
Marc Benioff of Salesforce: ‘Are We Not All Connected?’ - dsr12
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/business/marc-benioff-salesforce-corner-office.html
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ryandrake
> Then Larry [Ellison, Oracle’s co-founder] took notice of me, and I started
> working directly for him.

Wow, so much to potentially unpack here! Career advice-wise, I’d love to read
the details of how one joins a company (presumably as a rank and file
contributor) and all of a sudden the CEO “takes notice” of them and they are
working directly for the CEO! How big was Oracle at the time? I can count on
one hand how many companies I worked for where I even once met the CEO, and
they were all very small indeed.

~~~
anitil
Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but it appears he was in sales there? If you're a
high performer in sales you get access to people because your activities
directly impact the balance sheet

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cookingrobot
“We have a plan to get every homeless family off the streets within five
years. We’ve already moved hundreds of families back into society and into
homes.” Wow.

~~~
1123581321
You have to start somewhere. A local, wealthy entrepreneur has the same goal,
and after about a decade of work coordinating public and private orgs and
developing a unified case management system, our city of ~140k has
functionally zero homeless because they are all getting help. Replication of
this model is underway in other cities. The hard work of scheduling meetings
and getting multi-org agreement “scales” if it’s being effectively managed by
locals in each city, and of course the software is easily distributed.

~~~
janpieterz
Any more info you can share on this?

Very curious what the difference is compared to the usual approach, see how it
could apply in different places (here in NL).

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1123581321
Sure, here’s a very recent article (but the effects of this approach have been
accumulating for awhile.) [http://www.rrstar.com/news/20180608/rockford-gets-
attention-...](http://www.rrstar.com/news/20180608/rockford-gets-attention-
for-efforts-to-reduce-homelessness)

Here’s the software referenced: [https://www.mpowr.com/focus-
areas/community](https://www.mpowr.com/focus-areas/community)

It’s a SaaS, but as you can see, the hard part isn’t the app development; it’s
getting all the government departments and charities talking and agreeing to
automatically coordinate via software.

Our city is bad at a lot of things, so I’m a bit proud we’ve actually
accomplished something good that we are able to export. :)

The usual approach is to start a new case at each org which duplicates the
same kind of assistance, leaving less for others and making it harder to
steadily advance someone towards receiving the treatment or rehabilitation
they need since they’ll bounce from place to place. When communication between
agencies does happen, it generates too much paperwork and decision-making is
inconsistent, time-consuming and less effective because the staff might not be
up to date on the solutions or money available to treat an individual’s
specific problems. Software, along with a more collaborative mindset, helps
all of this.

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justin
Benioff is one of my inspirations and one of the technology CEOs I most look
up to.

~~~
friedman23
Why is that? As someone that has only been exposed to him via headlines and
articles like this he has come off as someone that states populist politically
correct statements for the purpose of gaining attention and not seeming like a
"typical" billionaire.

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afpx
One of my mentors, who worked with Benioff directly for years at Oracle, says
he’s legit - one of the kindest and most generous people he’s known.

~~~
friedman23
Ok, I'm probably looking at him in the worst possible light then.

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jonathanedwards
Bit of a puff piece. For a contrasting view, Dan Lyons (Fake Steve Jobs) has
some choice quotes on Benioff excerpted here
[http://www.platformonomics.com/2016/09/the-spectacle-that-
is...](http://www.platformonomics.com/2016/09/the-spectacle-that-is-
dreamforce/) “There’s an art to this kind of horseshit, and Benioff is its
Michelangelo.”

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wyldfire
This was an interesting article.

Changes my impression of SFDC.

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pbreit
Curious why impression would be different? Benioff has been outspoken like
this for at least a decade (two?). And Salesforce is well-known to be very
charitable.

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praneshp
> And Salesforce is well-known to be very charitable.

When I interviewed there, every single person who spoke to me talked about
their 1-1-1 thing. Might be interview training though.

~~~
bigtones
Yes, it's their main sales tool for recruiting and public relations efforts.
Everyone gets two weeks training in part on 1-1-1 when they join, and
employees involved in recruitment get a lot of training on how to present it
and respond to questions, and exposed to ongoing marketing on it.

~~~
drivingmenuts
Is it possible to work there (or any socially invested company) and just do
your job and go home?

I do certain charitable things but I don't discuss it except with a few people
who also participate.

I interviewed with a company here in Austin early this year and one of the
things that bugged me was how they'd turned their charitable work into a
marketing tool with slick brochures. I actually felt bad about being more
interested in the actual business work than the charity work.

~~~
mirceal
Yes, it’s possible.

You have the option of using up to 7 days per year (56hours) to volunteer and
you’re being paid normally for this time.

You are encouraged to volunteer and there are events setup regularly in which
you can take part if you want.

If you have something you personally care about you can volunteer there.

That being said nobody is forcing you to volunteer.

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internetman55
If you're remembered primarily for doing great philanthropic things in a few
decades I'll buy it. Til then you're just a billionaire who went to India and
likes to say stuff, in my books.

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bhouston
Cool guy. The core software is pretty dated though (it is 2000 era) and in
need of a major refresh which seems like it may never happen. So there are
some long-term risks with Salesforce because of that.

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thedoops
You're right. Salesforce is a big, complicated, multi-tenant, CRUD application
coupled to an Oracle database. Multi tenant architectures themselves aren't an
issue, but Salesforce implemented it well before the days of containers. All
the Apex code has to be "bulkified" which means writing almost everything for
multiple records in an execution context. This adds to the mental effort and
reduces readability. A major concern when not all consultants do it well.

They've been trying for years to replace the Oracle database with Postgres,
but it's not easy in such a large, heavily used enterprise application.

For many situations I recommend integrating with a messaging system and using
the REST apis from something like Ruby.

Lightning is not bad, but it's slow compared to the front end framework
competition. It is pretty fast to develop with though.

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marricks
He seems like he wants to be a better CEO and have employees volunteer but I
wonder if this type of business leader ever actually wants to empower their
employees by unionizing them? Or giving them the day off to vote? Encouraging
regulation on their own industries? Not financing lobbyists?

Not to say he’s a horrible person, just the corporate system we have seems
destined to take more and more power away from the avgerage joe.

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briandear
Good grief. Salesforce people are well paid. They can take a personal day to
vote. For many people, working at Salesforce is a dream job.

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TheCoelacanth
Also, people shouldn't really need a day off to vote unless they are working
an insane schedule. Polls are usually open 12+ hours. You should have time to
vote before or after the workday.

