Dark Data

Have you ever heard of Salesforce? The website states “Salesforce is a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) platform for supercharging every part of your company that interacts with customers — including marketing, sales, commerce, service, and more.” However, as a lower level employee I could really only say what Salesforce was to me based on pillars of the company that I worked in. From my vantage point, Salesforce made software that helped marketers better advertise to their customers and helped companies manage their customer data.

I started my Salesforce journey at ExactTarget, which one year into my employment was acquired by Salesforce and later became their marketing software platform. Within the first year we slowly shifted our name from ExactTarget, to ExactTarget a Salesforce Company, to Salesforce ExactTarget Marketing Cloud, until finally being fully integrated as Salesforce Marketing Cloud. I clearly remember after the first year all ExactTarget employees attending a “Becoming Salesforce” ceremony where we were supposed to be fully integrated into the company's culture. We got our first of many leies as we entered, they had Salesforce blue and ExactTarget orange flowers to signify the two companies merging as one. From there, I eventually decided to leave Salesforce and move onto another company Krux. Two days into working there the announcement was made, Krux was bought out by Salesforce, and became Salesforce Data Management Platform.

While I was working on a project creating software that allowed marketers to grab potential customers using Facebook ads, I had the first moment when I questioned what we were making and if it was starting to invade personal privacy. This software started tracking a potential customer the moment they clicked an ad, and created an anonymous profile associated with that user for the company to reference. This was done without the user ever opting in or subscribing to an email list. As employees working on this, we were told this type of tracking was still anonymous, since the users being tracked had not subscribed to the companies advertisements yet, making this legal. What I later learned is that it was actually pseudo anonymous, meaning (insert what pseudonymous means here). Therefore, if you eventually signed up for a company’s email list, you would become a targeted opted in customer, and they could easily connect all your previous data. This could be seen as problematic because even though you as a customer buying or looking at a companies products was anonymous, they had enough information on you to connect the dots on who you were.

In the years following my resignation from Salesforce, I started to see news coming out almost daily about data privacy violations. I began to reflect on the software I had made while working there and its potential malicious applications. I wanted to talk to my previous coworkers to get their opinions of their own experiences at Salesforce.

A conversation

ANNA: So we all came as outsiders, acquired companies, into Salesforce versus directly applying there. I clearly remember sitting there at my first Salesforce initiation and feeling like I was watching some weird ceremony. We got the leies, we watched that guy play the conch shell while that other lady played the ukulele (Who were they? Why did they make so many appearances at meetings?). Can you describe your experience with what the Salesforce culture is?

LENA, UX Researcher: ALOHA SPIRIT!! 🤙 Basically, appropriating Hawaiian culture to make us a company culture. The CEO, Marc Benioff, went swimming with the dolphins during a sabbatical once, and decided to bring that feel back into a company (or something like that, they explained it every year at our end of year meeting, and I luckily block it out of my mind every time). Like you said there were a lot of leies, hula dancers, hawaiian shirts, etc. Then there were other weird non Hawaiian things, like bringing Metallica in several times to all company hands calls to just shred the guitar to the star spangled banner for a bit, because why not.

THOMAS, Development Manager: Aloha, ohana, trailblazers, leies. I remember at my “Becoming Salesforce” they told us each to turn to the person to the right of us and give them a shoulder rub because we were doing a great job and we all looked stressed. It felt so uncomfortable, most the people I was around I managed. We were in the back so we all just tried to keep from laughing. Oh and then they had the weird mascots, like Astro, Saasy, and the bear and goat. Sometimes they would just get on the stage and dance. There was always a lot of dancing and weird camp-y (both cheesy and camp themed) things. My favorite moment will be when I saw Astro just give up walking around at a conference, and I felt like that was how I felt working there.

ANNA: Other things in an office, such as cubicles, were given more soft and approachable names, such as hugs. Every company meeting involved a new leie of sorts, usually around a color scheme such as orange for the Marketing Clouds color, rainbow during pride month, etc. A conch shell and moments of respect were given to those members of the Salesforce Ohana who had passed away at the beginning of some of the big all hands call.

ANNA: What about the Salesforce Ohana, our “chosen families”?

