**Salesforce to Close Hillsboro Office, Offers Relocation or Severance to Employees**

Salesforce has announced the impending closure of its Hillsboro, Oregon office, urging many of its employees to either relocate or accept a severance package. In virtual meetings held on Thursday, the cloud software heavyweight informed its Hillsboro staff of the decision. Customer-success employees, who form a significant portion of the Hillsboro workforce, have been given until November 26 to choose between relocating to other offices in Indianapolis, Atlanta, or Seattle, or taking a severance package. Employees in other roles have been offered the option to continue working remotely for the company.

A Salesforce spokesperson explained in an email to Business Insider that the decision reflects the company's ongoing efforts to optimize its structure for better customer service and growth. The closure of the Hillsboro office is part of this strategy, with local employees given the options of remote work, relocation, or a "generous" severance package.

Salesforce initially opened its Hillsboro office in 2013, committing to create at least 205 jobs and maintain them for two years, with average wages of $67,500, in exchange for $1.45 million in tax incentives, according to The Oregonian. By June 2024, Salesforce operated 99 offices across 87 cities globally and employed 72,682 people, with 51% based in the United States.

This move is part of a broader restructuring plan announced by Salesforce nearly two years ago, which involved reducing its real-estate holdings and commercial leases. Amid this restructuring, the company has already closed offices in San Francisco and Seattle. The Hillsboro office was Salesforce's only presence in the Portland metro area.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff's stance on remote work has been inconsistent. While he initially embraced remote work in the early pandemic days and declared in 2022 that return-to-office mandates would be ineffective, he later attributed the company's declining sales to the remote workforce trained during the pandemic hiring surge. In July, Salesforce requested most employees at its San Francisco global headquarters to return to the office four to five days a week.

The closure of the Hillsboro office aligns with Salesforce's ongoing efforts to rebrand as a company driven by artificial intelligence. Earlier this month, Salesforce introduced its most ambitious AI strategy yet, Agentforce, a platform designed to create and manage AI bots for customer service tasks and enhancing employee productivity.