4 ms·

Marc Benioff of Salesforce: ‘Are We Not All Connected?’

76 points by dsr12 8y ago

marricks 8y ago
He seems like he wants to be a better CEO and have employees volunteer but I wonder if this type of business leader ever actually wants to empower their employees by unionizing them? Or giving them the day off to vote? Encouraging regulation on their own industries? Not financing lobbyists? Not to say he’s a horrible person, just the corporate system we have seems destined to take more and more power away from the avgerage joe.
- briandear 8y ago
  Good grief. Salesforce people are well paid. They can take a personal day to vote. For many people, working at Salesforce is a dream job.
  - TheCoelacanth 8y ago
    Also, people shouldn't really need a day off to vote unless they are working an insane schedule. Polls are usually open 12+ hours. You should have time to vote before or after the workday.
- drivingmenuts 8y ago
  Opinion only, so take it for what it's worth: Wanting to unionize is something that should come from the bottom up, and in my mind, is usually a sign that there's a serious disconnect between corporate leadership and employees. A few disgruntled employees is not indicative a major problem within a company and if there's no major problem, why form a union? Salesforce pushing for regulation on their own industry would be seriously harming their customer base, since their a service provider, not a marketing company themselves. If there was to be a call for regulation in an industry, it would be one or two steps removed from SF. Lobbying is a fact-of-life in competitive industries. It sucks, but it's absolutely necessary to survive at the level they play at, given how much economic power they have and the legislators they have to endure.
- erikb 8y ago
  He encourages regulation that gives him something, like market protection from competitors.
wyldfire 8y ago
This was an interesting article. Changes my impression of SFDC.
- pbreit 8y ago
  Curious why impression would be different? Benioff has been outspoken like this for at least a decade (two?). And Salesforce is well-known to be very charitable.
  - wyldfire 8y ago
    I guess I'll just have to confess my ignorance :(
  - praneshp 8y ago
    > And Salesforce is well-known to be very charitable. When I interviewed there, every single person who spoke to me talked about their 1-1-1 thing. Might be interview training though.
    - Snackchez 8y ago
      I'm definitely out of the loop here; 1-1-1 thing?
      - nopal 8y ago
        http://www.salesforce.org/pledge-1/ http://www.salesforce.org/pledge-1/
    - bigtones 8y ago
      Yes, it's their main sales tool for recruiting and public relations efforts. Everyone gets two weeks training in part on 1-1-1 when they join, and employees involved in recruitment get a lot of training on how to present it and respond to questions, and exposed to ongoing marketing on it.
      - 8y ago
justin 8y ago
Benioff is one of my inspirations and one of the technology CEOs I most look up to.
- friedman23 8y ago
  Why is that? As someone that has only been exposed to him via headlines and articles like this he has come off as someone that states populist politically correct statements for the purpose of gaining attention and not seeming like a "typical" billionaire.
  - afpx 8y ago
    One of my mentors, who worked with Benioff directly for years at Oracle, says he’s legit - one of the kindest and most generous people he’s known.
    - friedman23 8y ago
      Ok, I'm probably looking at him in the worst possible light then.
cookingrobot 8y ago
“We have a plan to get every homeless family off the streets within five years. We’ve already moved hundreds of families back into society and into homes.” Wow.
- 1123581321 8y ago
  You have to start somewhere. A local, wealthy entrepreneur has the same goal, and after about a decade of work coordinating public and private orgs and developing a unified case management system, our city of ~140k has functionally zero homeless because they are all getting help. Replication of this model is underway in other cities. The hard work of scheduling meetings and getting multi-org agreement “scales” if it’s being effectively managed by locals in each city, and of course the software is easily distributed.
  - janpieterz 8y ago
    Any more info you can share on this? Very curious what the difference is compared to the usual approach, see how it could apply in different places (here in NL).
    - 1123581321 8y ago
      Sure, here’s a very recent article (but the effects of this approach have been accumulating for awhile.) http://www.rrstar.com/news/20180608/rockford-gets-attention-for-efforts-to-reduce-homelessness http://www.rrstar.com/news/20180608/rockford-gets-attention-... Here’s the software referenced: https://www.mpowr.com/focus-areas/community https://www.mpowr.com/focus-areas/community It’s a SaaS, but as you can see, the hard part isn’t the app development; it’s getting all the government departments and charities talking and agreeing to automatically coordinate via software. Our city is bad at a lot of things, so I’m a bit proud we’ve actually accomplished something good that we are able to export. :) The usual approach is to start a new case at each org which duplicates the same kind of assistance, leaving less for others and making it harder to steadily advance someone towards receiving the treatment or rehabilitation they need since they’ll bounce from place to place. When communication between agencies does happen, it generates too much paperwork and decision-making is inconsistent, time-consuming and less effective because the staff might not be up to date on the solutions or money available to treat an individual’s specific problems. Software, along with a more collaborative mindset, helps all of this.
bhouston 8y ago
Cool guy. The core software is pretty dated though (it is 2000 era) and in need of a major refresh which seems like it may never happen. So there are some long-term risks with Salesforce because of that.
- briandear 8y ago
  Have you used it lately? The Lightning update, not to mention their rabid acquisitions have made them quite formidable. They own Heroku for example. There core systems are a pain to learn, but the most powerful stuff in their market.
- thedoops 8y ago
  You're right. Salesforce is a big, complicated, multi-tenant, CRUD application coupled to an Oracle database. Multi tenant architectures themselves aren't an issue, but Salesforce implemented it well before the days of containers. All the Apex code has to be "bulkified" which means writing almost everything for multiple records in an execution context. This adds to the mental effort and reduces readability. A major concern when not all consultants do it well. They've been trying for years to replace the Oracle database with Postgres, but it's not easy in such a large, heavily used enterprise application. For many situations I recommend integrating with a messaging system and using the REST apis from something like Ruby. Lightning is not bad, but it's slow compared to the front end framework competition. It is pretty fast to develop with though.
greatamerican 8y ago
Benioff is a rancid Anti-Trump CEO
ryandrake 8y ago
> Then Larry [Ellison, Oracle’s co-founder] took notice of me, and I started working directly for him. Wow, so much to potentially unpack here! Career advice-wise, I’d love to read the details of how one joins a company (presumably as a rank and file contributor) and all of a sudden the CEO “takes notice” of them and they are working directly for the CEO! How big was Oracle at the time? I can count on one hand how many companies I worked for where I even once met the CEO, and they were all very small indeed.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- anitil 8y ago
  Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but it appears he was in sales there? If you're a high performer in sales you get access to people because your activities directly impact the balance sheet
internetman55 8y ago
If you're remembered primarily for doing great philanthropic things in a few decades I'll buy it. Til then you're just a billionaire who went to India and likes to say stuff, in my books.
jonathanedwards 8y ago
Bit of a puff piece. For a contrasting view, Dan Lyons (Fake Steve Jobs) has some choice quotes on Benioff excerpted here http://www.platformonomics.com/2016/09/the-spectacle-that-is-dreamforce/ http://www.platformonomics.com/2016/09/the-spectacle-that-is... “There’s an art to this kind of horseshit, and Benioff is its Michelangelo.”

