I bet you could rehire those 4000 experienced staff, if you offered them a sufficient raise, and some other significant contractual benefits.

And yet, despite fucking up royally, CEO Marc Benioff won't lose his job or probably any remuneration. And there's the problem.

“We assumed the technology was further along than it actually was,” one executive said privately

I wonder how many executives made these types of decisions knowing the technology could not perform as intended, but wanted to boost their quarterly or yearly bonuses, versus how many were just gullible morons.

Oh no!!! The dumb business plan that has no proven way of working didn’t work!?

Not that I don't love this for them.

But this source is really odd, it's not a reputable new source, and has no citations, and very much an opinion blog type site.

Is there a better source for the story?

Unfortunately it’s part of their plan.

Now they will hire people for cheaper.

Cool, now fire the entire executive staff. Replace them.

I already had a good few years academic and professional experience in both NLP and ML before ChatGPT came out, and since then I’ve been doing some consulting in gen AI.

I don’t feel safe posting or commenting anything about AI on LinkedIn because of the sheer strength of the cult of “if you criticise AI you’re a Luddite who doesn’t understand the modern world, and should be shunned professionally”. Pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes makes you unemployable in the eyes of at least half the hiring managers in my contacts.

It’s amazing how stupid these people are

How much longer will anyone believe the lie that success is earned and not luck

I think it's a giant billboard sign that if they can replace you, they will. It was good for the tech bros to see this.

ha ha ha, haha, ha ha, hahahahaha, ha ha, ha

Who couldn't have seen that coming? It really brings home how stupid most of these company leaders are. The lack of ethics and reduced morals they have allow them to rise to the top of the organization but that in no way selects for intelligence. AI has them blinded because their dream is to have everyone replaced by machines. Just like that Twilight Zone episode.

I picture a room with 5 execs desperately typing into chatgpt.

Time to short

ML techniques have a lot of productive uses. Perhaps even LLMs and other generative approaches find their useful place one day. It takes effort and grit to find those productive uses and make them pay, which has been the case for any new technology I’ve seen come to the fore over the past good few decades. Chasing quick profits never delivered the results, and it never will.

now get fucked

Sad trombone…

What did people bet on how long this would take? I think I was around 1 year?

But modern high-performance computing is so awesome?

Unfortunately, the company I work for uses Salesforce to supply equipment to me and my colleagues.

I've not been able to log in with my given credentials to order winter gear.

This... Explains a lot.

Always the damn suits.

Salesforce has now begun reframing its AI strategy, shifting away from the language of replacement toward what executives call “rebalancing.”

Gee, I wonder why the executives suddenly don't want anyone talking about replacing people 🤔

“We assumed the technology was further along than it actually was,” one executive said privately

Assumed? They fired nearly half their customer service team on an assumption? Why do they get paid that much money then?

Unfortunately they've wrecked 4000 lives, but they'll take big bonuses and walk away winners.

This was a staggeringly short-sighted and inept move by the senior management of Salesforce. But then from everything I've heard of that company, this is just par for the course.

So they fired some of the execs that made this call right? /s

More evidence that LLMs are perfectly suited to emulate the incompetence of senior executives.

They are one of the worst companies to work with, especially if you manage corporate email systems. I think RIM is the only company that caused me more pain in my career. They really are very poorly managed, and their systems are straight garbage. But they keep making money because execs gonna exec.

maybe replace your DOUCHEBAG ceo.

Sucks to suck, fuckers.

Sales

Ah, the scourge of capitalism.
I got some snake oil in my boot to sell you.

lol good. I hope they get the employees they deserve.

I worked there before. Was laid off because I wouldn't RTO. Fuck them.

Unfortunately, I don't see any indication of comprehension of the real problem on the part of the executives. To them, they just had an ooops, we should have waited a bit longer. They aren't going to rethink the strategy. They're going to throw money at it until it works. They will probably throw more money than it would have cost to keep those pesky humans, but there's a more important goal there that they're not saying out loud.

Behind the scenes, the layoffs triggered challenges that were not anticipated when the AI rollout was approved.

Former and current employees describe a loss of institutional knowledge, longer resolution times for complex cases, and an increased burden on remaining staff tasked with supervising AI outputs. In some instances, human agents were required to step in and correct AI-generated responses, eroding the productivity gains the layoffs were meant to deliver.

Not anticipated my ass. Every company that has gone down the path of firing experienced staff has run into this issue.

overestimated AI’s readiness

No shit, a tech only a few years old is not ready to be shoehorned into everything.

Totally unexpected and unpredictable outcome ........ (Don't make me add /s it's uncalled for)

It's a surprise to psychopath executives who connot distinguish between human resources and non-human resources.

SalesForce is a shit product

“We assumed the technology was further along than it actually was,” one executive said privately, reflecting a growing recognition that AI performance in controlled demonstrations did not translate cleanly into real-world customer environments.

Just this once I'd like to see the C-suite take personal consequences. Their overconfidence was based simply on wishful thinking, and if there is one company that should know better than trusting a sales demo, it's Salesforce.

Hire back everyone with retroactive pay, then let the leopard finish eating the execs’ faces by firing them and replacing with AI (except, don’t bother with the AI part)