From Great Resignation to Great Termination
The theme of 2023 is tech layoffs, and this has continued into February at a pace - if you are in any doubt about this, check out https://layoffs.fyi/, which had passed the 110k mark at the time of writing versus 160k for the whole of 2022. A number of companies clearly feel the power is swinging back in their favour, as they mandate return to office without fearing a mass exodus. And to think it was only 18 months ago we were all worried about the Great Resignation!
Salesforce
Salesforce now has three activist investors involved who, amongst other complaints feel that Will.i.am and Matthew McConaughey were a bit too involved in strategy - something that I don’t recall even Silicon Valley predicting. The redundancies hit Europe this month, so it looks like the investors are getting their way to some degree. Marc Benioff was energised for the fight though, as he’d had a digital detox in late 2022, helping his addiction to devices and unproductive remote employees.
Salesforce also restricted its annual Company Kickoff attendance to leadership only - allegedly to stop leaks to the press, which is ironic given that this decision was immediately leaked to the press! One side effect of the Salesforce shenanigans is louder calls to drop the family schtick - the principles of Ohana seem flexible when they come up against the reality of economics.
There was also, for the first time in a number of years, a delay to a release. Not a major one, but sandbox issues meant it slipped into the working week in some places. Was it a case of the individual that knew to run a specific script at a specific time no longer works there? More likely a coincidence, but it’s fun to speculate!
On a more positive note, it looks like Salesforce are jumping on the ChatGPT bandwagon in time for TrailblazerDX. While it’s a fun tool, and seeing enormous interest, it feels like it would be a courageous decision to use it in production systems - I’m sure there will be some battles around ownership of the artefacts produced.
Other
The search AI wars are hotting up - no sooner have Microsoft announced the revamped Bing than Google jumped on the bandwagon with Bard.
One of my non-tech interests is rugby union, and this year’s six nations introduces a smart ball - tracked 20 times a second by a network of beacons, it will unlock another gold mine of data for coaches aiming for that extra 1%. Maybe one day it will be able to stop scrum halves feeding the second row!
Bret Taylor announced his new venture - given his track record it would be a brave individual that bets against him. Maybe Salesforce will acquire it and have another go at turning him into their CEO!
Me
New conditional LWC directives appeared in Spring ‘23, giving more clarity to decisions made in the markup.