As we wrap up an eventful 2024, there is no better time to reflect on how much Salesforce has changed as both a product offering and company.
When we last reflected on the state of all things Salesforce last year – the job market, and the ecosystem – the message was clear: saturation, layoffs, and unease about the future were the main talking points. A year later, how different do things look now?
The Great Reset Theory
2020’s COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the globe – and although we are now out of the weeds, the magnitude of its ripple effect has negatively impacted the past few years and may continue to do so.
Interestingly, the tech industry didn’t crash and burn during this time as other industries did – it thrived. Shira Ovide, a journalist for the New York Times, wrote a post in 2021 that included a brilliant quote: “I promise you that Big Tech’s numbers are now so wild that I am running out of non-curse words to explain them.”
Salesforce, of course, felt this too. Their 2020 State of Sales report showed that 84% of sales operations professionals said digital transformation had accelerated since 2019. Virtual selling had become the new norm; it was a fruitful time across the ecosystem.
As the world began to climb out of its hiding across 2021 and 2022, things were still going strong. Salesforce had announced a record FY2022 Q4 in March 2022, and Marc Benioff spoke of “tremendous demand from customers”, ending the year off on a high.
The Trough of 2023
Enter 2023, and come January, Salesforce announced that they would be laying off 10% of their workforce, after letting go of 1,000 employees in November 2022.
The boost of the pandemic had come to a sharp end, with Benioff admitting that Salesforce had “hired too many people” throughout the pandemic. We had seen the peak; we were now in the trough.
Despite this, Salesforce made one of its first bold steps into the AI realm come March 2023, announcing and unveiling Einstein GPT – both a challenge and a nod to ChatGPT that graced the world not too long before.
Then came Dreamforce, where the first AI rebrand came into effect; Einstein GPT had become the Einstein 1 Platform/Studio, operated by Einstein Copilot. Einstein 1 Studio, as we know, consisted of Prompt Builder, Skills Builder, and Model Builder, transforming the way Salesforce professionals used Salesforce AI.
It was a big venture and a committed step to the forefront of AI innovations, but it unfortunately did not perform as well as hoped. The Einstein Platform just wasn’t accessible to many orgs due to its pricing, but the full effect of this didn’t really become apparent until Dreamforce 2024, when it was announced that only 122K prompts were being executed per week compared to 83.2B flows.
Meanwhile, the ecosystem – and the job market by extension– was facing a level of uncertainty not felt since the recession era of 2008-2010. 10k’s 2023 Talent Ecosystem Report revealed some less-than-favorable insights, and ultimately, there just weren’t enough jobs for newbies looking to break their way into the industry. The luck for existing professionals wasn’t faring too well either, and layoffs had already started the year off in a less-than-promising way.
On top of this, the 9% price increase across Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Industries, and Tableau likely did not make situations easier for end users. A lot of businesses also struggled with rising costs due to the highest rate of inflation in 40 years.
So, with 2023 faring as one of the most difficult years in Salesforce’s history, how has 2024 been? Let’s take a look at the job market first.
Is the Salesforce Job Market Still Saturated in 2024?
We concluded at the end of 2023 that the Salesforce job market was decidedly saturated. Kindled by a disparity between supply and demand as well as salaries, and the rise in certified professionals with half-built skillsets, the end of the year signaled a murky future. Was a career in Salesforce even worth pursuing anymore?
This year’s findings from 10k’s 2024 Talent Ecosystem Report indicate that Salesforce, like many other tech companies, is continuing to experience what can be interpreted as a “post-covid hangover” – essentially a slowdown or correction following the rapid growth and high valuations experienced during the pandemic’s surge in digital transformation and remote work adoption.
As a result, once again, there is a distinct disparity between supply and demand. This year, supply grew by 19% and demand decreased by 37%. It will take a while for the ecosystem to find an equilibrium here, but this news is not as stark as last year; the drop in demand is only 37% this year compared to 46% last year.
