The day after Salesforce began informing thousands of employees that it was terminating their jobs in what will be weeks of rolling layoffs, some 47,000 employees tuned into a virtual all-hands meeting.
They wanted their executive leadership, especially founder and CEO Marc Benioff, to answer their questions about the layoffs, give them an idea on who might be targeted next and when.
Instead, he talked for nearly two hours in what listeners described as a rambling, often "tone deaf" discussion. And one topic employees noticed that he discussed was leaks to the press.
"If there's somebody out there who thinks that they should take a Slack recording or a video recording or whatever and that it's the right of the public to see what's happening inside our company, wow, that is very surreal," Benioff said. "I have a thick skin after doing this for 24 years and I don't care what people say about me. You know, I want us to get to the right place as a company. And one way to do that is with total transparency and with total communication."
Meanwhile, employees told Insider they have been left in the dark about many of the details about the layoffs and have been finding out through news reports. One manager had to call each of their own employees to find out whether they had been laid off, that person posted on the Slack channel during Thursday's all-hands. An employee who was laid off found out about the layoffs through social media while they were taking time off, they said.
Some days earlier, Benioff had also bemoaned leaks to the press in a company-wide internal Slack message viewed by Insider.
"I hope you will agree it is also disappointing that our private conversations here were almost immediately given to the public media," Benioff wrote. "I wonder how do we reinforce that Trust is our highest company value? How do we demonstrate the power of Trust and Transparency without an immediate public disclosure. It gets to the heart of who we are at Salesforce."
And on Monday, after Insider published more details on turmoil going on inside of Salesforce as it prepares for its next round of job cuts, Benioff published yet another company-wide message about leaks.
"I noticed that recently our Slack posts, AHCs, and other company communication are leaving our circle of trust. Does it hurt all of us when this information is intentionally leaked? Am I the only one who enjoyed the movie 'Meet the Rockers'?" he asked.
He then posted a link to a YouTube compilation of the ongoing "circle of trust" joke from the 2004 Ben Stiller film. The compilation shows scenes where the ex-CIA father-in-law (Robert De Niro) threatens the ousting of his son-in-law, (Stiller), using the phrase "circle of trust."
It was an admittedly humorous attempt to tell employees, again, that he was disappointed that they were sharing information about their experience with Salesforce's layoffs with the press, and hundreds of employees responded with positive messages of support to the post.
But one Salesforce employee told Insider that some see these repeated messages about leaks as a red herring. These people feel he's blaming employees for their frustrations over how Benioff is handling the layoffs.
The initial comments on leaks came after another internal Slack message sent in December became public in which he suggested newer employees are less productive, and that remote work might be to blame. That message received hundreds of responses and appeared to cause an uproar among some employees, many of whom responded with requests to see data backing up Benioff's claims.
"We are going to operate as a team and with integrity and transparency and open honesty going forward," Benioff said during the all-hands. "If that gets published, well that's unfortunate for whoever publishes it, that's their karma."
Salesforce did not respond to requests for comment.
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