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It's hard to know what really happened here, but Butterfields comments as cited reflects an all-too-common mindset in company mergers regardless: “The problem

It's hard to know what really happened here, but Butterfields comments as cited reflects an all-too-common mindset in company mergers regardless: “The problem has been, there’s no incorporation of the Slack culture into the Salesforce culture, and unless there is some element of that, then it’s not integration in any sense. It’s just the elimination". It seems like the process of populating the top tiers in large orgs routinely sifts out people who know how to cooperate, and promote the people who only know how to dominate.

LapsangGuzzler 4y ago
> It seems like the process of populating the top tiers in large orgs routinely sifts out people who know how to cooperate, and promote the people who only know how to dominate. This is an inherent trait of our modern result-driven system. Being able to dominate is a key trait for a successful executive in this culture, and anyone saying otherwise is just trying to sell books. As egalitarian as we might think our modern work culture is, the idea that leading by cooperation just isn't true. Successful executives at big companies are able to make it look like they lead by cooperation (and sometimes do cooperate in the process) while fully maintaining control. And many don't even try to pretend to be cooperative.
- parineum 4y ago
  > This is an inherent trait of our modern result-driven system. Is being result-driven modern?
  - shaneofalltrad 4y ago
    I believe it's a modern version of result-driven.
    - samstave 4y ago
      Results drive modernity
- stareatgoats 4y ago
  I'm not really as pessimistic as all that. True, in the companies I've worked for there was always a tendency for the domineering types to make it to the top, but there is definitely a spectrum involved, a bell curve that could conceivably be shifted more towards cooperation than currently if the zeitgeist favored that more. Maybe after some time with more women on the boards?
  - esja 4y ago
    In my experience the women who make it to these levels are no less domineering than the men, and often more so.
- ResearchCode 4y ago
  Don't think there's any evidence for that.
  - shaneofalltrad 4y ago
    I see it in most companies I work at, I see the most aggressive delegation minded extroverts climbing to the top and those heads down getting shit done stepped over much of the time or even considered less important because they are not playing the social game. We need a study to see this?
    - ResearchCode 4y ago
      That doesn't mean it's the best model. Successful in the sense of the career ladder, then maybe you're right. Successful as in productive or good for the organization or society, probably not. They are responsible for many of the biggest organizational failures.
- indymike 4y ago
  > It seems like the process of populating the top tiers in large orgs routinely sifts out people who know how to cooperate, and promote the people who only know how to dominate. I don't think it's that simple. As you move up, you lose touch with those below you because the problems that can get you fired come from your other executive peers and the C suite. Most of these problems are really hard to explain because they are kind of stupid. Someone's sleeping with the CEO and wants something. Another VP promised the company would do X for an investor who will withold investment if X doesn't happen. Everyone is terrified of a lawsuit because someone got liquored up and said something to the media at a conference. Our rock star, investor-placed, infallible CFO made a mistake and we have one third the cash we thought we did. And your job as executive is to make it happen even if it is stupid. So it comes across as domineering and very political: "We're not doing that, Dave. We're doing this. Because I said so." If the executive took time to explain: "We're not doing that, Dave. I had to make a deal with CMO Schmidt (who referred me to the CEO for my job and is married in to the owner's family) because he committed that we would be ready to release feature X at convention Y at last week's investor meeting. So, that integration with Z that will make us a bunch of money isn't going to happen. I know, it's stupid. But we're doing the stupid. And yes, that guy who makes 3x what I do is an absolute idiot." This is why I much prefer to work in companies where the owners are still working in the business and the whole team is "dealt in" on outcomes (i.e. in a startup, has options) and executives are looking to increase the valuation of options/shares instead of trying to max out some badly designed "multi-dimensional, goal-aligned incentive structure".
  - FormerBandmate 4y ago
    > This is why I much prefer to work in companies where the owners are still working in the business and the whole team is "dealt in" on outcomes (i.e. in a startup, has options) and executives are looking to increase the valuation of options/shares instead of trying to max out some badly designed "multi-dimensional, goal-aligned incentive structure". This is incidentally why stock based comp exists
- 8note 4y ago
  I don't know if you should call that results driven. Results tend to come from cooperation and collaboration. What you might be looking for is that were in an attribution-driven system and culture?
imwithstoopid 4y ago
well Stewart always had the choice of going it alone and building out Slack as its own brand, but he took the $$$ he had the same experience with Yahoo buying Flickr so its not like any of this should have surprised him...he still consented to the acquisition of Slack no difference here from the WhatsApp guys who took a ton of money and then pooped on Facebook...be happy you got the money and understand that you agreed to be acquired
- gonehome 4y ago
  I’ll defend Brian Acton a bit here - he refused to sell WhatsApp until it got up to a ludicrous 19B$ for 30 full time employees? Few people are tested to that amount and then it becomes a legitimate question of opportunity cost (he gave 50M$ to signal after the sale). Even with that Meta has been a decent steward of it imo despite obvious conflicts of interest. 19B$ of character is more than most. Slack failed to compete with Microsoft and then the CEO sold it to one of the worst possible acquisition companies in the industry (maybe only behind oracle?) not unlike his flicker sale, it’s not the same. I have a lot lower opinion of him (to the point I’d be less likely to join a company he’s running).
  - phpisthebest 4y ago
    >>Slack failed to compete with Microsoft I dont know that is a fair characterization, by most accounts Slack is a better product, however Microsoft has a vertical integration and with the strong push to bring most orgs on to Microsoft 365 it is hard to compete with "free" in the sense that Teams is included in the suite products you are already going to pay for anyway.... I highly doubt it Microsoft would have made Teams a stand alone product each company had to buy per user that it would have gotten anywhere near the adoption it did.
    - gonehome 4y ago
      Slack had an in to expand and capture what eventually became 365, but they didn’t do it and Microsoft caught up and captured it.
    - 4y ago
iancmceachern 4y ago
Exactly. Big companies can't innovate, they can't get out of their own way enough to get something all the way through. The way it goes: 1.Company with great leadership gets investment (angel, VC, government, etc.) to do something great. 2. Great leadership takes the time and effort to a - understand what is needed and how to recognize talent in those areas and b - gets that talent onboard, even if it's expensive and time consuming to align their desires with the companies 3. A great team, with great leadership, does great things. 4. Great things are profitable, so the company is sold to a big soulless company, or becomes a big soulless company over time 5. Many of the people with true passion and skill leave because they can. They generally leave because the toxic environment in big soulless companies hurts them and takes away what makes them individually so great. 6. Company is left with a shell. They manufacture and sell a product, but all the people who made that product from first principles, the people who can do it again, have been alienated,insulted, or otherwise fell victim to the toxic culture and had to leave to preserve their humanity. Source: I've been through this cycle 3 times, one with a company that went IPO and is big now, one time with St. Jude/Medtronic and one time with J&J. Edited to correct a spelling error
- eftychis 4y ago
  You can also add my personal anecdota in the pot. Same experience. (I know there is self selection sampling here that needs to be adjusted for.)
- fatfox 4y ago
  Big soulless company will fail to replicate success of original founders due to lack of genuine vision for the acquired business. Will try to shoehorn acquired business into mega corps core competencies and remove whatever made it uniquely successful.
- 8note 4y ago
  4.5 the big company has different constraints that the small company did not have
  - fatfox 4y ago
anon2358 4y ago
The simplest explanation is that the small team of people who ran Future Forum probably just didn't want to deal with Benioff and Salesforce's bullshit anymore. Either that, or they got laid off in one of the recent rounds of cuts.
WhyNotHugo 4y ago
> The problem has been, there’s no incorporation of the Slack culture into the Salesforce culture, and unless there is some element of that, then it’s not integration in any sense. It’s just the elimination. Considering that the CEO is pushing for "back to the office" mentality and against remote work, I'd say it's pretty clear that this is just elimination of Slack. Slack is a key tool in remote work, it basically stands against what they're pushing for.