The rise in supply was also slower this year, with a 19% increase compared to a 28% increase last year. It can be speculated that this is due to uncertainties within the ecosystem surrounding Salesforce’s direction, the threat of layoffs due to AI, and the continued difficulty in landing Salesforce jobs.
In our first salary survey, we were able to paint a clearer picture of this – an overwhelming majority (87%) of respondents admitted that the market has been more challenging than in previous years. Juniors in the industry felt this most, but the pinch was felt across the board, even extending to director-level positions.
This was unfortunately coupled with a decline in career opportunities. Of the respondents, 54.4% said that there have been fewer opportunities within their roles, 20.4% said there have been more, and 25.2% said it has stayed the same.
LinkedIn statuses and Reddit threads with titles like ‘Getting a job at Salesforce… how the hell’ remain prevalent, especially as 10k’s report stated Salesforce is indeed hiring, with 755 open roles documented in early August, and the announcement of hiring 1000 employees in November.
It’s in threads like the one mentioned here that people voice their struggles of getting hired by Salesforce, with one commenter noting that they believe most hiring now happens through referrals or acquisitions.
“I went through their interview process and got access to their insider program (basically an opportunity to network with existing employees),” they said. “I was looking for employees who also went through the interview process, but everyone I found had joined through an acquisition.”
In the wider partner ecosystem, you could assume that hiring would have increased due to a 20% increase YoY in the number of Salesforce partners – the most notable increase since 2020. However, some of the most recent high-profile layoffs will be taking place after the acquisition of Own, so it’s tricky to say whether the number sits in the positives.
The Disruption of Agentforce
At this stage, it’s almost imperative that we acknowledge the elephant in the room: Agentforce.
In case you haven’t heard the buzzword enough this year, there’s no denying the power that Agentforce has as both a product and market disruptor. So far, the stats look positive: Salesforce have announced that they are aiming to hire over 1,000 people to help keep up with Agentforce’s demand. At the time of writing this article, there are currently 46 open positions for jobs matching the word ‘Agentforce’ on Salesforce’s career site.
However, like with any notable new technology such as AI, a substantial group of professionals worry that a technology like Agentforce will result in a larger loss of jobs. From a surface-level perspective, it can be easy to believe that; Marc Benioff, Salesforce’s CEO, has continuously pioneered Agentforce as a truly groundbreaking product.
It’s definitely too early to make a concrete or meaningful hypothesis here, as the future remains very much in Salesforce’s working hands. However, if Michael Costigan, Vice-President of Salesforce Futures, is to be believed, the road ahead might be clear for a while; Costigan sees Agentforce “not as a replacement but as a supplement to people,” as noted by the Enterprise Times.
It was Agentforce that has been touted as the driving force behind last quarter’s strong earnings too, and what feels a world away from the disappointing results of this year’s first quarter. Not only that, but there’s good news for investors too: there’s been a 65% increase in Salesforce’s stock price since its notorious dip in May.
It must be said that growth is not accelerating by any means, but the first proof of escaping 2023’s trough has now been outlined.
The State of the Salesforce Ecosystem in 2024
When it comes to the state of the wider ecosystem as 2024 draws to a close, although a portion of the ecosystem has its concerns, satisfaction amongst professionals is high.
If we draw from our salary survey once again, we can see that the majority of professionals stated that they felt 80-90% satisfied in their careers. However, in the same vein, 58% of respondents also admitted that they were considering changing jobs or industries in the near future.
We concluded earlier this year that this comparison of statistics didn’t necessarily equate with professionals being unhappy in their roles, but indicated that although they may be content in their positions, they also weren’t afraid to ‘jump ship’ for better opportunities.
Ben McCarthy, the founder of Salesforce Ben, said that although we can’t deny that 2024 has had its fair share of grievous moments, things do appear to be heading in a more positive direction.
