Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff announces no new software engineer hires – see how AI is shaping the company's future.

Salesforce Will Hire No More Software Engineers in 2025, Says Marc Benioff

https://www.salesforceben.com/salesforce-will-hire-no-more-software-engineers-in-2025-says-marc-benioff/

A ￼person holding a fortunate from a fortune cookie that reads “seek help from professionals trained in mental health care”

++ i also agree with what you’re saying, Jamie

Doesn't matter. o3 is a massive leap in reasoning skills. Very different from currently existing tools. People just like to convince themselves that reality they don't like isn't happening.

Besides that.. I don't know why you're being so defensive on the behalf of big tech companies that do what they want regardless and don't need anyone defending them. 

Whatever their justification is, less tech jobs is.. not a good thing?

Just looked through my posts and I don't see a single one where I've been wildy disrespectful or condescending. And I certainly didn't attack anyone personally like you have here so, if anything, you're projecting.

I worked in a stocklisted HR tech company until a few months ago. The tough market for hiring services in the past few years was  always correlated with inflation and recession, not AI. It has an influence ofc but most companies don’t use it for more than writing better emails.

LLMs are already helping do grond breaking research in fields like medicine. They can take the data they're trained on and take it much further. And that's LLMs before o3. o3 takes it to a different level.

The only thing I'm saying is that it's very obvious to anyone who understands tech that AI has already made a lot of engineers redundant (average to below average for now) and it's improving extremely quickly. That's really all I'm saying. Not defending anyone.

i’m genuinely glad to hear ai has enabled you to better realize the things you want to create, but this anecdote does not make me change my mind that i don’t see it replacing people solving complex design and engineering problems as quickly as is prophesized

Just came across this. I rest my case. 

https://www.salesforceben.com/salesforce-will-hire-no-more-software-engineers-in-2025-says-marc-benioff/

The tough job market isn't *just* because of AI.. For example, companies know they can get away with annual layoffs now. It's not a huge surprise that developers are on the chopping block along with everyone else. They're usually the most expensive people 🤷🏻‍♀️

In fact, it was such a powerful and positive experience that it got me excited about coding & I've got a few more ideas to try creating my own apps. For the first time I feel like I have an opportunity to do so without help from anyone else. Anyone human, anyway.

i would agree it makes just starting to create a product more accessible but this is different than it’s ability to outright replace workers for a big tech company, for example.

OK. No need to get upset. We just disagree. It's all right.

workers as in devs, in the above post^

this is from the perspective i have developed working on ai and automation tools in an engineering/tech lead role day to day, fwiw.

these are tools that can disrupt no doubt, but the impact they currently have is often overstated imo.

This has been what made the most sense to me too. It's definitely not just one factor but this makes sense to me.

there’s still a lot of tech jobs i see, but the bar to entry is higher and the competition is much fiercer. compared to the state of hiring in tech industries not even a decade ago i think this amplifies people’s perspective of how poor things are.

Currently, yes. As I said, Copilot helps an engineer be much more productive but you still need to have engineering skills and experience. o3 sounds like a completely different beast. We'll know more soon.

my experience and perspective wrt tech industry is that there was genuinely a lot of excess for a while (when i entered uni the idea of graduating into a cushy tech job was almost a given) and as times have gotten tougher this excess has dried up.

I understand everything you've said very well. Disagreeing doesn't mean not understanding.

Unlike most people on social media I actually go out of my way to state my opinions in the most neutral way possible without attacking anyone personally, even when I disagree, so the fact you think the opposite says more about how you choose to perceive what you read.

Maybe. I guess we'll see what happens in the next couple of years.

Even if what you're saying is 100% true we need to move past this idea that companies and their leadership are infallible. The reality is that people don't always know what they're doing or worse - they know and simply don't care. Sad but true

We will see. I don't think either of us know enough about it since it just came out in closed beta. If it can code at the level they say it'll be able to do everything senior engineers do, including system design.

My point was that o3 is a whole new level of AI. With Copilot (which has already 10x'ed dev productivity) you still need to really know what you're doing. o3 will likely allow anyone who has a product idea create a product. No years of tech expertise necessary.

Yeah I think the though job market is here since interest rates went up during or post COVID. No more access to free or cheap money really had a toll on companies’ budgets and hiring plans.

Crazy how much credit people will give to text predictor++, even though it still doesn't have an understanding of what the problem you're asking it is. It's helpful, sure, but I don't think most people are losing their jobs to this just yet

This will revolutionize tech making it accessible to the masses. That's the good news. The bad news is that people who were making a lot of money because they were the only ones who knew how to do these things are going to become irrelevant.

