The big tech companies are a little scared because they are making less money (although they are still making a lot), and they are paying for the broken dishes with employment. One after another, the big tech companies have been announcing in recent weeks measures to contain expenses that imply the hiring freeze or the dismissal of some of their workers. After Meta, Twitter, Netflix or Uber, it is now Salesforce that has announced the same through an internal statement seen by Business Insider.
According to said statement, Salesforce has decided to adopt several measures to contain its expenses, among which are curbing new additions, limiting corporate travel and ruling out any company purchases.
Great employment engine. The freezing of Salesforce hiring is another setback for the labor market in the technology sector, especially in the United States, although it also affects Spain, since the company has been one of the great generators of employment in the pandemic. Okay with the data of the multinational itselfsince the start of the health emergency they have hired more than 30,000 workers, and in the first quarter of 2022 alone, 4,000 new employees have joined their ranks.
However, the poor situation of the world economy has affected Salesforce as much as the rest of the technology companies, and that, added to the pressure to which the multinational is subjected after the multimillion-dollar purchase of Slack, has caused it to take containment measures. before the bills get out of hand. And it is not for less, since in the last six months the software company has seen its shares sink 50%, despite continuing to increase its profits quarter after quarter.
Slack, an unexpected ballast. Apart from the unfavorable economic context that hits everyone, and that has shaken more than one technology company, Salesforce has an additional condition that weighs down its economy: Slack. In December 2020, the multinational bought the popular communication software for professionals for 27.7 billion dollars, an operation that was clearly successful due to the growth and potential of this tool, but which is currently conditioning its accounts.
In your last quarterly presentation of results, Salesforce executives pointed out that they are focusing on integrating their multiple tools into Slack, something that is neither easy nor cheap, but they trust that it can bring them much joy in the future. However, while they succeed, they strive to show financial stability to their shareholders, which, in an economic context like the current one, means tightening their belts.
Skinny cows. There are several technology companies that have decided to contain expenses in recent weeks by freezing hiring or dismissals. All of them, to a greater or lesser extent, are being affected by inflation and financial instability caused by the war in Ukraine. A common evil that is aggravated, in some cases, by other individuals that are leading these companies to be more conservative than ever.
Meta, for example, has stopped hiring largely due to the withdrawal of the advertising sector, to which is added the slow but inexorable decline of Facebook as a potosí of the conglomerate and the enormous expense they have made in recent months in the development of the metaverse .
The decline in advertising revenue also has affected Twitter, although in his case the uncertainty about his sale to Elon Musk has also had a lot of weight in the decision to stop the arrival of new employees. And Netflix, for its part, is experiencing the economic crisis within its particular subscriber crisis: it lost 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2022, partly due to the termination of its service in Russia, but also due to increasingly fierce competition from the other streaming platforms. Something that is paying off with numerous layoffs in the company.
