Salesforce

Salesforce was a market leader in the SaaS space with a great "Ohana" culture for two decades. The culture was awesome; there were learning opportunities at every corner, and people really believed in the CEO.

For the past 6 years, the company has been in steady decline.

The acquisition route to growth has been disastrous. Mulesoft, Tableau, and Slack were all acquired with the promise of tremendous growth. The only outcome has been that these once good companies have been torn to shreds, with all their leadership having fled long ago. The integrations have been weak at best.

The CEO stepped away for many years, letting the culture rot. He came back only when the Co-CEO called it quits and activist investors threatened his throne. The CEO's response has been to lay off thousands of high-performing engineers so he could keep his position as Chairman and CEO. Poor attitude and sometimes outright threats to employees in internal Slack channels by him have destroyed the confidence in his leadership.

Every Business Unit has been re-orged multiple times in the last 8 months, resulting in chaos and confusion.

EVPs, SVPs, and VPs who remain in the company are basically "yes men" who are trying to protect their butts.

Ridiculous developer metrics like the number of check-ins and lines of code written per sprint are draining engineers' morale. Self-preservation has taken the place of collaboration in engineering teams.

Innovation has all but ground to a halt. The tech stack is ancient, monolithic, and horrible to maintain.

• Marc needs to step down, or at least give up the dual role of Chairman and CEO.

• New blood is needed at the top. The current President and Chief Engineering Officer needs to be replaced.

• Cut the fat at the EVP / SVP and VP levels.

• Bring back real innovation instead of the "old wine in a new bottle" mentality.