> 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.
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
“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.
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.
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.
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... “There’s an art to this kind of horseshit, and Benioff is its Michelangelo.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
Have you used it lately? The Lightning update, not to mention their rabid acquisitions have made them quite formidable. They own Heroku for example. There core systems are a pain to learn, but the most powerful stuff in their market.
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.
Wanting to unionize is something that should come from the bottom up, and in my mind, is usually a sign that there's a serious disconnect between corporate leadership and employees. A few disgruntled employees is not indicative a major problem within a company and if there's no major problem, why form a union?
Salesforce pushing for regulation on their own industry would be seriously harming their customer base, since their a service provider, not a marketing company themselves. If there was to be a call for regulation in an industry, it would be one or two steps removed from SF.
Lobbying is a fact-of-life in competitive industries. It sucks, but it's absolutely necessary to survive at the level they play at, given how much economic power they have and the legislators they have to endure.
[+] [-] ryandrake|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] anitil|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cookingrobot|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1123581321|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cookingrobot|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justin|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] friedman23|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonathanedwards|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wyldfire|7 years ago|reply
Changes my impression of SFDC.
[+] [-] pbreit|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] internetman55|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greatamerican|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bhouston|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thedoops|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] briandear|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marricks|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] drivingmenuts|7 years ago|reply
Wanting to unionize is something that should come from the bottom up, and in my mind, is usually a sign that there's a serious disconnect between corporate leadership and employees. A few disgruntled employees is not indicative a major problem within a company and if there's no major problem, why form a union?
Salesforce pushing for regulation on their own industry would be seriously harming their customer base, since their a service provider, not a marketing company themselves. If there was to be a call for regulation in an industry, it would be one or two steps removed from SF.
Lobbying is a fact-of-life in competitive industries. It sucks, but it's absolutely necessary to survive at the level they play at, given how much economic power they have and the legislators they have to endure.
[+] [-] briandear|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] erikb|7 years ago|reply