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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

Let's not forget pre-2020 when the company released "Salesforce Blockchain", "NFT Cloud" and "Salesforce Web3 Platform".

This is how they operate. Just one marketing hype moment after another. The actual product doesn't really matter (and in a lot of cases doesn't even launch). They just need to keep making pretty slide decks filled with meaningless buzzwords so their customers get distracted from the fact that they are paying $500+ per user per month for a shitty web UI on top of 4 database tables.

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I wasn't sure whether "NFT Cloud" was real or parody so had to look it up. 2022 but it's in the official history https://www.salesforce.com/news/stories/the-history-of-sales... noted in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31666887

dang, I knew I shouldn't be drinking water while checking out the link. Almost caused water damage to my laptop

> Sustainable Blockchains > Choose from sustainable blockchains and estimate carbon usage prior to deployment

lol. lmao, even.

According to the numbers in that link, their nominal revenue per employee flattened out shortly after IPO up until it stops listing them in 2020.

I imagine getting that ratio up is important, especially with recent inflation.

> so their customers get distracted from the fact that they are paying $500+ per user per month for a shitty web UI on top of 4 database tables.

Oof, I felt that cut in my bones and I was only a customer.

slow database tables too.

A minor nitpick.

SF doesn’t have tables. It is not a relational database. It is slow because it is an enterprise application.

The link details the steps that are triggered every time a record is updated.

https://www.salesforceben.com/learn-salesforce-order-of-exec...

Salesforce’s product is technically is a relational database. Maybe it doesn’t perfectly fit the relational model that Edgar Codd theorized, but I don’t think any widely used database product does.

A crucial aspect of the relational database is that the tables have columns which refer to another table (e.g. AccountId) and this what they call “lookup relationships” or “master-detail relationships” in Salesforce.

Also, I recently learned that SQL has triggers too in case you want the same procedure to take place after an INSERT, UPDATE, etc.

In Salesforce everything is an API call with hard limits eg you can only return 200 records unless you hit the bulk api.

JOINS do not exist in Salesforce. Instead you have to create bridge tables. Even then you can only traverse a max of three objects at a time.

Please do not try to use Salesforce as a general database, you are only putting yourself in a world of hurt.

I'm old enough to remember when Dreamforce was "The Largest Internet of Things Conference".

I presume it works to have the new shiny thing that execs have vaguely heard about. It only has to exist while the hype cycle is at its peak.

I'm surprised there hasn't been a Salesforce AR/VR.

Not even Salesforce was deranged enough to buy into "Metaverse"?

Don’t forget IOT Cloud back when IOT was a thing. I think I was one of the first 10 people holding that certification. I really liked the architecture but the product sort of went nowhere. After learning about data cloud I feel like a lot of that architecture (iirc it was called Thunder) wound up in data cloud.

I think silicon labs uses salesforce for their iot cloud. The iot cloud - globally - is gigantic, and a requirement for any embedded iot device with a radio.

That's why the Irish pronounce it "Salesfarce"

Salesmen selling to other salesmen.

Poe's Law being what it is, I had to double check, and Salesforce indeed has official marketing/landing pages for these.

… on top of circa 1997 Java syntax …

I never dare say that part out loud but isn't that all we do? Move things into db tables and back. Like packing mules to go to market.

Dressed up dbs. That's what 90% of the saas economy is. I feel like I'm going mad. How can such a gigantic part of the software economy be just dressing up dbs and making them hard to interoperate? I can't make sense of it. Any business can run using email and vanilla spreadsheets. Everything else just feels like a surreal dance while I can't hear the music.

Ergonomics have value in itself, dressing up DBs in good ergonomics around some applied use-cases has quite some value for companies to not have to deal with edge cases that email + spreadsheets will suffer from at scale, that's also why I do not understand Salesforce.

The products are clunky, difficult to integrate/use/deploy, a lot of times they simply don't work or require an immense amount of effort to be barely workable. It's really hard to understand the value proposition, I guess they might have very good salespeople reaching out to the right clueless people to pitch.

You're just mad you didn't invent it first!

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