Salesforce will pause all hiring in technology and product divisions, including in its chat subsidiary Slack, according to a message from Ross Harmes, chief of staff to the Slack CTO, seen by Fortune.
“This isn’t our first rodeo with hiring pauses, but it’s definitely disruptive and will affect our plans in Q1 and beyond,” Harmes wrote. “Remember, we won’t ask you to do the same amount of work with fewer people, so adjust plans accordingly.”
While Salesforce had a hiring freeze last year from October 2022 to January 2023, this hiring freeze doesn’t have an anticipated end date, according to the memo. The freeze will be lifted “based on how the numbers are looking each quarter, I would assume at least a quarter,” Harmes wrote. All written and verbal offers already out will be honored, the memo added. A spokesperson for Salesforce told Fortune that the firm has “made rapid progress on our hiring goals in technology and product to support strategic growth areas like AI,” adding that they’re “continuing strategic hiring to meet the needs of our business.“
“Headcount that you currently have isn’t going away, it’s just being delayed,” Harmes wrote. “We’ll maintain the list of open roles, and continue to add to it when people leave.”
This hiring pause comes after Salesforce went on a hiring spree just a few months ago, hiring 3,300 people across various departments, Bloomberg reported. Just one year ago, in January 2023, the firm laid off 10% of its staff after hasty pandemic hiring followed by an economic downturn.
“Our job is to grow the company and to continue to achieve great margins,” Benioff told Bloomberg in an interview at the time. “We know we have to hire thousands of people.”
Layoffs and pauses seem to be making an unfortunate comeback in the new year. The announcement of Salesforce and Slack’s hiring pause coincides with significant reductions in Amazon’s Twitch and Prime Video divisions, where there are plans for a 35% reduction in staff and several hundred cuts, respectively. There’s also Humane, the AI pin startup which raised over $200 million and plans to ship its new hardware in the coming months, which laid off four percent of employees this week in a cost-cutting measure.
This freeze comes as a surprise to some, especially after Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff extended job offers to OpenAI employees in November, promising to match their current salaries after the temporary removal of OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman.
“The good news is that we’ve made a ton of hires over the last six months. The bad news is that managers with open roles will feel the pain for a while with understaffed teams,” Harmes wrote.
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This is an ongoing story, please check back later for updates.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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