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Comment by danielfoster | Hacker News Reader

Stockholders likely think Salesforce had too much fluff and can get the same results with fewer staff.

For example I believe they were working on some sort of solution for managing NFTs.

Ex employee here. Salesforce was the most laid back, rest and vest, coasting culture in my experience. Generous employee benefits, absolutely no work pressure. They took pride in their work life balance. Many employees (in product and marketing) were just focusing on (flavor of the day) activism - BLM, AAPI, GLBT, Homelessness in SFO. I always wondered if these employees had any 'actual job' in the company or their managers even cared what their team delivers. As an employee it was great. As an ex employee whose vested RSUs are more than 50% down from it's peak, it sucked. While I feel bad for those who are laid off, this downsizing was written on the wall.

Can you describe what changes you think should be made to that culture? How do you balance what sounds like great work/life balance and awareness of Salesforce's impact outside of strictly its business activities, which is something I'd expect from a "good" employer, with the potential downsides of (paraphrasing your words) "employees focusing on [not an "actual job"]"?

Do you think those colleagues didn't contribute anything as far as their job title?

Yeah IMO those colleagues didn't pull their weight to justify their titles (Sr. Director whatever). While Salesforce's titles are very inflated (Director at Salesforce maps to L6 in other companies), these were still senior talented folks drawing good salaries. I never saw if actually delivered something. Salesforce ecosystem (Salesforce partners, consultants, customers etc) is great. but I am not very convinced by Salesforce's impact outside of its business activities. Their 1-1-1 pledge or stakeholder capitalism model isn't genuine. These are PR stunts where Salesforce could post some rainbow flag pictures or Matthew Mc's videos about global warming on social media. During my tenure at Salesforce it was possible to work for single digit hours per week and still be a top performer. The rest of the 'work' time was occupied by team socials, VTO activities and other shenanigans.

Having said that the number one thing Salesforce should culturally do is put more focus on what it's customers need. It is a sales and marketing organization, which it is very very very good at. But you can't just keep up by upselling stuff to customers. If you don't keep your customers happy, all this WLB doesn't really help.

Wasn't this promoted from the very top? Marc Benioff's fetishization of Hawaiian culture and the whole Ohana thing. They only slowed down with it a few years ago. But they were always awkwardly promoting a prosocial conscious image.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/salesforce-is-ditching-its-awk...

Yes it was absolutely promoted from the top. There was a meditation room in Salesforce tower as well as regional headquarters. We had meditation experts and monks (remember Gavin Belson's spiritual friend from Silicon Valley?) join all hands meetings. During pandemic there were biweekly wellness hours on EVERYONE's calendar where people could optionally do guided meditation for a couple of hours. Just last year I saw they announced some wellness ranch. Probably a five star holiday resort for employees I guess. (I wasn't employee then so just guessing). Employees were required to put in VTO hours every year. VTO goals were part of many team's V2MOM (just google this acronym for details). I am not sure if Salesforce bean counters considered ROI due to this PR branding when it was strictly enforced, nevertheless it wasn't contributing to improvement in quality of products, innovation, customer's experience and revenues.

I've never seen the market react negatively to layoffs themselves. As far as I can tell most traders and fund managers believe all employees are interchangeable widgets.

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