More than 50 jobs are expected to go at the Irish arm of Salesforce as the customer management software company looks to shed a reported 1,000 jobs globally this year.
In response to questions from The Irish Times, the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment confirmed that the Minister, Fine Gael’s Peter Burke, received a collective redundancy notification from the North Wall, Dublin 1-based company on February 4th.
While the department declined to say how many jobs were affected, it is understood that 52 roles are in the firing line, according to a source familiar with the process.
Salesforce, which declined to comment on the latest round of cuts, reportedly employed about 2,000 people in the State at the start of 2024 after shedding more than 200 jobs here during 2023. Those cuts were part of a wave of retrenchment across the group and the tech sector globally, following a hiring spree during the Covid-19 pandemic.
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On February 4th, Bloomberg reported that San Francisco-headquartered Salesforce planned to cut as many as 1,000 jobs internationally at the start of its latest fiscal year, despite simultaneously hiring workers to sell new artificial intelligence (AI) products.
Quoting an analyst at investment advisory group Evercore, it reported that the cuts speak to Salesforce’s “focus on driving productivity and should help offset some of the incremental sales hiring that the company has already outlined”.
The news outlet said it could not determine which divisions within the company were the focus of the redundancies but reported that Salesforce, which employed some 73,000 people at the start of last year, planned to allow affected employees to apply for other roles within the business.
Salesforce is the latest in a string of tech companies that have their European headquarters in the Republic to announce job cuts in recent months.
Meta, which also employs about 2,000 people here, intends to shed about 5 per cent of its workforce globally, targeting what chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has described as low performers. Mr Zuckerberg announced the plans in a company memo in January.
Last week, Workday announced plans to cut 1,750 positions globally, or 8.5 per cent of its current workforce, a move that will affect some 142 roles at its offices in Dublin.
A small number of jobs are also expected to go in Dublin at Stripe after the online payments giant in January confirmed plans to seek some 300 redundancies globally.
Salesforce’s main trading company in the Republic, SFDC Ireland, returned to a pretax profit of $54.94 million (€52.66 million) in the 12 months to the end of January 2024 off the back of a $936 million increase in revenues from $5.18 billion to $6.12 billion, according to accounts filed last December.
In a report attached to the accounts, the directors said $988 million in costs were incurred in the year associated with its group-wide restructuring plan, which included a 10 per cent reduction in its global headcount as well as property exits and office space reductions.
