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> Today they have announced this policy has ended as a result of the economy as well as making the workplace more equitable It's too bad their hands were entir

> Today they have announced this policy has ended as a result of the economy as well as making the workplace more equitable It's too bad their hands were entirely tied on this and they had no other choice but to take it away from everyone. /s It always amazes me when my coworkers pretend things just "are how they are" within a company. Everything can be changed, everything is negotiable, nothing is set in stone. Obviously this gets harder as the company gets bigger but the defeatist attitude I often see is so depressing. I'm sure there were some people (Salesforce employees) who heralded this a good change instead of thinking for even 1 minute about how the better change would be that everyone got it. And don't tell me they couldn't afford it, that's just bullshit.

Benjammer 4y ago
Jealousy is a deep, natural instinct. There are tons of studies that show how various kinds of monkeys/apes will happily eat a piece of fruit or whatever, but if you give the monkey next to them a piece of candy instead, the first monkey will go ape shit and never eat the fruit again. Many, many people think like this. I remember talking to a software engineer from MIT a while back, I don't even remember what we were talking about. But, I distinctly remember him expressing an attitude where someone else received something that he felt that he deserved, regardless of whether the other person deserved it also or not, and to him, this was just about the gravest injustice that he could imagine. He was like visibly angry clenching his teeth while talking about it. And it had nothing to do with whatever the thing was, hence why I can't remember it. To him it was a very deeply rooted idea of "fairness" defined in this sort of simple-minded, inflexible way. And he was ALL ABOUT removing the thing from the other person as opposed to trying to get compensated equally himself.
- password4321 4y ago
  So... give the benefit to everyone??
  - PHGamer 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - aaronbrethorst 4y ago
      I too love having my boss's boot on my neck because communism doesn't work!
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      Giving everyone in the company a benefit like some days off doesn't work out in practice?
  - tshaddox 4y ago
    And don’t forget other benefits like salary.
  - bastardoperator 4y ago
    How can a multi-billion dollar company afford to let employees enjoy the holidays? /s
    - zrobotics 4y ago
      Especially because the period between Christmas and new years is the absolute lowest point of productivity. Giving everyone the holiday probably saves the company money, since then employees have the benefit of returning after the 1st refreshed. Every job I've had to work that period, the 25th through the 31st is absolutely dead and unproductive, since lots of coworkers burned their pto to take it off anyway and any external vendor is extremely unresponsive. Similar thing to anyone who deals with China, you just expect that nothing will get done over their new year celebrations and you build schedules appropriately. Salesforce could absolutely afford to do this, they already have a good example in house. Instead of doing something that would generate positive press, they've generated negative headlines and really pissed off the employees as slack twice (once now, and once again later this year around the holidays). What a classic short-sighted MBA brain move.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Those experiments don't distinguish between jealousy and intolerance for injustice or unfairness from a third party. In the capuchin studies, given that they usually express their displeasure at the experimenter rather than the other monkey and also spontaneously share it's reasonable to view it as the latter. This whole crab bucket mentality of 'it's unfaaaiiir that minimum wages get raised' rather than fighting to get the benefit for everyone is a distinctly neoliberal and american mindset that you have to 'deserve' to survive or be comfortable.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - runarberg 4y ago
    I usually take these monkey studies with a pinch of salt. It shouldn’t be to hard to conduct a similar study on humans, and the fact that we are only hearing about monkey studies makes me question whether the results can be generalized. It is not just that we are a different species and exhibit different behavior under same circumstances as monkeys, but also that the monkeys are kept under captivity all their lives which will profoundly alter their behavior (the same applies to humans).
