From Ohana to Osama - Account Executive Salesforce Employee Review

1.0
31 Aug 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Salesforce is globally a good company with a great portfolio, a solid set of values, and a good engagement model with their clients. Revenue grows constantly year on year and share prices have skyrocketed recently. Employees have the possibility to take enroll in a beneficial stock purchase scheme. Other benefits include wellbeing reimbursements, life insurance, education.

Cons

Salesforce Asia with its only office in Singapore has witnessed a very poor management performance since the beginning of 2019. Portfolio: Despite the overwhelming strength of the Salesforce portfolio, Service Cloud (the customer service centred arm of their CRM) is the only well performing product. Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud (dubbed the "Attrition Cloud" by sellers because clients tend to cut relation with Salesforce after unsuccessful deployments), MuleSoft, and even the latest promising acquisition of Tableau have not received enough management attention to deliver proper results. Values: Salesforce has an outstanding set of values with their 1-1-1 model giving value back into the communities (1% equity, 1% of employees' time, 1% of their products. Also, the concept of the "Ohana" is a unique criteria. Ohana is Hawaiian and means "family". Employees, clients, partners, and the whole ecosystem are regarded a part of that family. Unfortunately, many employees in Singapore will not be able to testify that family ambience. Start from April 2019 numerous sellers have been hired to serve the ASEAN market out of Singapore (based in Singapore, working in Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand) with the effect that territories have been mutilated and numbers have become difficult to achieve. At the same time it has been announced that representations would be established in the ASEAN countries (see above). But no communication has been made as to what would happen to the Singapore employees serving those countries when the changes would come into effect. Start from August 2020 people have been fired by HR without prior conversations from line of business and been given 2 months notice (the author of this review not being one of them). Others have been offered up to 60% pay cuts to change their Singapore contracts into local contracts in the respective countries, if they would not accept, their employment contracts would be terminated. Client engagement: Despite putting the client in the centre of everything, Salesforce has not helped many clients that were severely hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. Requests had to be handled by the Account Executives and cases have been dragged along months to finally tell the clients that no reductions in their contract commitments would be approved even though those very clients just had lost 30% + of their workforce.

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5.0
9 Jun 2026
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Pros

wonderful people and sales training

Cons

big emphasis on external hiring

4.0
9 Jul 2014
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

I've spent over 8 years with Salesforce in various management and individual contributor roles, all customer or partner facing. Some of the pros: - vibrant, fast paced culture - smart, fun, aggressive colleagues - management is focused on latest tech trends and staying or becoming a leader for many of them - by and large, customers and partners are very positive about the technology - good benefits and perqs - hip urban culture at HQ - a chart-your-own-course mentality that rewards those who aggressively seek out the job they want and pursue it, or sometimes even create it

Cons

After my long tenure and many Dreamforce conferences, I'm nearly fried. To say the culture is fast paced and the focus is always changing is an understatement. The reason Salesforce always seems on top, and chasing the latest trend, and in the press, is because employees are expected to run harder, carry more, cheer loudly, and pivot constantly. It's the world's biggest startup in behavior. But at the same time, with the recent influx of top career sales leaders from Oracle and what appears to be a board-level mandate for doubling revenue, employees are being asked to do even more with even less, fill higher quotas with smaller territories, less help, and the big company bureaucracy is rearing it's ugly head. Worse still is the politics. When you hire a bunch of smart, aggressive people, and put them in an environment of outsized expectations, throw in a bunch of re-orgs and changing management, and sprinkle with uncertainty and constantly changing priorities, you inevitably get people back stabbing each other and throwing others under the bus to appear smarter and more worthy of promotion. The few at the top will get very, very rich. The rest will lose the sense of personal ownership and start to wonder why they've given up health and family

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Salesforce Response
1y
It's not often that you get the opportunity to respond to a review 10 years in but your comprehensive and thoughtful review has managed to hold on as one of our most popular even a decade in :) It’s exciting to see that the things we love most about the Salesforce of today — super smart colleagues, being at the forefront of tech trends and establishing ourselves as leaders in the space, great benefits and perks to name a few — haven’t changed in the past 10 years. We acknowledge the challenges you faced, such as the pace, shifting priorities, and internal politics. Your advice on maintaining our foundational vision while avoiding big-company bureaucracy is helpful as we continue to grow as the #1 AI CRM. Salesforce is committed to balancing growth with employee well-being and staying true to our core values. We appreciate your insights and dedication over the years. Thanks again for your feedback!
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