If you're close to the Silicon Valley tech community you know the Salesforce datacenter organization and recently security organization has been taken over by many ex-Microsoft executives who are fairly clueless
This. A thousand times this. The Microsoft rot started in the Datacenter and Security org but is fast spreading to all of infrastructure resulting in a culture that is dramatically different from the rest of Salesforce.
If you're from Microsoft (or better yet, a crony of a high up Microsoftie in Salesforce) you are guaranteed to receive a plum job with a bump up of at least two or more seniority levels and preferential treatment in every aspect.
It's not hard to find examples of mid level ICs (level 61 - 62) being brought in as Senior Directors, level 63's being brought in as principal architects etc. What about non microsoft people ? Well, in that case we need to 'carefully consider the feedback', 'be conservative in our approach', 'avoid being too generous' etc.
Every process, from hiring, to promotions, to appraisals has been systematically corrupted and taken over almost exclusively by Microsoft people with the inevitable results.
It's like watching an aggressive strain of flesh eating bacteria at work. It would be comical the amount of damage this is causing Salesforce if it weren't for the enormous human impact.