- throwawaysleep 4y ago
  This is why I conceal/pretend to have a lower salary than I do. People claim that sharing salaries only benefits employers. No, it also benefits the people who will have to deal with colleague jealousy.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - housedrafta 4y ago
    Doing the opposite works too. If there are people in your org you don't like, insinuate that you make a lot. Of course doing such a thing is incredibly petty and should only be reserved for special cases, as it were.
- this_steve_j 4y ago
  Studies, studies, every where, And nor the apes did think, Studies, studies, every where But naught to drop a link. Ah! well a-day! what evil looks Had I from old and young! Instead of lolz, the Albatross About my neck was hung.
ben_jones 4y ago
There's two revelations here: * big companies have entire teams (internal and consultants) advising them on large changes in the name of productivity, cost reduction, whatever. These teams contrive metrics, KPI, and correlations, between what they do and the success of the business. These teams are paid bonuses, promotions, etc., based on these metrics they themselves contrive. * small companies blindly do what the big companies do because surely these big companies know what they're doing And everyone suffers. Except the people who implement this stuff. They probably have celebrations.
- mushufasa 4y ago
  > big companies have entire teams (internal and consultants) advising them on large changes in the name of productivity, cost reduction, whatever. These teams contrive metrics, KPI, and correlations, between what they do and the success of the business. These teams are paid bonuses, promotions, etc., based on these metrics they themselves contrive. definitely some misaligned incentives. do you have an alternative you recommend? Big institutions typically make decisions via "committees of experts" because the alternative decision making in big groups of people is often dictated by a single or cadre of leaders, or total stasis. And small groups of leaders don't scale to the amount of decisions to be made at big groups.
  - ben_jones 4y ago
    I'd counter its not "committees of experts" but "committees of stakeholders and powerbrokers" with equally misaligned incentives not worth replicating.
- weatherlite 4y ago
  Yes it's called capitalism, if they could get away with it they would pay us nothing. In good times the stock gets so high you can get away with super high salaries, over staffing and perks. But in worse times the stock starts to get a hit, the multiples don't look good and to retain earnings you have to cut costs. The biggest cost is wages...
  - 4y ago
Spooky23 4y ago
My sister was an RN at a hospital whose parent company gobbled up some area hospitals. In her case, they cut her pay 25%, because it would be unfair to pay the other people less. This was right before COVID, and everyone basically quit - like a whole department of nurses en masse. She came back as a contractor when they were hard up, at one point making $350/hr. All of the normal staff left and it became a contractor mill. When contract people didn’t show, she got $2000-3000 shift bonuses for a 4 hour work commitment to allow the ER to stay open. I certainly hope the Slack folks do something similar.
- joshstrange 4y ago
  Yep. My good friend is an RN who worked for a hospital bought up by some conglomerate and the perks slowly went away and burned a ton of loyalty/good-will. He left to do travel nursing and made a ton more. It’s so shortsighted and ultimately defeating/self-destructive when companies act like this.
  - pempem 4y ago
    It just doesn't seem to harm the corporation enough. The requests for subsidies, the limitations of available support that put the public at risk should be negatively impacting leadership of these organizations drastically.
    - GeorgeWBasic 4y ago
      Maybe not enough people know what's really happening with those companies.
    - throwawaysleep 4y ago
      Nobody is really evaluated all that effectively on an individual level. I can't figure out the difference in my performance reviews between advocating, coming up with new ideas, and taking initiative vs just working on tickets and not saying a word in meetings.
    - otikik 4y ago
selcuka 4y ago
