Pros
There are lots of smart and well-meaning people at Salesforce. Many non-sales do try and reflect the company values. Benefits are good (though not crazy) for a large tech company. New hires make a lot of money. Company has made a real effort to diversify and give women especially opportunities to move up (less so minorities). There are still a good number of old-time employees who genuinely care about the company and its values.
Kontras
As someone whose been with the company many years, it has transitioned from a smaller, agile, product-focused company to a Marketing and Sales holding company that does little or no product development. Nearly every major product announcement over the last few years featured huge fanfare, but resulted in the product dying a quiet end within 2 years. Pretty much every major product announcement now is just a Marketing 're-alignment', rebranding existing products, not actually developing anything new. All innovation is bought, not developed internally, and there is little sign that the various acquisitions (Mule, Tableau, Slack) are actually creating a 2+2=5 effect. It really feels like a bunch of independent companies that are owned by the same conglomerate. The focus on growth by acquisition also means very limited growth opportunities internally since the existing products aren't really growing or innovating significantly, it isn't creating new positions. A new, related phenomenon is that in order to retain talent, many low-to-middle managers are getting 'promotions in place', i.e. they are getting a bigger title and more money without additional responsibility because their orgs aren't growing. So you see lots of VPs with only two directs who are also VPs, creating lots of unnecessary layers of management who all feel they have to micromanage those below them in order to show they are 'adding value'. This lack of organic growth means a lot of people are attritting because they don't see any real career path. Career development isn't a focus beyond the first line of management. After that its all operations, process and programs. Manager success is evaluated on how many programs did you develop and market, not how many employees did you develop or how productive and happy is your team. Another issue is the split between the company image and Sales. While I do think a lot of product and engineering people do really believe in the company values, remember, this is a company founded by a Sales Guy. There is a very cutthroat sales mentality inherited from Oracle that often sees sales reps and leaders blatantly ignore values like trust, equality and customer success in order to hit their quarterly number. Sales is really the #1 value. The large and not rationalized product stack means that often sales reps are pitted against each other because they have overlapping products, and the result can be the customer gets the product of the better rep, not the product they need. Many products are 'zombie' products with no future product development and virtually no support staff, but because there are reps with quota on them, they are still being sold despite the fact that the customer will likely attrit in a couple of years once they realize they've been sold a lemon. Turnover in the Sales org also means a lot of inexperienced account execs who have zero understanding of the products or the company culture but are still being put on big accounts. Over and over you'll hear how solutions teams are the most vital part of the sales organization, but every award, spiff or shoutout goes to the sales rep. You'll hear about some amazing demo that sold the deal but the only names you will here are 5 different reps/AEs, like they did all the work themselves. They'll pat themselves on the back, go off to sales club and collect a massive commission and the SE will get back to work. Another thing most new employees won't notice at first because they just got their nice offer package, is that Salesforce hires at much higher dollar amount than it pays existing employees. Pretty much every new hire will make a LOT more than everyone else on a team. It's joked repeatedly that if you want a raise or promotion, your best option is to leave the company and get re-hired in a year. Stock is incredibly stingy. Unlike most tech companies that do yearly refreshes, you will be lucky to get new RSUs every 3-4 years, even for very top performers. Many relatively senior employees (15+ years overall experience, 4+ with company) have NO stock. A team of 10 might get 2-3 stock refreshes in a year. This is the #1 retention tool, and yet Salesforce consistently lags behind all competitors here. A lot of lip-service is given to the 'giving back' part of the company. When I joined this was for real. You got a week of VTO time, and if you used all that you'd get a sizeable grant to give to a charity of your choice. They removed the grants a few years ago without making any real announcement. The VTO time is still there but if you are above a certain level, you are on 'unlimited' PTO (which means you can take what you want, but only if your manager is cool AND you don't feel guilty about taking off during whatever crisis is currently happening). This makes the VTO time meaningless, since it just gets blurred in with PTO and sick leave.
