Salesforce yields to activist pressure with harsh new policies for engineers(techcrunch.com)
techcrunch.com
Salesforce yields to activist pressure with harsh new policies for engineers
https://techcrunch.com/2023/02/14/salesforce-yields-to-activist-pressure-with-harsh-new-policies-for-engineers-sales-people/
33 comments
> Trying to change productivity at Salesforce is rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic.
I agree. But this Titanic has many more years to very slowly sink, because large enterprises take forever to migrate away from Salesforce.
And the Salesforce sales teams are even better than Oracle at selling a crap product at high prices. That will buy them a lot of time.
I agree. But this Titanic has many more years to very slowly sink, because large enterprises take forever to migrate away from Salesforce.
And the Salesforce sales teams are even better than Oracle at selling a crap product at high prices. That will buy them a lot of time.
Absolutely. It takes forever to get an org onto salesforce so disentangling is probably basically impossible.
What would you say is today’s Salesforce?
Interesting question. If you mean enterprise software/saas offerings with a lot of stickiness, there are clearly a lot of them in the data space. Palantir, Snowflake, maybe Splunk etc are the sorts of fundamental pieces of architecture which people build an “enterprise data strategy” around, and those sorts of projects take a long time to roll out and are therefore intrinsically hard to roll back. There’s a long way to go to become as big as Salesforce though clearly so we’ll have to see how the next few years play out for them. It looks likely to me that some of the “enterprise AI” players (openAI, scale.ai etc) may well end up in the same position also as large companies build LLMs and other models into their workflows.
One thing about Salesforce (anecdotally) is that CRM systems are painful to put in place because they require people to change. They promise that once the processes/workflows are redesigned this “digital transformation” of the business will result in various benefits. This gives Salesforce an army of free sales people at the big consulting firms who essentially sell this transformation project and salesforce as an side-effect.
However people don’t want to change. For this reason at every org where I’ve worked where there has been a big project to put in a CRM system (not just Salesforce - I’ve seen it with Siebel as well) there is a huge painful project to get the CRM system in and afterwards there is massive management pressure to try to force people to use the CRM system in place of existing processes (typically using email to pass around spreadsheets). This pressure is because the benefits of the CRM don’t typically accrue to the people who have to put data into the system. Typically they accrue to the managers of those people. So CRMs often end up out of date, full of duplicate records, bad data etc rather than the perfect repository of institutional knowledge they are billed as.
The promise of the new gen I listed above is because they operate on the data sources (rather than requiring the people to change their existing flows) the analytical insights can come from existing systems and processes without as much organisational pain. It remains to be seen whether they end up as sticky in the long term.
One thing about Salesforce (anecdotally) is that CRM systems are painful to put in place because they require people to change. They promise that once the processes/workflows are redesigned this “digital transformation” of the business will result in various benefits. This gives Salesforce an army of free sales people at the big consulting firms who essentially sell this transformation project and salesforce as an side-effect.
However people don’t want to change. For this reason at every org where I’ve worked where there has been a big project to put in a CRM system (not just Salesforce - I’ve seen it with Siebel as well) there is a huge painful project to get the CRM system in and afterwards there is massive management pressure to try to force people to use the CRM system in place of existing processes (typically using email to pass around spreadsheets). This pressure is because the benefits of the CRM don’t typically accrue to the people who have to put data into the system. Typically they accrue to the managers of those people. So CRMs often end up out of date, full of duplicate records, bad data etc rather than the perfect repository of institutional knowledge they are billed as.
The promise of the new gen I listed above is because they operate on the data sources (rather than requiring the people to change their existing flows) the analytical insights can come from existing systems and processes without as much organisational pain. It remains to be seen whether they end up as sticky in the long term.
"Basically a layer which allows you to map your business problems onto a relational database + workflow thing"
How is this different from any B2B SaaS product?
How is this different from any B2B SaaS product?
The primary difference is that they decided (like SAP and a few others) that rather than solving a particular vertical well they would produce a generic thing that could be used to tackle all business types, and then build an ecosystem of consultants and providers that sell and implement the product for them. So you have a thing that was originally for sales people now doing the loan application and credit approval workflow at banks[1] for example.
So the tradeoff is most b2b saas products which are special-purpose tend to be easier to deploy and more directly suitable for their purpose vs salesforce being a "do-everything but maybe not that well" solution.
[1] https://www.ncino.com/ have built an entire business out of getting salesforce to do this
So the tradeoff is most b2b saas products which are special-purpose tend to be easier to deploy and more directly suitable for their purpose vs salesforce being a "do-everything but maybe not that well" solution.
[1] https://www.ncino.com/ have built an entire business out of getting salesforce to do this
> “From what we know, [Boston Consulting Group] made some significant recommendations on how salespeople and developers should be measured to improve productivity,” Wang told TechCrunch.
Huh, so SalesForce, up to this point had, no idea on how to measure if their salespeople or developers were doing anything useful?
