Ex-Herokai here. In some sense, SFDC didn't start taking over H until several years after we were acquired. We had our own CEO, office, mission, org structure, annual meetup, etc.

Then, year by year, those things were taken away. Eventually, circa 2018, investment in the core H product started being reduced and individuals and teams started being reorged to focus on Salesforce priorities. H became a "keeping the lights on" job. Folks who wanted to keep pushing left to work on GitHub actions or on render.com, netlify, other places still striving for great devex.