"CEO Marc Benioff said during a Labor Day podcast that the company has already cut 4,000 customer support roles after deploying its own AI agents. "I've reduced it from 9,000 heads to about 5,000 because I need less heads," Benioff said, calling the past eight months "the most exciting" of his career. (A Salesforce spokesperson later clarified that many of the affected jobs were support engineers who were shifted into other roles.)"
"Still, Salesforce may be an outlier. Benioff was likely promoting his own AgentForce platform. Gartner predicted back in March that half of all organizations will abandon plans to shrink their customer service staff because of AI. In a poll of 163 customer service leaders, 95% said they intend to keep human agents and use AI more strategically."
"Other roles behind the scenes-like software engineering-may prove easier to replace. Junior developers, for example, are increasingly vulnerable as coding agents such as Cursor and Claude Code take on much of the basic work. A recent Stanford study found that employment for 22- to 25-year-old software engineers fell nearly 20% between late 2022 and July 2025, even as hiring for older engineers grew."
Salesforce cut about 4,000 customer support roles after deploying AI agents, with CEO Marc Benioff saying headcount fell from 9,000 to about 5,000. A Salesforce spokesperson clarified many affected roles were support engineers who moved into other positions. A poll of 163 customer service leaders found 95% intend to keep human agents and use AI strategically. Customer service is sensitive to automation, while behind-the-scenes roles like junior software developers face higher replacement risk; a Stanford study found employment for 22- to 25-year-old engineers fell nearly 20% between late 2022 and July 2025. A Gerald Huff Fund study estimates 45 million U.S. jobs at risk by 2028, including retail managers and HR coordinators.
Read at Fast Company
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