ELT will never tell us. They had every chance to better communications to us during the various stages of the round 1 layoffs, but did they? Most people that knew about layoffs beforehand found out from anonymous sources online.
How sad is this, truly? That all of us have to rely on anonymous boards and other sources of rumors to find out what's going on. This is a clear mark of cowardly leadership.
Well, some of the rules are straight from stock exchanges. For listed companies, the stock market will always be informed before the employees. So all sensitive information will be kept confidential until it is officially and publicly announced. Employees will be informed after 1. ELT, 2. Stock market.
The only way around this is to make the company private.
"...An NYSE listed company has disclosure and reporting obligations both to the NYSE and the SEC. Generally, a listed company must release quickly to the public any news or information that might reasonably be expected to materially affect security values or influence investment decisions. Further, the NYSE strives to ensure that listed companies provide timely and regular financial information..."
This is standard operating procedure for most large, publicly traded orgs. Layoffs and re-orgs are always highly sensitive. The difference is thinking Salesforce is different or immune. Thats easy to do when things are always golden. As this has shown, in times of buckling down they are a shareholder driven corporation like anybody else. The hardest part to swallow is that Salesforce is now the same as working for IBM, Cisco, Oracle, or whatever...
I remember reading about the second wave of layoffs online, and I thought it must be wrong. How is some anonymous source communicating this before ELT? Turns out they were right. Unfortunately, this happened for a few more of the waves this year. Really sucks to find out like this.