The free money well has dried up and people are scrambling for new ideas.. So they're all jumping on the AI ship whether or not it makes sense to do so 🤷🏻‍♀️

That's the great thing about this tech. People will be able to test it independently and confirm or question what Open AI said about it.

Lol, does it? I've heard good things but haven't used it myself and obviously not an engineer so don't have an opinion on it.

yeah i have known companies who legitimately do fire based exclusively on cost of employee, leaving huge gaps in knowledge/lack of specific SMEs.

imo, economic factors far outweigh AI’s abilities in these firing decisions. present day, anyhow.

So it's you who needs to seek the help of a mental health professional after self reflection. I'm fine, thank you. If you still think you're right why don't you point to a single example of your claims. Or rather multiple ones since you claim I do what you said consistently.

You are consistently wildly disrespectful and condescending. I don’t know why you choose to behave this way, but I would reflect on that.

I think people just don't want to face the reality of where this is going. Even if o3 doesn't lead to full replacement of devs (and all knowledge workers, for that matter) it's only a matter of time. And not very much time.

Read the thread or do a bit of research. That's the point. o3 is able to reason. Probably better than most people. 😂

Same goes for everyone who liked your reply to me. If I think you've found even one example I'll admit it. Probably more than any of you will ever do. Have a nice day, everyone.

i’m not denying the capability of o3. simply saying that the total replacement of devs that people dream of/catastrophize about is a ways off yet.

i also think that putting the lion’s share of blame for dev jobs drying up on ai is an incomplete picture of what’s happening.

Sure but that's a different conversation from the one I started. I was just talking about the impact o3 and similar products (surely to launch soon) will have.

Governments will have to figure out a completely different way of managing society once we enter the post work era. And it's not as far off as most people think. Andrew Yang got laughed at by a lot of normies but that's what always happens to those who are a bit ahead.

Working with it was an amazing experience. Far better than working with a human engineer. I got great code immediately, it was explained to me very well, requested changes were made right away, no condescensing tone or excuses. Brilliant!

Says the guy who insults me and tells me to go seek mental help. Look in the mirror. Where have I insulted or been condescending to anyone at all? Especially consistently. I just stated an opinion you don't like. Maybe grow a thicker skin, buddy.

i never said the job market wasn’t tough. i have incredibly qualified friends who have had to look for months upon months to find work. my point is that there’s a lot of existential doom around the job of the developer and i’m hesitant to buy into it at this current moment.

Now I don't think you're understanding what I'm saying. I'm not defending big tech. That's how you're taking it. I'm looking at trends. I don't have emotional attachment to either side like you seem to.

But if you have to think about a difficult problem, and you have to reason with the given conditions and constraints, you won't get very far with just prompting, because oftentimes your problem will be more complex than whatever it's been trained on

I also don't know how you can trust research from the company that's trying to sell you the product. Of course they're going to make it look good, they want to make money. That's how marketing works. It's like putting all your trust in the "9 out of 10 doctors" thing

Especially not people whose entire job is to think and reason about problems logically. If all you do at your day job is press buttons on a keyboard like Employee 427, then yeah LLMs can probably replace you, because you're not doing much more than they are

Check developer threads on Reddit, Levels or HN, for example. Even many senior engineers with years of experience have found the market to be tough.

If you arent a engineer, a developer or Have BEEN one in any firm, let alone “never coded much) you have NO concrete opinion on how engineers and developers will be treated under “ai” outside your twitter and ai bro articles- inherently unreliable and detached from reality

i feel like we’ve been ‘a few months away’ from ai replacing all devs and designers for like a year now

I did read the thread and did my own research before making my points. That said, I can see that this discussion isn't gonna go anywhere, so I'm just gonna leave it here

I'll give you a personal example. I'm not an engineer and have never really coded much (beyond basic HTML & CSS). I recently got an idea for a python script to automate something I've been doing manually. I was able to create it, improve it and add to it using Claude 3.5.

There's a huge impact already on the developer market now, before o3. Just ask any developer who has been looking for a new job in the past year. They used to have it really sweet. Two weeks and a new job paying much more. Very different now.

I mean.. ok? 

What we were saying before still stands.. Especially when Salesforce has been laying people off for years. Their big thing at one point was NFTs. 

I don't think you understood what we were saying

Idk, it's surprising how short-sighted some companies are. Spotify laid-off the person who made their algorithm what it is. They look at people as numbers on a spreadsheet.. (c)

It may not be a complete picture but those are semantics. I'm interested in the major shift going on not minor immediate things that might have a slight impact as well.

Didn't say it was the only factor but it's a really big factor. You wouldn't fire people you need. Even if they're expensive. The truth is that even things like Copilot have 10x developer productivity. This is according to my developer friends themselves.

Posts