Time for Change at the Top

Well, Marc Benioff managed to do it again. If you thought his interview in October was bad, now you don't have to wonder if it was a one-off. This time he asked international employees (that his company had just flown to Las Vegas) to stand, as though they were about to be recognized positively, then "joked" that ICE was waiting in back for them. Into the deafening silence from the company, Parker Harris eventually said that he was "not OK" with Marc's comments. That alone would have been too little and too late. But he followed up by basically threatening employees that speak out about this with firing. Sigh.

I don't have much more to add here than has already been said better than I could in LinkedIn posts (here, and here, there are many more), threads on Slack channels, and the like. But I decided that I don't want to just ignore this either. I owe it to the Salesforce employees and the broader community—actual feeling humans, regardless of whether they were born in the US or abroad—to use my platform to say two things:

This is unacceptable.

It was insensitive, mean-spirited, and truly shows us just how disconnected tech bros are from real people. I think the board ought to remove Benioff over this.

I actually think this may be grounds for just about anyone to claim that Salesforce is a hostile work environment. I hope someone sues. Salesforce should be punished for this kind of behavior by its CEO. (And Wall Street ain't likely to do it.)

Benioff Said This, Not You

To employees of Salesforce: I feel for you. I sympathize with what you must be going through. I can't really imagine how crappy it must feel to work for someone so hateful.

There are many of you that regularly interact with the community. I think you do it with respect. I've found most Salesforce employees to lead with compassion, humility, and understanding. Thank goodness you're not learning from the example of your CEO!

I'm sure that since this happened, some of you are taking heat that you don't deserve. I don't claim to speak for anyone but myself, but I hope you know that we in the community have your back.

If you need (or want) to stay in your job (for all kinds of reasons), that is OK.

If you feel you need to quit over this, I will be here to support you in whatever ways I can.

I Wish I Could Do More

It would be nice to think we could really punish the company for keeping Benioff in leadership after comments like these. I just don't see many avenues that I think would be effective. The stock market has been punishing the company's share price for more than a year. No one could truly say if any recent drop has to do with the recent mess. But trusting Wall Street and capitalism seems rather naive to me anyhow

I'd love to see people boycott Salesforce's signature events like Dreamforce, TDX, and World Tours. But again, it's hard to know how this would truly send a message, since there will always be some people attending (they need to for their business) and the motives of those not there are rather hard to measure. I can tell you right now that my heart wouldn't be into going to any of those events right now. But I'd cooled on the big events already because I think the community-organized not-sponsored-by-Salesforce Dreamin events are so much better for learning and networking.

And then there's the question of using the platform or not, recommending the platform to a new nonprofit that needs a CRM or not. Unfortunately, as I've written before, I don't see a viable alternative. I'm using a technology because it works and I'm supporting my clients that are already on Salesforce. I'm not going to pretend that the company behind the platform somehow is also improving the world.