That seems implausible so I assume this is just about reducing headcount without having to pay the costs of laying people off. Or am I being too cynical?
Huh, so SalesForce, up to this point had, no idea on how to measure if their salespeople or developers were doing anything useful?
That seems implausible so I assume this is just about reducing headcount without having to pay the costs of laying people off. Or am I being too cynical?
My guess is that Salesforce execs already wanted to do this and then hired BCG to back this idea.
At least, that’s how a lot of MBB consulting is.
At least, that’s how a lot of MBB consulting is.
From the article, it seems like they were made to hire BCG and listen to their recommendations. They almost surely had to have an existing system but it’s likely that the investors deemed BCGs advice more reliable.
"Activist investors" are just hedge funds trying to extract as much short term rent from the work of others as possible.
That their short term desire for a brief bump in profit regardless of long term cost has an impact on the executive management of the company is more an indictment of the ineffectiveness of that company than anything else. The use of consultants to launder their incompetence is a BS activity - I've never heard of any consultants in these circumstances doing anything other than say that the executives are awesome, and that all the employees have too many rights and need to be put in their place and/or fired, as close to the bounds of legality as possible.
That their short term desire for a brief bump in profit regardless of long term cost has an impact on the executive management of the company is more an indictment of the ineffectiveness of that company than anything else. The use of consultants to launder their incompetence is a BS activity - I've never heard of any consultants in these circumstances doing anything other than say that the executives are awesome, and that all the employees have too many rights and need to be put in their place and/or fired, as close to the bounds of legality as possible.
Activist investors are key players in making companies better and more efficient.
Nope ... as the poster above explained, they're strip miners.
Capitalism only works in theory. While it might sound good in principle, the realities of human nature make it impractical as a way to organize an economic system.
Capitalism is the most successful system we’ve tried.
Or, at least, of those that we can remember we’ve tried—- where our memory consists strictly of… the set of written artifacts that have survived all the way until today. Subject to interpretation, and with a built-in bias for the more recent.
What percent of all human organizational structures in history exists in that memory? How many exist in dig sites buried beneath the oceans, where the coastlines once stood? How many were written down on something temporary, such as, say, paper, and were destroyed before we could read them?
I think this is why people feel strongly that there could be a better approach. We haven’t explored much of the space at all. Though any unexplored option would be very risky to try at scale, of course, and perhaps there lies the rub.
Or, at least, of those that we can remember we’ve tried—- where our memory consists strictly of… the set of written artifacts that have survived all the way until today. Subject to interpretation, and with a built-in bias for the more recent.
What percent of all human organizational structures in history exists in that memory? How many exist in dig sites buried beneath the oceans, where the coastlines once stood? How many were written down on something temporary, such as, say, paper, and were destroyed before we could read them?
I think this is why people feel strongly that there could be a better approach. We haven’t explored much of the space at all. Though any unexplored option would be very risky to try at scale, of course, and perhaps there lies the rub.
We never tried capitalism, its been feudalism all along since the founding if you look closely.
Not saying that its not been successful, you just have to think for who?
Yeah, our economy is totally based on grants of land in exchange for military service
> based on grants of land in exchange for military service
US railroads have entered the chat
US railroads have entered the chat
Railroads served in the military? Are the engines the generals? The caboose is the privates? Do the rail cars wear war ribbons on their chests???
I don't get what you're saying. I didn't even know railroads were people, but you learn something new every day, I guess.
The times we live in.
I don't get what you're saying. I didn't even know railroads were people, but you learn something new every day, I guess.
The times we live in.
Human nature is often contradictory, and is in no way universal across humanity. No system of organizing humanity will fit neatly with human nature. No economic system, religion, moral system, government, educational model, language, and so on, will ever work well universally. So this leaves us all with a series of tradeoffs and concessions. Capitalism has one set of tradeoffs, feudalism had another, socialism a third.
We might disagree on the relative importance of the concessions required, but I hope we can all agree that there is simply no perfect system (yet).
We might disagree on the relative importance of the concessions required, but I hope we can all agree that there is simply no perfect system (yet).
Capitalism DOES work to generate more wealth than any other system. But if profit is your ONLY motive it causes you to treat humans very badly, as the flat out murder of strikers in the past have shown us. Capitalism needs to be tempered by requirements for employees to be treated like actual human beings. EU countries are a good example of this. Capitalism is also very good at concentrating wealth, which is bad for society in the long term as you end up with small numbers of incredibly rich people hiding away from the vast number of desperate poor people. The solution to this problem is extremely progressive income taxes and a 100% estate tax on anything over $100 million. Taxing people after they are dead is the fairest possible time to do so.
I find it remarkable to note that not a single person, since, well, recorded history on the subject, has ever matched criticism of capitalism with a viable, well-tested and proven alternative. Perfect it is not. And yet, no other system in human history has elevated more people out of poverty than capitalism.
Its the old "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all other types that have been tried."
