Salesforce lets go of more of its towering presence in San Francisco

Updated Salesforce appears to be pulling out of even more of its San Francisco office tower space, following job cuts and a cost-cutting exercise.

The CRM giant, which has struck a towering presence over the city skyline, is set to sublease the space it holds at 350 Mission Street, the 30-story office tower often dubbed Salesforce East. This is not to be confused with its adjacent 61-story building known as Salesforce Tower at 415 Mission Street. The listings are available to peruse on the website of real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield.

According to the San Francisco Business Times, which has been keeping track, this is the last remaining space in the East building, meaning the CRM giant will be pulling its troops out of its offices there completely for the time being.

Last year, Salesforce sublet part of the East building to Yelp and cosmetics chain Sephora, among others, according to real estate database wranglers at CoStar.

The new listing boasts "plug and play view space" on the fifth, sixth and top floors and includes the top four floors of 350 Mission. The listing also includes the tower's fifth and sixth floors.

Last June, Salesforce decided to lease out 40 percent of its Salesforce West building at 50 Fremont Street, a whopping 350,000 square foot of office space which apparently has "room for roughly 1,750 workers." It also canceled its lease on approximately 325,000 square foot in the unfinished Parcel F tower last year.

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Salesforce's diminished presence in the West Coast tech Mecca is likely to reflect a drive to improve margins against slowing sales growth. In January it announced a 10 percent cut to its workforce in a restructuring plan set to cost of around $1.4 billion to $2.1 billion.

Meanwhile, the SaaS specialist has been executing a dramatic volte-face on its work-from-home policy. In the middle of last year CEO Marc Benioff flaunted the cloud company's permissive stance on allowing folks to work from home in a flexible way, following a trend set by pandemic-related lockdowns. But by December, he was calling some workers back to the office.

Fellows SaaS traveler Workday has adopted a different stance on home working – and property investment. In March 2021, the finance and HR software company announced a $172.5 million property investment on the eastern side of San Francisco Bay. CEO Aneel Bhusri said he was "a big believer that we're going to be back in the office." ®

Updated to add

A Salesforce spokesperson declined to comment further, other than to say the changes are "part of what we announced in January.”