Culture Whack-a-Mole - Anonymous employee Salesforce Employee Review

The Kool-Aid is powerful here and for good reason. Salesforce is a highly visible and very successful company led by a charismatic CEO coupled with an amazing culture. The yearly Dreamforce conference is a thing of wonder. Salesforce consistently ranks at the top of best places to work surveys and for good reason. There are HUGE plus points to being here. However, there is some serious rot inside of the system around 1) the Ohana (family) culture, 2) inept middle management and a lack of transparency, and 3) equality (aka diversity and inclusion). I’m writing this now before I become too comfortable and too vested to speak up. There have been many situations where Ohana is the opposite of what I’ve seen in many situations during my short time at Salesforce. Some people and teams are petty and hard to work with. The Ohana culture comes from the top, and that’s a great thing. Marc Benioff has made some clear and newsworthy moves, which are great. However, the Ohana culture is hit or miss. There are stories of people one level below Benioff treating other employees quite badly. Also, the company is growing so fast that people who ought not be managers are managers. The ranks are populated it with awful mid-level managers that seem to have no idea how to work with people and lack essential management knowledge and skills. The company is so fast-paced that it’s not possible to take the time needed to learn them either. It’s happened to me, and I’ve heard other first-hand accounts of people in the organization that deal with their co-workers with aggressiveness and passive-aggressiveness, politics, gossip, and a good amount of foot dragging or back-stabbing. To his credit, when stories of bad behavior and mismanagement get to the top, Benioff shuts it down quickly. I’ve seen it, and the change that comes is swift. But it’s usually just a patch. However, the problem comes from exactly that. The company is growing at such a fast rate that he can’t catch all the rot in the system and make sure it’s fixed. Benioff and his team simply can’t see all of the problems that pop up in varying levels of the company. My feeling is also people don’t want to share the bad stuff with him. It’s cultural-rot whack a mole. There is a new internal feedback app, but it feels like a bandaid when what’s really needed is surgery and physical therapy. The culture discourages full transparency. If you complain you’re running a real risk of being ignored or scolded. I’ve seen that happen. After all, it’s one of the best places to work, right? Who are you to complain?! You better suck it up because tons of people really want to be here. There isn’t any outright corporate warfare between employees and teams because that would be seen as too aggressive. That would be healthier and easier to resolve. What it means is there are a lot of sly maneuvers, working in silos, budget and headcount fights, and teams and co-workers that keep essential information from each other. I don’t have much faith that their equality team and initiatives can really affect change. Some people on that team don’t have a track record of diversity and inclusion. How can you lead the charge on equality when it’s not an issue you’re vested in? You can’t claim equality is important when you don’t take the time to stop, listen, learn, and act. The focus is on PR and there is an unrealistic focus on scale. Scale will follow when people can make intentional moves to bring people in. Those people will then refer their contacts. People will see diverse candidates joining and will want to follow. If equality were quick and easy all of these companies would be showing incredible numbers. Instead, there is a lot of talk and waste. Middle managers talk about equality and diversity while still packing their teams with people that look just like them. People flying here and there blowing the budget on expensive programs instead of being allies to people at the company right here and now that need support. The same goes for public-facing events. With all of the talk of no budget or headcount on a lot of teams. Why blow money on a fancy awards ceremony when the program isn't even one year old? (Google "Salesforce Equality Awards" and you'll find it.) You get great PR, get to expense a trip, get pictures with some influential people, pat yourselves on the back about how progressive you are, have a fancy and expensive party, and reward privileged people with an award. What you’re really doing blowing money that could be used to make a real difference by hiring people who’d shift the needle. Put that money to teams where they can aggressively pursue and hire diverse candidates and pay them a competitive wage. Build an incentive into the system: refer diverse candidates and get a bonus if they’re hired. Hold managers accountable when they pass over qualified diverse candidates. Right now, what I'm seeing is lots of great PR, feel good moments, and no real moves shift the numbers. Other points: HR is pretty awful. Getting through a recruiting cycle takes forever in many cases: tons of candidates and lots of work for the recruiting team coupled with hiring managers and teams that don’t make moving the candidate through the pipeline a real priority. As a result, you have candidates languishing for weeks. How they handle issues around budget and headcount is awful. Lots of last minute decision making and lots of demands without the matching budget so a lot of stress. How they deal with contractors is the antithesis of the Ohana culture. They should really rethink and fix how they work with them.