“The Salesforce job market is in an interesting place at the moment. Although 2024 has been pretty rough with over 150,000 layoffs in the technology job market, things seem to be leveling out and the large-scale layoffs are becoming less frequent,”
He stated that it was important to understand that people are shifting away from the boom of 2022, and starting to reset to reality. Less demand for Salesforce professionals and a decrease in salaries depending on your role and location is unfortunately the norm for the moment, and although that can be seen in a negative light, it’s still a shift upwards compared to this time last year.
However, the Salesforce job market, in Ben’s words, remains “resilient”.
“If the Salesforce share price is anything to go by, there is a huge amount of optimism around Salesforce’s future prospects, especially with how they have positioned themselves in the Agentic AI revolution.”
Do Professionals Feel Fairly Compensated?
If we look at professional satisfaction through a financial lens, we’re provided with a strong idea of how content professionals are in their Salesforce roles.
In our salary survey, 56.7% of respondents said that they feel their salary is fair and equal compared to others in their role, with 43.3% of respondents disagreeing with this statement.
This nearly even split highlights a wide range of opinions. Several factors could explain this, such as a decline in salaries compared to three or four years ago, a perception that salaries don’t align with job responsibilities, or wages failing to keep pace with rising inflation.
The Agent Rebrand
When we first heard the word ‘pivot’ come from Marc Benioff regarding Salesforce’s Agentforce strategy, for many, it acted as a considerable indication of where Salesforce was heading.
As I mentioned earlier, 2023’s big Salesforce news was the release of the Einstein 1 platform, which, as we now know, has been rebranded into Agentforce. In a year, Salesforce’s golden offering had been given the makeover of a lifetime, and the possibilities – seemingly – were endless.
At least from Salesforce’s perspective, AI agents are the way forward, and there is no better proof of his belief in this than Marc Benioff’s constant excitement surrounding Agentforce.
In the company’s latest quarterly results, we got the latest facts and figures to back up Benioff’s excitement: Salesforce closed 200 deals for Agentforce in just one quarter, and the pipeline is “in the thousands for potential transactions that are coming up in future quarters,” according to the CEO.
However exciting this may be, it’s important to view the situation at a more granular level. One professional I spoke to in the ecosystem laughed when I asked them what they thought about implementing this kind of AI in the near future.
“Don’t even consider that yet, especially if you’re a SMB,” they said. “Fix your data quality first.”
They also said that they wouldn’t be pushing Agentforce anytime soon. “Right now, I’m not even thinking about recommending Agentforce because I know my clients won’t be able to afford it.”
Agentforce can be expensive, especially if you apply it to the wrong business use case. Due to its usage-based model, you want to ensure that each conversation (on average) leads to direct cost savings or revenue generation exceeding $2.
It’s important to consider your numbers to gauge the tool’s value. For example, if an agent was able to handle 20 interactions an hour, it would cost around $40 an hour per Agentforce’s pricing (20 x $2) assuming no bulk discount is at play. That’s why you shouldn’t view Agentforce as an investment, and why you should think of it more as a virtual employee.
Barney Haywood, the Co-Founder of Futureform, said that from a partner perspective, he anticipates some obstacles in the future.
“There are definitely going to be challenges as Salesforce requires new technology or releases new technology that partner enablement is potentially following behind. It’s now for us to focus our attention on what is achievable, and think about: what’s the plan for getting a client to actually be able to make use of these capabilities on the platform?”
Salesforce might have escaped the worst of the after-pandemic situation, but they’ll need to have one hand on the code and one hand on a crystal ball to ensure that Agentforce is as accessible as it needs to be to stand up against the likes of its competitors.
Final Thoughts
If we can finish 2024 off with one takeaway, let it be this: the Salesforce ecosystem, job market, and product offering selection are, albeit slowly, getting stronger.
But, there is undoubtedly still a way to go. More work needs to be done to ensure that Agentforce is a more accessible platform, we need to be realistic that job market stats won’t be returning to their tech boom numbers anytime soon. Salesforce still needs to continue on its wave of people-centric processes going forward.
