Maybe productivity/life balance is the new work/life balance.
Salesforce's new hires are less productive, says CEO Benioff
Salesforce founder and soon-to-be sole CEO Marc Benioff says newbies on the payroll are being less productive and he is trying to get a better handle on why this might be, asking staff if the lack of office time is a contributing factor. In a message posted on the corporate Slack channel at the end of last week, as revealed …
COMMENTS
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Monday 19th December 2022 15:07 GMT Anonymous Coward
No Marc it's because your product suite is a sprawling mess of barely-integrated acquisitions supported by one of the most cutthroat, hard-to-navigate channel and partner landscapes in history, and all your key executive and sales talent have fucked off for pastures new as growth has slowed.
Look a bit closer to home. Ask why everyone uses Salesforce but everyone hates using Salesforce, not whether it must be your employees that are wrong.
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Monday 19th December 2022 15:37 GMT elsergiovolador
Pay
If someone isn't productive, likely they are not paid enough to be productive.
If I have to worry about how am I going to pay the bills or whether I will be able to afford a holiday or that house repair that has been due for ages, then that will eat into my brain "processing power".
If WFH does not increase productivity, then maybe after saving on the train tickets and lunches, the workers are still being short.
Maybe they can't afford to live in a place big enough to support WFH?
I mean I would still take working in the kitchen or utility room over going to office, but you know what I mean.
edit: just checked at their website what kind of pay they offer, but they seem to be only showing the pay ranges where it is required by law (e.g. for jobs in New York). It means that their pay packages are probably not something to write home about.
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Monday 19th December 2022 16:01 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Pay
>It means that their pay packages are probably not something to write home about.
Salesforce are in the top tier in compensation terms. Not right at the very top - they're not throwing cash at people like netflix or roblox or databricks, but certainly nobody there is looking at their TC and dreaming of working at Amazon one day.
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Tuesday 20th December 2022 09:02 GMT LybsterRoy
Re: Pay
-- If someone isn't productive, likely they are not paid enough to be productive. --
Much as I dislike quoting wikipedia here's some light reading for you
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs
and then again maybe, just maybe there are some jobs that are better carried out in a group session (and no I don't mean Teams)
Lets think of sales. The pipeline starts with a wadge of cold calling and if you've ever done that you'll know how demotivating getting NO after NO is. It helps to have fellow sufferers in eyeshot.
--Maybe they can't afford to live in a place big enough to support WFH?
I mean I would still take working in the kitchen or utility room over going to office, but you know what I mean.--
OK so you hate commuting, and probably your fellow man/woman/whatever.
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Thursday 22nd December 2022 16:52 GMT Friendly Neighbourhood Coder Dan
Re: Pay
"If someone isn't productive, likely they are not paid enough to be productive."
Or maybe they have to deal with a clunky completely non standard ( not for the better ) environment infested by point and click "technology" that makes you waste hours to fix some text in an HTML page for customer self service. Trying to build a chat bot, which basically requires a few strings and a few if statements is created using a UI spaghetti graph that makes you wonder if you really are awake or having a terrifying nightmare.
No real debug, no real sql, no real javascript, no real nothing...
The whole system is a scam to lock in customers, some of which might fall for the sunk cost fallacy and be scammed a bit longer.
I have been doing that for a whole year - as much as I adore my colleagues and the company I work for, I can't put myself through this for much longer.
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Monday 19th December 2022 17:54 GMT Fred Daggy
I wonder what the results would be if they thoroughly and thoughtfully told the management to "fuck right off". Blaming new hires is a great way to get them motivated and sends a big signal to any potential new hire - eg "not in a million years".
Going out on a limb here, I think the reason that productivity is down is (gasps from the crowd, envelope being opened) "incompetent management".
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Tuesday 20th December 2022 09:05 GMT LybsterRoy
-- I wonder what the results would be if they thoroughly and thoughtfully told the management to "fuck right off". --
Absolutely brilliant when their next employer asks for a reference!
--Going out on a limb here, I think the reason that productivity is down is (gasps from the crowd, envelope being opened) "incompetent management".--
Have you noticed the world financial situation?
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Monday 19th December 2022 17:02 GMT Marty McFly
So hire twice as many employees
Seriously. Hire 2x the employees needed as remote employees, and then weed out the dogs.
Of course, the pay grade for remote employees will be based on their geographic location. If an employee wants to live in BackwaterTown, they get paid the prevailing wages for a tech job in that area. They do not get paid the prevailing wages for the location of SFDC's corporate offices (all expensive areas).
