I’ve been reading about how AI is completely changing the way major tech companies operate internally. It seems like Salesforce is going through a huge transformation where they’re moving thousands of their existing workers into different roles instead of hiring from outside.
From what I understand, more than half of their new positions in the first quarter were filled by people who already worked there. This sounds like a massive reshuffling of their workforce.
I’m curious about how this kind of internal redeployment actually works in practice. Does anyone know if this is becoming a common trend across other tech companies too? It makes me wonder if this is the new normal for how businesses will adapt to AI changes.
Has anyone experienced something similar at their workplace? I’m trying to understand if this approach is more effective than traditional hiring methods when companies need to pivot their operations.
i completely agree! it’s kinda wild how fast they can shift gears with staff who already know the ropes. not only does it cut costs, but it keeps the vibes good with experienced peeps sticking around. this trend is def popping up in more places!
Exactly what I’ve been seeing. We dealt with this last year when AI took over most of our data processing.
Internal redistribution works better than people think. Your current employees already know the company culture and systems. When we moved our data ops team into AI training and validation, they got productive way faster than new hires would’ve.
Salesforce is smart doing this now instead of waiting. Early movers are more open to learning new skills, and you skip the whole layoffs-then-expensive-hiring mess.
What’s cool is they’re probably spotting which roles AI will hit hardest and getting ahead of it. Most companies I know are still pretending this isn’t happening as fast as it is.
The hard part is getting people to actually want retraining. Some of our folks pushed back initially, but once they realized the new roles were way more interesting than their old repetitive work, most got on board.
Salesforce is basically future-proofing their workforce while keeping things running smoothly. I’ve been through this before when my old company rolled out automated customer service. Here’s the thing - when you move people internally instead of hiring from outside, they already know the business. That cuts the learning curve way down. Most companies screw up the timing though. Salesforce is being proactive instead of waiting until it’s too late. If you wait until AI completely takes over certain jobs, you get scared employees who fight every change. Move people before their roles disappear and it feels like career growth, not crisis management. This only works if companies actually invest in training people up. The folks who adapt fastest can see a real path forward in their new roles. Without that clear progression, shuffling people around just feels like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
This makes total business sense. Companies blow tons of money recruiting externally, then lose all that institutional knowledge when they fire people. Salesforce is doing exactly what smart companies did during the cloud migration wave a decade ago - the ones that retrained their infrastructure teams kept way more talent and dodged the expertise gaps that crushed everyone else who just hired and fired. The big difference now? Speed. AI adoption is happening in months, not years, so there’s no time for slow workforce planning. Moving people internally also cuts the risk of hiring someone who can’t handle rapid tech changes. I’ve seen this work really well in enterprise roles that need deep product knowledge or client relationships. You can teach someone AI tools pretty fast, but you can’t teach them years of domain expertise.
