As AI slashes white-collar jobs, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff says almost no one is being hired—except in sales
Lots of students study engineering at university in the hope of entering the recruitment market as a hot commodity. But now the expectations of some large employers are diminishing. sales force CEO Marc Benioff recently announced that the $145 billion cloud-based platform is keeping its engineering headcount unchanged as AI pushes the boundaries of productivity. And the hiring freeze extends to many layers across the tech giant, with the exception of sales.
“We’re not hiring more engineers, we’re not hiring more GAs [general and administrative roles]we’re mostly just expanding in one area,” Benioff said during a recent conversation quarterly earnings He made the call on Wednesday, adding that the company was growing “mostly in Miguel’s territory, which is sales.”
Benioff said the number of engineers in the company sales force remained stable for about two years at about 15,000 employees; Even last year the CEO announced The company won’t hire more engineers in 2025 due to its AI gains. However, Salesforce’s headcount is still growing thanks to sales being a key area of growth.
Talent with the knowledge to sell the company’s products, from customer clouds to AI agents Loose—is at the forefront of the company’s recruiting agenda. Salesforce chief revenue officer Miguel Milano’s team is expanding even as hiring in other departments declines, the CEO noted.
“I think we all realize that the one thing we do here with you — sales and communication — that’s not exactly what reps do,” Benioff said. “They may be qualified, they may be able to provide service, but we are still scaling in sales because there are so many different segments of the market that we need to reach.”
Hiring paused, but engineering hiring freeze may be thawing
Salesforce’s decision to pause engineer hiring reflects growing concern in the profession: Artificial intelligence and declining hiring are hindering job opportunities.
“We haven’t been able to load a lot of engineers over the last couple of years,” Benioff said. “The reason it’s generally held steady is because we’re using AI to drive greater efficiency for our engineers. And this year in particular, we’ve seen much more dramatic capabilities now with these new coding tools.”
The cloud giant is not the only business that is shrinking the headcount of this department. Amazon’s layoffs of more than 14,000 last year affected nearly every part of the business, but engineers They took the hardest hit There were layoffs, too, as nearly 40% of the 4,700 layoffs in New York, California and New Jersey were from engineering positions. And Microsoft’s software engineers was the largest single job category to receive layoff notices in May last year. As of the beginning of 2025, the number of job postings for software engineers, the most common technology job title, was down 49% from early 2020 levels. according to a Really Recruiting Lab analysis.