SFDC should have no problem making this math work when the entire costs of employing headcount is considered. Office space, urban & metro taxes, etc all play a part. Plus they have to pay outrageous salaries simply because that is the cost of living in that area.
So they hire 2x the employees. Within a year, they have weeded out 50% of the unproductive ones. Now they have a fully remote workforce at half the price. This really is a no-brainer to reduce headcount costs if management can figure it out.
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Monday 19th December 2022 17:19 GMT John H Woods
"Lower productivity"
No metric is supplied.
As I like to KISS I'm wondering if the problem maybe that they are measuring productivity by a measure which is correlated more to presenteeism than actual quality* of output.
In which case, yes, WfH, will tend to lower that.
* I actually worked for a company once that had a question on the colleague peer-assessment form "Regardless of quality, what is the quantity of [colleague]'s output"
I always refused to answer it.
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Monday 19th December 2022 22:58 GMT ravenviz
Re: "Lower productivity"
Productivity is usually measured as dollars per unit time. Management has a $(sold)/t(sold) KPI, then ask the employee to log their t(actual) against individual projects without knowledge of the $(sold) and then tell them at the end of the project that their $(sold)/t(actual) is lower than the KPI, even when the employee has no knowledge of the $(sold) or t(sold), or any control over the t(actual).
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Monday 19th December 2022 19:27 GMT raving angry loony
Productivity vs boss?
I read this and weep: "the number of meetings users held on Teams was up 153 percent globally ". Gee, wonder why productivity went down?
ps: what exactly does he MEAN by "lower productivity"? Lower sales? Fewer accounts? Less coffee being consumed? Cash earned per worker? Bugs resolved? "Productivity" is a really fluid concept.
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Tuesday 20th December 2022 12:39 GMT oiseau
Re: Productivity vs boss?
ps: what exactly does he MEAN by "lower productivity"?
Come now ...
Everyone knows exactly what "productivity" means when it comes from the mouth of dicks like Benioff.
ie: our shareholders are not getting a large enough dividends and I am not getting a big enough bonus.
The rest is nothing but utter bullshit.
O.
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Tuesday 20th December 2022 09:57 GMT Throatwarbler Mangrove
A dissenting opinion
I suspect this will be an unpopular opinion (and, since I'm now on the moderation naughty step, it's questionable how many people will even see it), but the story at Salesforce is a common one, and it may not have anything in particular to do with low pay or incompetent management. In the Before Times, an employee would be seated with a group of people doing similar jobs, so it was easy to ask questions and get feedback from one's peers in real time. With employees working remotely, this becomes much more difficult, not because you can't get real-time information from someone via Slack or Teams but because it's a much less organic process and because it's more difficult to even know who one's peers are. I started a new job last April, and while, yes, the online training and documentation leave much to be desired, the reality of the position is that there are subtleties which are hard to effectively convey via static content. Many jobs are not just about creating a widget or cranking out a block of code, they're adaptive to a changing set of circumstances, and until one has experience with those circumstances, it's very helpful to have a more senior staff member (or multiple staff members, i.e. a team) to observe one's actions and provide immediate feedback. I've been on both sides of the relationship and heard plenty of feedback from friends and colleagues, and the challenge is real: onboarding new hires remotely is a much more difficult process.
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Tuesday 20th December 2022 10:38 GMT RTFM_UK
Re: A dissenting opinion
Not unpopular as you share some basic truths in a world of noise and bluster. There are absolutely a ton of jobs where WFH is both sensible and practical. But that does not apply to all jobs and a reality filter needs to be applied to the great WFH entitlement. Knowledge is gained via osmosis, which includes from your team around you. There are a good many jobs where being physically with the team, accelerates knowledge and therefore productivity. Work is an outcome, not a place, but in many instances, the place (and people) is required to do the work. WFH is not the great panacea preached by the Social Media masses.
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Thursday 6th April 2023 16:01 GMT SimonGear
It's interesting to see a company of Salesforce's stature dealing with the same challenges as many other companies during these pandemic times. One potential factor that Benioff mentioned was the lack of office time, which I can definitely see being a challenge for new hires who are trying to acclimate to a new company and culture.
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Tuesday 11th April 2023 12:15 GMT SimonGear
It will be interesting to see what measures Salesforce takes to address this issue, as I'm sure many other companies are grappling with similar challenges. Perhaps partnering with a reputable software sales recruitment agency could help to identify candidates who are better equipped to adapt to remote work environments and hit the ground running.
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