• Salesforce plans to cut 10% of its workforce, co-CEO Marc Benioff told employees Wednesday.
• MuleSoft was the hardest hit by layoffs so far, which amount to around 1,000, insiders said.
• Cuts affected recruiting and product management roles, insiders said.

Salesforce has already laid off about 1,000 employees as part of a plan to slash 10% of its workforce, and the MuleSoft unit was the hardest hit so far, insiders said. 

CEO Marc Benioff announced the overall plan in an email to staff on Wednesday, saying the cuts will happen “mostly over the coming weeks.” A Salesforce spokesperson referred Insider to the email when asked for comment on the details of this report.

While many of the initial cuts came to largely to customer-success roles at MuleSoft, the data integration platform Salesforce acquired for $6.5 billion in 2018, the layoffs did not appear to affect Salesforce’s direct sales teams, according to the insiders. Cuts this week also focused on recruiting and product management jobs, the people added. They asked not to be identified discussing sensitive topics. 

Salesforce went on a hiring binge during the pandemic, after COVID-19 forced companies to work remotely and use more cloud-based software services. When the pandemic subsided, and economic growth slowed, Salesforce experienced a slowdown, too. It laid off hundreds of sales staff in November, and employees have been expecting more cuts for weeks. Some Salesforce managers were asked in December to rank employees to identify their bottom 10% of performers. 

MuleSoft’s struggles

MuleSoft has also struggled in recent years as part of Salesforce, Insider previously reported. While MuleSoft’s product has been strong, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and smaller players like Workato and SnapLogic offer s