Salesforce Betrays America – The Dark Side of the “Indian Era”

Salesforce is currently the market leader in customer relationship applications and a leading cloud-based software provider. Tragically, similar to other once great American titans like Boeing and Intel, it’s executing an operating plan that is disinvesting in the very workforce that prioritized innovation, built it into a global powerhouse and enabled it to soar above its competition.

CEO Marc Benioff proudly dubs the company’s current chapter as the “Indian era,” but for Americans it’s nothing less than a betrayal as Salesforce’s U.S. workers are systematically being displaced by cheaper, more exploitable and ultimately less productive foreign ones.

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Over the past four years, Salesforce has aggressively offshored jobs, exploited immigration loopholes, and redirected profits to build a foreign workforce—all while shedding thousands of U.S. employees.

From 2020 to 2024, Salesforce’s India workforce experienced a 420% increase expanding to over 13,000 workers.  At the same time, the company slashed 8,000 jobs globally, including thousands in the U.S.

In January 2023, they “marketed “their layoffs as a “Restructuring Plan” designed to reduce operating costs.  But if you’ve ever wondered why your neighbor’s kid who graduated from Stanford with a computer science degree can’t get a job and move out of the house, there’s your answer.

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Currently 93% of Salesforce’s revenue comes from U.S. customers, so it’s a bitter irony to learn they’re rapidly dismantling their American workforce. In short, Salesforce is reaping the profits it earns stateside and investing them in India’s future.  And that commitment to India is becoming increasingly more profound.

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Salesforce has also been asking for more H-1B workers and is suspected of gaming the PERM process, the system through which H-1B visa holders are sponsored for Green Cards – at the same time they continue to lay off Americans. Between August 2023 and July 2024, Salesforce filed 824 PERM applications and over 4,300 H-1B petitions.

These immigration programs, which are ostensibly designed to address a shortage of skilled workers, are being used to displace qualified Americans.  And adding insult to injury, companies like Salesforce further entrench an exploitative model by bringing in foreign managers to oversee the offshore teams they’ve established.

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