Salesforce isn’t offering raises to employees of director level and above, according to an internal email viewed by Business Insider. “We have decided to focus on merit increases at the Senior Manager level (grade 8) and below,” states the email, sent by the company’s human resources team.
Instead of giving raises, the company said it will increase stock and bonus pools for its “highest performing individuals” among upper-level employees, calling it part of an “investment in performance and long-term growth.” Employees will learn about their compensation during their performance review, which is set to begin during the end of March.
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According to the Business Insider report, Salesforce’s decision reflects a broader shift in how Big Tech is paying senior talent. Many companies are now tying compensation to stock performance and equity rather than increasing base pay. This allows them to preserve cash while continuing to incentivize top leaders. Meta recently announced that it created a lucrative incentive system for stock for a number of its C-suite executives.
The email said that 10% more directors and senior directors are getting stock grants, the average stock grant increased, and 80% of directors and senior directors who received “highly successful” or “exceptional” performance ratings received a 20% to 40% bigger grant.
The pool for bonuses “is funded at 103%,” according to the email. Most eligible directors and senior directors received 100% or more of their bonus, and all of the directors and senior directors who received the top performance ratings got 115% to 140% of their bonuses.
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Salesforce saw a round of layoffs in the beginning of the fiscal year. The cuts reportedly affected fewer than 1,000 employees. Affected roles included marketing, product management, data analytics, and Salesforce’s Agentforce AI product, according to LinkedIn posts and profiles, as well as two employees who spoke to Business Insider. The layoffs came amid an executive shakeup in the company, in which six new leaders were appointed to replace five high-profile leaders who have announced departures since December 2025.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff recently downplayed fears about AI’s threat to software-as-a-service companies. “If there is a ‘SaaSpocalypse’, it may be eaten by the ‘SaaS-quatch’ because there are a lot of companies using a lot of SaaS because it just got better with agents,” Benioff said during a recent earnings call. He also said the company’s focus on AI agents would counter the threat to software, telling investors that Salesforce was seeing “incredible demand” for its Agentforce platform. He added that top AI companies were already working with Salesforce.