LapsangGuzzler 4y ago

> It seems like the process of populating the top tiers in large orgs routinely sifts out people who know how to cooperate, and promote the people who only know how to dominate. This is an inherent trait of our modern result-driven system. Being able to dominate is a key trait for a successful executive in this culture, and anyone saying otherwise is just trying to sell books. As egalitarian as we might think our modern work culture is, the idea that leading by cooperation just isn't true. Successful executives at big companies are able to make it look like they lead by cooperation (and sometimes do cooperate in the process) while fully maintaining control. And many don't even try to pretend to be cooperative.

parineum 4y ago
> This is an inherent trait of our modern result-driven system. Is being result-driven modern?
- shaneofalltrad 4y ago
  I believe it's a modern version of result-driven.
  - samstave 4y ago
    Results drive modernity
stareatgoats 4y ago
I'm not really as pessimistic as all that. True, in the companies I've worked for there was always a tendency for the domineering types to make it to the top, but there is definitely a spectrum involved, a bell curve that could conceivably be shifted more towards cooperation than currently if the zeitgeist favored that more. Maybe after some time with more women on the boards?
- esja 4y ago
  In my experience the women who make it to these levels are no less domineering than the men, and often more so.
ResearchCode 4y ago
Don't think there's any evidence for that.
- shaneofalltrad 4y ago
  I see it in most companies I work at, I see the most aggressive delegation minded extroverts climbing to the top and those heads down getting shit done stepped over much of the time or even considered less important because they are not playing the social game. We need a study to see this?
  - ResearchCode 4y ago
    That doesn't mean it's the best model. Successful in the sense of the career ladder, then maybe you're right. Successful as in productive or good for the organization or society, probably not. They are responsible for many of the biggest organizational failures.
indymike 4y ago
> It seems like the process of populating the top tiers in large orgs routinely sifts out people who know how to cooperate, and promote the people who only know how to dominate. I don't think it's that simple. As you move up, you lose touch with those below you because the problems that can get you fired come from your other executive peers and the C suite. Most of these problems are really hard to explain because they are kind of stupid. Someone's sleeping with the CEO and wants something. Another VP promised the company would do X for an investor who will withold investment if X doesn't happen. Everyone is terrified of a lawsuit because someone got liquored up and said something to the media at a conference. Our rock star, investor-placed, infallible CFO made a mistake and we have one third the cash we thought we did. And your job as executive is to make it happen even if it is stupid. So it comes across as domineering and very political: "We're not doing that, Dave. We're doing this. Because I said so." If the executive took time to explain: "We're not doing that, Dave. I had to make a deal with CMO Schmidt (who referred me to the CEO for my job and is married in to the owner's family) because he committed that we would be ready to release feature X at convention Y at last week's investor meeting. So, that integration with Z that will make us a bunch of money isn't going to happen. I know, it's stupid. But we're doing the stupid. And yes, that guy who makes 3x what I do is an absolute idiot." This is why I much prefer to work in companies where the owners are still working in the business and the whole team is "dealt in" on outcomes (i.e. in a startup, has options) and executives are looking to increase the valuation of options/shares instead of trying to max out some badly designed "multi-dimensional, goal-aligned incentive structure".
- FormerBandmate 4y ago
  > This is why I much prefer to work in companies where the owners are still working in the business and the whole team is "dealt in" on outcomes (i.e. in a startup, has options) and executives are looking to increase the valuation of options/shares instead of trying to max out some badly designed "multi-dimensional, goal-aligned incentive structure". This is incidentally why stock based comp exists
8note 4y ago
I don't know if you should call that results driven. Results tend to come from cooperation and collaboration. What you might be looking for is that were in an attribution-driven system and culture?