76 points by dsr12 8y ago

He seems like he wants to be a better CEO and have employees volunteer but I wonder if this type of business leader ever actually wants to empower their employees by unionizing them? Or giving them the day off to vote? Encouraging regulation on their own industries? Not financing lobbyists? Not to say he’s a horrible person, just the corporate system we have seems destined to take more and more power away from the avgerage joe.

briandear 8y ago
Good grief. Salesforce people are well paid. They can take a personal day to vote. For many people, working at Salesforce is a dream job.
- TheCoelacanth 8y ago
  Also, people shouldn't really need a day off to vote unless they are working an insane schedule. Polls are usually open 12+ hours. You should have time to vote before or after the workday.
drivingmenuts 8y ago
Opinion only, so take it for what it's worth: Wanting to unionize is something that should come from the bottom up, and in my mind, is usually a sign that there's a serious disconnect between corporate leadership and employees. A few disgruntled employees is not indicative a major problem within a company and if there's no major problem, why form a union? Salesforce pushing for regulation on their own industry would be seriously harming their customer base, since their a service provider, not a marketing company themselves. If there was to be a call for regulation in an industry, it would be one or two steps removed from SF. Lobbying is a fact-of-life in competitive industries. It sucks, but it's absolutely necessary to survive at the level they play at, given how much economic power they have and the legislators they have to endure.
erikb 8y ago
He encourages regulation that gives him something, like market protection from competitors.

wyldfire 8y ago

This was an interesting article. Changes my impression of SFDC.

pbreit 8y ago
Curious why impression would be different? Benioff has been outspoken like this for at least a decade (two?). And Salesforce is well-known to be very charitable.
- wyldfire 8y ago
  I guess I'll just have to confess my ignorance :(
- praneshp 8y ago
  > And Salesforce is well-known to be very charitable. When I interviewed there, every single person who spoke to me talked about their 1-1-1 thing. Might be interview training though.
  - Snackchez 8y ago
    I'm definitely out of the loop here; 1-1-1 thing?
    - nopal 8y ago
      http://www.salesforce.org/pledge-1/ http://www.salesforce.org/pledge-1/
  - bigtones 8y ago
    Yes, it's their main sales tool for recruiting and public relations efforts. Everyone gets two weeks training in part on 1-1-1 when they join, and employees involved in recruitment get a lot of training on how to present it and respond to questions, and exposed to ongoing marketing on it.
    - 8y ago

justin 8y ago

Benioff is one of my inspirations and one of the technology CEOs I most look up to.