Not that I support the decision, but to be fair the size of the Slack team is probably a small percentage of whole SalesForce, so applying the same benefit to everyone instead of taking it away from that small team is much harder to justify.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- joshstrange 4y ago
  I’m not disagreeing that that’s probably exactly what the execs who made this decision thought, it’s just gross. But I’m sure one them will get a nice bonus for cutting this.
babyshake 4y ago
"your employment is very important to us, please hold..."
- xen2xen1 4y ago
  I'd like the Kevorkian disconnect please.
- iwilalb 4y ago
sorry_outta_gas 4y ago
I went though this years ago when my coworkers at the time were complaining about some random process/internal standard.. it's like you realize we're the ones who control that right?
eloisius 4y ago
There are definitely people there who are relishing in this change. Such a sad mentality, but I remember reading plenty of whine posts about why it’s unfair for Heroku to not use GUS or, why does X acquisition still get to have free lunch.
sharkweek 4y ago
“The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make, and could just as easily make differently.” -David Graeber I know this reads as a gross oversimplification but it rings true all the time. Imagine if almost everyone collectively at Salesforce said, “nope, this is dumb! We are going to stop working until this benefit is handed out to everyone at the company.” It’d be changed back / expanded within 48 hours.
- brigandish 4y ago
  You'd have to solve the prisoner's dilemma though, and that's something Graeber certainly hasn't managed to crack.
  - HWR_14 4y ago
    Why would you need to solve it? Because the prisoners dilemma suggests everyone should hold out for the holiday.
    - brigandish 4y ago
      The reason the dilemma is of any interest is because people do defect.
  - AmericanChopper 4y ago
    You don’t have to solve it. There’s not really any problem to solve to begin with. People who are happy with the changed working conditions will continue to work there. People who do not want to tolerate the change will not continue to work there. Every person can precisely choose the outcome they want, without cooperation from anybody.
    - brigandish 4y ago
      That's not what I was responding to though. This is: > Imagine if almost everyone collectively at Salesforce said, “nope, this is dumb! We are going to stop working until this benefit is handed out to everyone at the company.” It’d be changed back / expanded within 48 hours. That's a prisoner's dilemma, people holding out for the best they can get. If enough people defect then it won't work.
mizzao 4y ago
Seems like we're on a slow burn to a crappy Slack product. What should we be switching to instead...Teams?
- Griffinsauce 4y ago
  This was my first thought, there goes the product (eventually ofc)
nathanvanfleet 4y ago
"Due to the bad economy we can exploit you even more than normal!"
jiveturkey 4y ago
Managers can simply ignore this policy for their reports. If, at the Director level, most of the managers are still of original Slack ilk, this is very feasible. SFDC has unlimited PTO so this won't even be noticed.
- moju 4y ago
  In the United States. Other counties have limits.
- joshstrange 4y ago
  I get this and people have tried to assuage me throughout my career with things like "yeah but it's up to the manager so you'll be fine" or similar. I absolutely hate manager-discretion "perks" because they aren't official ("on the books"), they can be taken away at a moments notice on the whim on your manager or if a new manager comes in who doesn't agree. Before COVID this was the case with WFH at my last company. I was able to WFH for 2 days a week but it was impossible to get that codified in the handbook. I was even on the committee that oversaw edits/rewrites of the handbook but HR would not let us add anything about WFH other than "It's up to the manager". I had so many people tell me "I don't know why you are so bothered, you are able to WFH". Yes, today, right now, with this manager, or at least this managers current demeanor I have WFH but all that can turn on a dime, I wanted it to be official. "Of course", the company as a whole couldn't allow WFH, that would be "impossible". I left that company in late 2019 and... surprise! They went fully remote in 2020 and now are a hybrid with the majority of people WFH-ing. It was a rare case of being told it was impossible and would never work to seeing not but a few months later all their arguments to be shown for the BS they really were.