Poverty in terms of what? Needs of the body are met for many (though generally with cheap, ugly, and/or low quality products lacking craftsmanship) but needs of the soul are at an all time low. Just judge from the present mental health crisis—likely the worst in human history—which is largely fueled by disconnection which is an inherent feature of capitalism.
The “poverty” narrative a lie, a rehashing of the old “savages” narrative. It goes hand in hand with this idea that "poor" countries need the western world’s help. No they don’t. Has forced indebtedness helped them? No. And most of their people did not even get a say in the matter of becoming indebted. Advertising of nonprofits and the like is still littered with posters of white men kissing little black babies. It’s quite strange.
In fact, America as a culture is quite new and though it has many good qualities, seeds which can be watered to make for a better future, at present it has become especially barbaric, which is of course not news. These other “impoverished” countries generally have much more historic and developed cultures, ways of handling themselves, etc.
Also, it’s not like “capitalism” was proven and tested before “it” came to be. It has been an incredibly complex process. And it’s not that “it” even will be replaced at some single moment. It’s always a process, and this particular process is already underway.
The “poverty” narrative a lie, a rehashing of the old “savages” narrative. It goes hand in hand with this idea that "poor" countries need the western world’s help. No they don’t. Has forced indebtedness helped them? No. And most of their people did not even get a say in the matter of becoming indebted. Advertising of nonprofits and the like is still littered with posters of white men kissing little black babies. It’s quite strange.
In fact, America as a culture is quite new and though it has many good qualities, seeds which can be watered to make for a better future, at present it has become especially barbaric, which is of course not news. These other “impoverished” countries generally have much more historic and developed cultures, ways of handling themselves, etc.
Also, it’s not like “capitalism” was proven and tested before “it” came to be. It has been an incredibly complex process. And it’s not that “it” even will be replaced at some single moment. It’s always a process, and this particular process is already underway.
Yeah, it's fairly obvious from the fossil records that all humans were using cash back in the tribal nomadic days hundreds of thousands of years ago. There literally has never been any other ways humans have organized other than wage labor.
But of course! We should revert to barter as it is the most optimal system.
Do not reply in bad faith. You know the person you are replying to was not saying that capitalism is the only system to ever exist. They were saying that, despite its numerous flaws, it appears to be the most successful system we’ve tried.
I'm not replying in bad faith. It is very obvious that capitalism has always been with us and always will be. If you observe birds long enough, you'll start to see them exchange tokens with each other, but results like that rarely get published
This is a “no true Scotsman” argument. Any counterexample with a proposed alternative will be criticised as either not viable, untested or unproven and yet pretty much every nation on earth has a system which includes some legal limits on the powers of corporations in order to protect people. Noone just does completely unfettered capitalism. The importance of this principle goes back all the way to the birth of capitalism with Smith’s “Theory of Moral Sentiments”. The important question is how to strike the right balance of protection of workers vs growth and dynamism in the economy.
Notwithstanding that, the social problems arising from extreme inequality (with its roots in a type of capitalism that lacks empathy for people) are very real. I see them all the time in homeless people living beside the freeway when I visit LA or under the underpasses in SF. Here in the UK there is a growing group of working people who have had to choose between heating and eating this winter[1]. I’m not sure they feel like they have been elevated out of poverty.
[1] The guardian has been running a series of “Heat or Eat Diaries” where people document this situation eg https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/14/heat-o...
Notwithstanding that, the social problems arising from extreme inequality (with its roots in a type of capitalism that lacks empathy for people) are very real. I see them all the time in homeless people living beside the freeway when I visit LA or under the underpasses in SF. Here in the UK there is a growing group of working people who have had to choose between heating and eating this winter[1]. I’m not sure they feel like they have been elevated out of poverty.
[1] The guardian has been running a series of “Heat or Eat Diaries” where people document this situation eg https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/14/heat-o...
Wow big claims, all the benefit comes from the socialist policies in this feudalist system.
All poverty elevating concepts come from there since capitalist is all about greed and progress without caring for human lives.
Don't forget to blink once in a while, might not be seeing things clearly.
Don't forget to blink once in a while, might not be seeing things clearly.
This is odd phrasing because usually capitalism is sold as the pragmatist solution, imperfect by design but stable and “good enough”
Usually “only works in theory” is applied to the other economic systems which tend to sell high on the idea of equality, but devolve into the same problems of haves and have-nots.
Usually “only works in theory” is applied to the other economic systems which tend to sell high on the idea of equality, but devolve into the same problems of haves and have-nots.
You're so close to seeing through what I wrote!
Secondly, their business model has attempted to diversify from just being about sales but fundamentally they are long the economy in general. If the economy is struggling, the appetite for “sales enablement” and collaboration-type tooling is going to wither. Some of the products they acquired (Tableau, Slack in particular) are pretty cool but came at a hefty price tag that is going to be tough to recoup as the environment generally gets tougher and their competition (free and paid) increases.
I don’t think either engineering or sales productivity is going to solve this and if there’s some magic there I’m pretty skeptical that BCG would find it.