friedman23 8y ago
Why is that? As someone that has only been exposed to him via headlines and articles like this he has come off as someone that states populist politically correct statements for the purpose of gaining attention and not seeming like a "typical" billionaire.
- afpx 8y ago
  One of my mentors, who worked with Benioff directly for years at Oracle, says he’s legit - one of the kindest and most generous people he’s known.
  - friedman23 8y ago
    Ok, I'm probably looking at him in the worst possible light then.

cookingrobot 8y ago

“We have a plan to get every homeless family off the streets within five years. We’ve already moved hundreds of families back into society and into homes.” Wow.

1123581321 8y ago
You have to start somewhere. A local, wealthy entrepreneur has the same goal, and after about a decade of work coordinating public and private orgs and developing a unified case management system, our city of ~140k has functionally zero homeless because they are all getting help. Replication of this model is underway in other cities. The hard work of scheduling meetings and getting multi-org agreement “scales” if it’s being effectively managed by locals in each city, and of course the software is easily distributed.
- janpieterz 8y ago
  Any more info you can share on this? Very curious what the difference is compared to the usual approach, see how it could apply in different places (here in NL).
  - 1123581321 8y ago
    Sure, here’s a very recent article (but the effects of this approach have been accumulating for awhile.) http://www.rrstar.com/news/20180608/rockford-gets-attention-for-efforts-to-reduce-homelessness http://www.rrstar.com/news/20180608/rockford-gets-attention-... Here’s the software referenced: https://www.mpowr.com/focus-areas/community https://www.mpowr.com/focus-areas/community It’s a SaaS, but as you can see, the hard part isn’t the app development; it’s getting all the government departments and charities talking and agreeing to automatically coordinate via software. Our city is bad at a lot of things, so I’m a bit proud we’ve actually accomplished something good that we are able to export. :) The usual approach is to start a new case at each org which duplicates the same kind of assistance, leaving less for others and making it harder to steadily advance someone towards receiving the treatment or rehabilitation they need since they’ll bounce from place to place. When communication between agencies does happen, it generates too much paperwork and decision-making is inconsistent, time-consuming and less effective because the staff might not be up to date on the solutions or money available to treat an individual’s specific problems. Software, along with a more collaborative mindset, helps all of this.

bhouston 8y ago

Cool guy. The core software is pretty dated though (it is 2000 era) and in need of a major refresh which seems like it may never happen. So there are some long-term risks with Salesforce because of that.

briandear 8y ago
Have you used it lately? The Lightning update, not to mention their rabid acquisitions have made them quite formidable. They own Heroku for example. There core systems are a pain to learn, but the most powerful stuff in their market.
thedoops 8y ago
You're right. Salesforce is a big, complicated, multi-tenant, CRUD application coupled to an Oracle database. Multi tenant architectures themselves aren't an issue, but Salesforce implemented it well before the days of containers. All the Apex code has to be "bulkified" which means writing almost everything for multiple records in an execution context. This adds to the mental effort and reduces readability. A major concern when not all consultants do it well. They've been trying for years to replace the Oracle database with Postgres, but it's not easy in such a large, heavily used enterprise application. For many situations I recommend integrating with a messaging system and using the REST apis from something like Ruby. Lightning is not bad, but it's slow compared to the front end framework competition. It is pretty fast to develop with though.

greatamerican 8y ago

Benioff is a rancid Anti-Trump CEO

ryandrake 8y ago

> Then Larry [Ellison, Oracle’s co-founder] took notice of me, and I started working directly for him. Wow, so much to potentially unpack here! Career advice-wise, I’d love to read the details of how one joins a company (presumably as a rank and file contributor) and all of a sudden the CEO “takes notice” of them and they are working directly for the CEO! How big was Oracle at the time? I can count on one hand how many companies I worked for where I even once met the CEO, and they were all very small indeed.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
anitil 8y ago
Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but it appears he was in sales there? If you're a high performer in sales you get access to people because your activities directly impact the balance sheet

internetman55 8y ago

If you're remembered primarily for doing great philanthropic things in a few decades I'll buy it. Til then you're just a billionaire who went to India and likes to say stuff, in my books.

jonathanedwards 8y ago

Bit of a puff piece. For a contrasting view, Dan Lyons (Fake Steve Jobs) has some choice quotes on Benioff excerpted here http://www.platformonomics.com/2016/09/the-spectacle-that-is-dreamforce/ http://www.platformonomics.com/2016/09/the-spectacle-that-is... “There’s an art to this kind of horseshit, and Benioff is its Michelangelo.”