‘They’re more productive than ever’: Marc Benioff says hiring in software engineering is ‘mostly flat’ at Salesforce because of AI – but the company is expanding headcount in one key area

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has revealed hiring for software engineering has dipped as a result of AI, but the CRM giant is ramping up recruitment in other key areas to push its agentic agenda.

Speaking on TBPN this week, Benioff attributed the “mostly flat” headcount in software engineering to marked productivity benefits delivered by its own internal agentic AI tools.

“I've held my engineering headcount mostly flat this year because I've gotten so much productivity increase,” he said. “I probably have about 15,000 engineers and they're more productive than ever.”

“I'm so proud of them. Look at what we just delivered for you guys [referring to the recently launched Slackbot].”

Benioff's comments on software engineering come roughly a year after the chief exec suggested the company would freeze hiring for roles in this domain as a result of AI – a prediction that appears to have come to fruition.

“In engineering this year at Salesforce, we’re seriously debating - maybe we aren’t going to hire anyone this year,” he told The Logan Bartlett Show podcast.

While headcount in this area has remained flat, the company is driving ahead with recruitment in other key areas – particularly sales and customer engagement – as it continues to push its agentic AI service, Agentforce.

“I’ve changed the employee mix,” he said. “This year we hired 20% more account executives.”

The recruitment drive in this business segment is crucial for Salesforce, Benioff noted, allowing it to boost engagement with customers still on the fence about agentic AI and showcase its potential.

“There still needs to be people like me and you who go meet with our customers to really explain all the intricacies and nuances of the technology,” Benioff explained.

“There’s a lot of false narratives and people playing the market and saying things about AI that are not true, especially in regards to the enterprise,” he added. “We have to go and explain it, and talk to it, and build the relationships, and show them, and prototype and deploy.”

Indeed, Benioff noted that staff in these areas are “more valuable than ever” and will play a vital role in ramping up adoption of agentic AI tools.

Despite a bullish recruitment campaign on some fronts, workers in other areas of the business have bore the brunt of Salesforce’s AI and automation efforts over the last year.

In a follow-up appearance on The Logan Bartlett Show, Benioff revealed the company had cut its customer support workforce by roughly 50%.

Marc Benioff is all-in on Agentforce

Salesforce unveiled Agentforce at its annual Dreamforce conference in 2024, with Benioff hailing the advent of agentic AI as a step change in the evolutionary path of the technology.

With agents, enterprises are able to draw upon an array of autonomous bots to carry out tasks on behalf of human workers, as opposed to the previous iteration of assistants which supplemented worker activities.

The launch of Agentforce marked a huge pivot for the CRM giant, and it’s now very much all-in on the technology. Benioff even hinted that the company might even change its name to Agentforce as a result.

Looking ahead, Salesforce shows no signs of slowing down on this front. Benioff told TBPN that “every company is going to have a customer agent”, touting the fact that customer adoption rates are surging.

“Since we’ve spoken there’s like 10, 20, 30,000 companies … deploying Agentforce for their customers,” he said.

“We’ve seen these amazing agents emerge,” he added. “We’re going to see one emerge next week at the World Economic Forum.”

Agentforce has seen significant growth since launch. However, the numbers flagged by Benioff don’t quite match up. Official figures from Salesforce show that over 12,000 companies in 39 countries currently use Agentforce in some capacity.

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