Benjammer 4y ago

Jealousy is a deep, natural instinct. There are tons of studies that show how various kinds of monkeys/apes will happily eat a piece of fruit or whatever, but if you give the monkey next to them a piece of candy instead, the first monkey will go ape shit and never eat the fruit again. Many, many people think like this. I remember talking to a software engineer from MIT a while back, I don't even remember what we were talking about. But, I distinctly remember him expressing an attitude where someone else received something that he felt that he deserved, regardless of whether the other person deserved it also or not, and to him, this was just about the gravest injustice that he could imagine. He was like visibly angry clenching his teeth while talking about it. And it had nothing to do with whatever the thing was, hence why I can't remember it. To him it was a very deeply rooted idea of "fairness" defined in this sort of simple-minded, inflexible way. And he was ALL ABOUT removing the thing from the other person as opposed to trying to get compensated equally himself.

password4321 4y ago
So... give the benefit to everyone??
- PHGamer 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - aaronbrethorst 4y ago
    I too love having my boss's boot on my neck because communism doesn't work!
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    Giving everyone in the company a benefit like some days off doesn't work out in practice?
- tshaddox 4y ago
  And don’t forget other benefits like salary.
- bastardoperator 4y ago
  How can a multi-billion dollar company afford to let employees enjoy the holidays? /s
  - zrobotics 4y ago
    Especially because the period between Christmas and new years is the absolute lowest point of productivity. Giving everyone the holiday probably saves the company money, since then employees have the benefit of returning after the 1st refreshed. Every job I've had to work that period, the 25th through the 31st is absolutely dead and unproductive, since lots of coworkers burned their pto to take it off anyway and any external vendor is extremely unresponsive. Similar thing to anyone who deals with China, you just expect that nothing will get done over their new year celebrations and you build schedules appropriately. Salesforce could absolutely afford to do this, they already have a good example in house. Instead of doing something that would generate positive press, they've generated negative headlines and really pissed off the employees as slack twice (once now, and once again later this year around the holidays). What a classic short-sighted MBA brain move.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
Those experiments don't distinguish between jealousy and intolerance for injustice or unfairness from a third party. In the capuchin studies, given that they usually express their displeasure at the experimenter rather than the other monkey and also spontaneously share it's reasonable to view it as the latter. This whole crab bucket mentality of 'it's unfaaaiiir that minimum wages get raised' rather than fighting to get the benefit for everyone is a distinctly neoliberal and american mindset that you have to 'deserve' to survive or be comfortable.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- runarberg 4y ago
  I usually take these monkey studies with a pinch of salt. It shouldn’t be to hard to conduct a similar study on humans, and the fact that we are only hearing about monkey studies makes me question whether the results can be generalized. It is not just that we are a different species and exhibit different behavior under same circumstances as monkeys, but also that the monkeys are kept under captivity all their lives which will profoundly alter their behavior (the same applies to humans).
throwawaysleep 4y ago
This is why I conceal/pretend to have a lower salary than I do. People claim that sharing salaries only benefits employers. No, it also benefits the people who will have to deal with colleague jealousy.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- housedrafta 4y ago
  Doing the opposite works too. If there are people in your org you don't like, insinuate that you make a lot. Of course doing such a thing is incredibly petty and should only be reserved for special cases, as it were.
this_steve_j 4y ago
Studies, studies, every where, And nor the apes did think, Studies, studies, every where But naught to drop a link. Ah! well a-day! what evil looks Had I from old and young! Instead of lolz, the Albatross About my neck was hung.

ben_jones 4y ago

There's two revelations here: * big companies have entire teams (internal and consultants) advising them on large changes in the name of productivity, cost reduction, whatever. These teams contrive metrics, KPI, and correlations, between what they do and the success of the business. These teams are paid bonuses, promotions, etc., based on these metrics they themselves contrive. * small companies blindly do what the big companies do because surely these big companies know what they're doing And everyone suffers. Except the people who implement this stuff. They probably have celebrations.

mushufasa 4y ago
> big companies have entire teams (internal and consultants) advising them on large changes in the name of productivity, cost reduction, whatever. These teams contrive metrics, KPI, and correlations, between what they do and the success of the business. These teams are paid bonuses, promotions, etc., based on these metrics they themselves contrive. definitely some misaligned incentives. do you have an alternative you recommend? Big institutions typically make decisions via "committees of experts" because the alternative decision making in big groups of people is often dictated by a single or cadre of leaders, or total stasis. And small groups of leaders don't scale to the amount of decisions to be made at big groups.
- ben_jones 4y ago
  I'd counter its not "committees of experts" but "committees of stakeholders and powerbrokers" with equally misaligned incentives not worth replicating.
weatherlite 4y ago
Yes it's called capitalism, if they could get away with it they would pay us nothing. In good times the stock gets so high you can get away with super high salaries, over staffing and perks. But in worse times the stock starts to get a hit, the multiples don't look good and to retain earnings you have to cut costs. The biggest cost is wages...
- 4y ago

Spooky23 4y ago

My sister was an RN at a hospital whose parent company gobbled up some area hospitals. In her case, they cut her pay 25%, because it would be unfair to pay the other people less. This was right before COVID, and everyone basically quit - like a whole department of nurses en masse. She came back as a contractor when they were hard up, at one point making $350/hr. All of the normal staff left and it became a contractor mill. When contract people didn’t show, she got $2000-3000 shift bonuses for a 4 hour work commitment to allow the ER to stay open. I certainly hope the Slack folks do something similar.

