Slack has begun cutting roughly 10% of its workforce, a move that lands just one day after parent company Salesforce revealed plans for sweeping layoffs across its operations. The job reductions at the workplace messaging platform confirm that Salesforce’s restructuring extends deep into its subsidiary network.
Business Insider first reported the Slack cuts, which remained uncertain when Salesforce announced its broader downsizing Wednesday. At that point, leadership had not clarified whether subsidiaries like Slack and Tableau would absorb any of the blow.
Salesforce acquired Slack in July 2021 through a landmark $27 billion transaction. That deal folded the chat service into Salesforce’s customer relationship management ecosystem while giving Slack heavyweight backing against Microsoft Teams during an intensely competitive stretch of the pandemic era.
The layoffs have not received official confirmation. However, Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield signaled the gravity of the situation in messages viewed by Fortune. He suggested the reductions would have hit harder had Slack operated as an independent company.
“The market shifts we’re going through right now are generational in magnitude,” Butterfield wrote, adding that economic conditions would have forced similar actions regardless of ownership. He also described Salesforce’s severance packages as “relatively generous.”
The cuts follow weeks of leadership churn at both companies. Butterfield announced his exit in December, alongside departures of Salesforce Chief Product Officer Tamar Yehoshua and marketing executive Jonathan Prince. Co-CEO Bret Taylor and Tableau CEO Mark Nelson left around the same time.
Meanwhile, Tableau confirmed its own layoffs this week, according to the Puget Sound Business Journal. Salesforce purchased the Seattle-based data visualization firm for $15 billion in 2019.
Slack representatives have not responded to comment requests. A Salesforce spokesperson declined to discuss the layoffs Wednesday, pointing instead to a letter from CEO Marc Benioff included in recent SEC filings. The restructuring signals a painful recalibration for one of tech’s most aggressive acquirers.
