Through the sky’s-the-limit boom years, Marc Benioff, the co-founder and chief executive of
Salesforce.com Inc., told employees they were bound together like family. In today’s leaner times, he is laying off thousands of them.
Since its founding in 1999, the San Francisco-based business-software company has grown fast and spent big. Salesforce put its name on skyscrapers in San Francisco, Tokyo, London and New York City and, according to people familiar with the arrangement, agreed to pay actor Matthew McConaughey more than $10 million a year to be a creative adviser and TV pitchman. Mr. Benioff added around 30,000 employees from the start of 2020 until the end of last year, roughly a 60% increase.