imwithstoopid 4y ago

well Stewart always had the choice of going it alone and building out Slack as its own brand, but he took the $$$ he had the same experience with Yahoo buying Flickr so its not like any of this should have surprised him...he still consented to the acquisition of Slack no difference here from the WhatsApp guys who took a ton of money and then pooped on Facebook...be happy you got the money and understand that you agreed to be acquired

gonehome 4y ago
I’ll defend Brian Acton a bit here - he refused to sell WhatsApp until it got up to a ludicrous 19B$ for 30 full time employees? Few people are tested to that amount and then it becomes a legitimate question of opportunity cost (he gave 50M$ to signal after the sale). Even with that Meta has been a decent steward of it imo despite obvious conflicts of interest. 19B$ of character is more than most. Slack failed to compete with Microsoft and then the CEO sold it to one of the worst possible acquisition companies in the industry (maybe only behind oracle?) not unlike his flicker sale, it’s not the same. I have a lot lower opinion of him (to the point I’d be less likely to join a company he’s running).
- phpisthebest 4y ago
  >>Slack failed to compete with Microsoft I dont know that is a fair characterization, by most accounts Slack is a better product, however Microsoft has a vertical integration and with the strong push to bring most orgs on to Microsoft 365 it is hard to compete with "free" in the sense that Teams is included in the suite products you are already going to pay for anyway.... I highly doubt it Microsoft would have made Teams a stand alone product each company had to buy per user that it would have gotten anywhere near the adoption it did.
  - gonehome 4y ago
    Slack had an in to expand and capture what eventually became 365, but they didn’t do it and Microsoft caught up and captured it.
  - 4y ago

iancmceachern 4y ago

Exactly. Big companies can't innovate, they can't get out of their own way enough to get something all the way through. The way it goes: 1.Company with great leadership gets investment (angel, VC, government, etc.) to do something great. 2. Great leadership takes the time and effort to a - understand what is needed and how to recognize talent in those areas and b - gets that talent onboard, even if it's expensive and time consuming to align their desires with the companies 3. A great team, with great leadership, does great things. 4. Great things are profitable, so the company is sold to a big soulless company, or becomes a big soulless company over time 5. Many of the people with true passion and skill leave because they can. They generally leave because the toxic environment in big soulless companies hurts them and takes away what makes them individually so great. 6. Company is left with a shell. They manufacture and sell a product, but all the people who made that product from first principles, the people who can do it again, have been alienated,insulted, or otherwise fell victim to the toxic culture and had to leave to preserve their humanity. Source: I've been through this cycle 3 times, one with a company that went IPO and is big now, one time with St. Jude/Medtronic and one time with J&J. Edited to correct a spelling error

eftychis 4y ago
You can also add my personal anecdota in the pot. Same experience. (I know there is self selection sampling here that needs to be adjusted for.)
fatfox 4y ago
Big soulless company will fail to replicate success of original founders due to lack of genuine vision for the acquired business. Will try to shoehorn acquired business into mega corps core competencies and remove whatever made it uniquely successful.
8note 4y ago
4.5 the big company has different constraints that the small company did not have
- fatfox 4y ago

anon2358 4y ago

The simplest explanation is that the small team of people who ran Future Forum probably just didn't want to deal with Benioff and Salesforce's bullshit anymore. Either that, or they got laid off in one of the recent rounds of cuts.

WhyNotHugo 4y ago

> The problem has been, there’s no incorporation of the Slack culture into the Salesforce culture, and unless there is some element of that, then it’s not integration in any sense. It’s just the elimination. Considering that the CEO is pushing for "back to the office" mentality and against remote work, I'd say it's pretty clear that this is just elimination of Slack. Slack is a key tool in remote work, it basically stands against what they're pushing for.