemic. And now we're here. Now, all of a sudden, we're architecting two years ago, this layoff. And then when we did the layoff, then I'm trying to over communicate. I'm having all employee meetings. It's a complete dumpster fire. It's a nightmare.

4. 48:14

   I'm getting bashed in the press on Twitter. Everyone's like shooting at me, you know, it's like, Oh boy, you know, if I had a thick skin, it got a lot thicker during that moment because, you know, it just is not, it's never going to go well, no matter what. And it didn't go well. And, um, but we got through it, you know, and, uh, like to the point where, you know, you're giving me these accolades, wonderful, you know, on this, on this podcast about where we are today financially and from a structural standpoint, or now from product innovation standpoint, but that's not where we were two years ago. It was clear we had to go through a financial transformation, which included an adjustment of our headcount. And we had to go through a technology and a product and an innovation transformation. And those two things were

5. 49:04

   going to require us to do a number of things and they were going to be painful. And so we all had to go through some of that pain to get the gain that we have now. And that was not easy, but I was in shock that I was going through this two years ago because I had already been running the company for 23 years. Things were going pretty well. And yes, there were a lot of failures during that period. I just didn't expect another massive issue to hit me, but guess what? They're constantly at massive issues coming at you and there's more coming and that's the nature and my friend michael dell is probably the best entrepreneur i know you know he says there is no linear success so what that means is that stock chart that you just referred to there's no up and to the right perfect chart you know where it's just one line i don't care who you are

6. 49:54

   apple doesn't have one no one has one okay and there's going to be changes could be economic changes. It could be societal changes. It could be the pandemic. There's no up and to the right. And if you think it's only going to be about up and to the right, you're in the wrong business or you have the wrong life, right? You want to, hey, the monastic life is maybe more for you, where you're, you know, you're just out living in that more of that steady state, right? But if you want more variation where it's not steady state, the entrepreneur life is a rock and roll roller coaster and you get ready because it's going to be pounding you all the time.