Salesforce co-CEO Marc Benioff took a needed first step this week toward stabilizing the company’s struggling stock, disclosing plans to right-size its overgrown workforce.
His next big task: getting more of Salesforce’s newest employees in sync with corporate leadership.
Fresh off Wednesday’s announcement of a 10% reduction-in-force, Fortune and Bloomberg published reports Thursday revealing a stark disconnect between Salesforce management and staff working in its recently acquired Slack and Tableau divisions. Salesforce closed deals for the two companies in 2021 and 2019, respectively, for a combined $43.4 billion.
Questions about a potential rift between Salesforce leadership and staffers at the recently acquired outfits have been burbling for months, particularly in light of Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield announcing his resignation plans in December. Salesforce’s poor financial results in 2022—its stock price sank by 49% and net income through the first nine months fell year-over-year from $1.5 billion to $300 million—also continue to weigh on the company.
But Thursday’s reports brought some of those tensions more into the open.
As Fortune’s Kylie Robison reported, Slack employees used an hourlong Q&A with the division’s senior leadership to air frustrations about a culture clash with the tech giant’s management. One staff member asked Butterfield how Slack’s remaining leaders can “help us stay in touch with our Slack values inside Salesforce,” accusing the parent company of disregarding those values. Others questioned whether Salesforce still sees Slack as a strategic priority and asked for clarity about Slack’s role in the company.
In a refreshing moment of candor—likely enabled by the fact that he’s got one foot out the door—Butterfield agreed with those grievances and took ownership of the rocky marriage.
“The problem has been, there’s no incorporation of the Slack culture into the Salesforce culture,” Butterfield said, according to an audio recording of the meeting obtained by Robison. “And unless there is some element of that, then it’s not integration in any sense. It’s just the elimination.”
Anxiety is also high within Salesforce’s Tableau data-visualization unit, which has struggled to live up to its $15.7 billion price.
Bloomberg reported that the division was “hit harder than other units” by Salesforce’s job cuts, though the news outlet didn’t detail exact layoff totals. In addition, many of Tableau’s leaders at the time of the Salesforce acquisition, including then-CEO Adam Selipsky and product development chief Mark Nelson, have resigned or been forced out of the company in the past three-plus years.
“Tableau is increasingly being treated as a visualization tool for data contained in Salesforce’s other services rather than a standalone program—co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff highlighted the new integrations in a December keynote speech,” Bloomberg reported. “The division has trailed the rest of the company in sales growth since the acquisition.”
It’s too soon to say Salesforce should feel buyer’s remorse about its two largest corporate acquisitions.
Both units remain solid long-term fits within a company aspiring to join the ranks of Microsoft and other highest-echelon tech titans—an argument Wall Street has tepidly supported, even if Salesforce might have overpaid. It’s hard, too, to separate any stumbles at Slack and Tableau from the broader slowdown in SaaS sales, which have pummeled companies big and small throughout the sector.
Yet Benioff, renowned for cultivating an “Aloha Spirit” at Salesforce, can’t afford to let culture and leadership issues fester much longer. The newbies are restless—and it’s his job to calm the waters.
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Jacob Carpenter
