Salesforce

Salesforce has overall been a great experience for me. I've had 7 years of increasing responsibility and have worked with excellent colleagues. The employees care about doing great work, building products to meet customer needs, and giving back to their communities. If you can get on the right projects with leadership whose stars are rising, you can have incredible impact, and their leadership training programs are second to none.

Salesforce was a revelation to me when I started, as it was a big company that still operated in many ways like a start-up, which kept them innovative. That presented some challenges because they were a big ship to turn, whether they acknowledged it or not, but it did lead to taking chances and trying things. It has always been the case that Marc Benioff sets the direction, and he can be mercurial. But since the era of activist investors, he seems scared to let some slack into the reins and trust his employees, which means he's keeping people who don't push back on some of his less considered ideas and help mold them into good strategy. Hire smart people and then refuse to listen to them or intimidate them into submission, and they will leave. Look at the recent track record of GM turnover for the product lines, and you'll see what I mean.

There are still many amazing qualities to recommend Salesforce.

That said, command and control leadership from Marc is not going to make you the innovation leader you once were.

Meet the AI moment and do it using the brainpower of the excellent people you have hired, versus dictating to them what you insist is the right answer.

And get a spine on real equality for all, despite political pressure.

You were once a great culture and could be again.