joshstrange 4y ago
Yep. My good friend is an RN who worked for a hospital bought up by some conglomerate and the perks slowly went away and burned a ton of loyalty/good-will. He left to do travel nursing and made a ton more. It’s so shortsighted and ultimately defeating/self-destructive when companies act like this.
- pempem 4y ago
  It just doesn't seem to harm the corporation enough. The requests for subsidies, the limitations of available support that put the public at risk should be negatively impacting leadership of these organizations drastically.
  - GeorgeWBasic 4y ago
    Maybe not enough people know what's really happening with those companies.
  - throwawaysleep 4y ago
    Nobody is really evaluated all that effectively on an individual level. I can't figure out the difference in my performance reviews between advocating, coming up with new ideas, and taking initiative vs just working on tickets and not saying a word in meetings.
  - otikik 4y ago

selcuka 4y ago

Not that I support the decision, but to be fair the size of the Slack team is probably a small percentage of whole SalesForce, so applying the same benefit to everyone instead of taking it away from that small team is much harder to justify.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
joshstrange 4y ago
I’m not disagreeing that that’s probably exactly what the execs who made this decision thought, it’s just gross. But I’m sure one them will get a nice bonus for cutting this.

babyshake 4y ago

"your employment is very important to us, please hold..."

xen2xen1 4y ago
I'd like the Kevorkian disconnect please.
iwilalb 4y ago

sorry_outta_gas 4y ago

I went though this years ago when my coworkers at the time were complaining about some random process/internal standard.. it's like you realize we're the ones who control that right?

eloisius 4y ago

There are definitely people there who are relishing in this change. Such a sad mentality, but I remember reading plenty of whine posts about why it’s unfair for Heroku to not use GUS or, why does X acquisition still get to have free lunch.

sharkweek 4y ago

“The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make, and could just as easily make differently.” -David Graeber I know this reads as a gross oversimplification but it rings true all the time. Imagine if almost everyone collectively at Salesforce said, “nope, this is dumb! We are going to stop working until this benefit is handed out to everyone at the company.” It’d be changed back / expanded within 48 hours.

brigandish 4y ago
You'd have to solve the prisoner's dilemma though, and that's something Graeber certainly hasn't managed to crack.
- HWR_14 4y ago
  Why would you need to solve it? Because the prisoners dilemma suggests everyone should hold out for the holiday.
  - brigandish 4y ago
    The reason the dilemma is of any interest is because people do defect.
- AmericanChopper 4y ago
  You don’t have to solve it. There’s not really any problem to solve to begin with. People who are happy with the changed working conditions will continue to work there. People who do not want to tolerate the change will not continue to work there. Every person can precisely choose the outcome they want, without cooperation from anybody.
  - brigandish 4y ago
    That's not what I was responding to though. This is: > Imagine if almost everyone collectively at Salesforce said, “nope, this is dumb! We are going to stop working until this benefit is handed out to everyone at the company.” It’d be changed back / expanded within 48 hours. That's a prisoner's dilemma, people holding out for the best they can get. If enough people defect then it won't work.

mizzao 4y ago

Seems like we're on a slow burn to a crappy Slack product. What should we be switching to instead...Teams?

Griffinsauce 4y ago
This was my first thought, there goes the product (eventually ofc)

nathanvanfleet 4y ago

"Due to the bad economy we can exploit you even more than normal!"

jiveturkey 4y ago

Managers can simply ignore this policy for their reports. If, at the Director level, most of the managers are still of original Slack ilk, this is very feasible. SFDC has unlimited PTO so this won't even be noticed.

moju 4y ago
In the United States. Other counties have limits.
joshstrange 4y ago
I get this and people have tried to assuage me throughout my career with things like "yeah but it's up to the manager so you'll be fine" or similar. I absolutely hate manager-discretion "perks" because they aren't official ("on the books"), they can be taken away at a moments notice on the whim on your manager or if a new manager comes in who doesn't agree. Before COVID this was the case with WFH at my last company. I was able to WFH for 2 days a week but it was impossible to get that codified in the handbook. I was even on the committee that oversaw edits/rewrites of the handbook but HR would not let us add anything about WFH other than "It's up to the manager". I had so many people tell me "I don't know why you are so bothered, you are able to WFH". Yes, today, right now, with this manager, or at least this managers current demeanor I have WFH but all that can turn on a dime, I wanted it to be official. "Of course", the company as a whole couldn't allow WFH, that would be "impossible". I left that company in late 2019 and... surprise! They went fully remote in 2020 and now are a hybrid with the majority of people WFH-ing. It was a rare case of being told it was impossible and would never work to seeing not but a few months later all their arguments to be shown for the BS they really were.