LENA: When conflict arose, usually we were told to remember our Ohana and to approach it more as you would approach a friend or family, even if it was a serious topic or concern. The problem was most conflicts were resolved with reminding us we are lucky to have such a high paying/well benefitted job in the Midwest. It had the perks of a California company with the midwest culture. It became hard to leave, and eventually was even harder because you priced yourself out of the midwest market, or you had to go work with old Salesforce Indianapolis employees who took the same values and cultures to their new startups.

ANNA: How did it feel being a woman in a male dominated team and field?

LENA: It was at times hard. There was a “Silicon Valley” episode that reminded me a lot of that in the sense whenever there was a woman who joined the team, they would be like oh you will be best friends because you are both female. However, there were some issues with hiring I remember where it was a philosophy of hiring people you would want to work with to help with the Salesforce Ohana, and sometimes someone would be qualified and they would be like I can’t imagine having a beer and watching basketball with her. It bugged me. Also there are things like its a casual attire for workplace, but if I wear a dress (one of the easiest things to wear) people would consider asking why I was so dressed up. It helped make me feel more out of place than I already felt sometimes. Another issue I had with male coworker with sexual harassment were handled somewhat badly at the time, but I guess that was pre MeToo and I would like to think it was better now. I remember talking to the female HR lady and she was like oh this sounds like an annoying guy at a bar, and laughed it off telling me to block his number (despite working with him everyday) and then I got in trouble for not hanging out with them, because you should spend time with your Ohana. Again want to think (and hope) it would be better now.

ANNA: What do you see as a big difference between what you are told as an employee and what you see in the news or image of the company otherwise?

LENA: One that really stands out to me is that Salesforce states in their Code of Conduct that they will not take a political stance for employees or as a company, however has taken several political stances and acting as though it is the voice of the whole company where it may only be the voice of the Marc Benioff or leadership itself. One example, was the during the time of Religious Freedom Reform Act in Indiana.

For clarification this was during the time Mike Pence was then the governor of Indiana before becoming the Vice President of the US. There was conflict around businesses not having to provide services that went against their religious beliefs. This all started when a gay couple wanted to get a wedding cake and the bakery denied them because they were Christian and did not believe in any marriage that was not between a male and female. Due to the fact that Salesforce at the time was 36% LGBT+ identifying, Salesforce decided to jump on the corporate bandwagon of boycotting this new law. When asked for an apology Mike Pence then stated he wasn’t trying to discriminate against LGBT, he was trying to say companies didn’t have to provide birth control options to women on their health care if it was against their beliefs. Eventually the law was not passed.

There was some conflict around the Indiana government and a lot of businesses, and during that time Salesforce removed flying into Indianapolis as an option for employees, as well as removing the conference that was held in Indianapolis each year, so that Salesforce was not supporting the Indiana government that went against its company beliefs. This was a big disconnect in my eyes because it almost felt like Benioff was punishing the Indiana employees just for the government of the place their office was located.

Also, there is a lot of preaching largely into talking about their contributions to making less gender gap to women in the industry, however news recently came out about their software being used for purposes that would not be aligned with those ideals.

ANNA: I remember my day to day work I was primarily focused on making the user experience more positive for the marketers, or whoever was using the software, and they were my main concern . I did not reflect as much on how they were necessarily using it, until I sat down once with several marketers to understand the kind of information and analytics they wanted to get from for the journey tool I was helping to develop. There were many different customers at this workshop from companies like Payless and Shopbop to Weight Watchers and Fidelity. However, it wasn’t until later that I realized or reflected on the fact that the software I was working on. This could and was being used as a tool for political ad targeting. This workshop was held right before the 2016 elections, and while we were focusing on improving companies engagement with their customers to help market more, referred to as customer journeys, campaigns were using it to encourage people not to vote. I did not think about this much, beyond making sure our Customer Satisfaction score increased.

So what drove your daily, monthly, or yearly goals and to do’s?

LENA: Every year we make a v2MOM - which stands for vision, values, methods, obstacles and measures. These goals are passed down from leadership and adapted a bit for each personal role with objectives for you to meet. All teams and products have one, and it helps drive what each person’s role is. It was about how do you make decisions about how to focus, how to invest and how to prioritize. It starts with — what’s the vision ? After that if you have any justifications to make we usually look at the customer satisfaction survey responses or the V2MOM to assess what is important for a minimally acceptable product or goals the company wanted to reach by end of year or end of a quarter.

THOMAS: When I was a developer it was really whatever I was assigned by my manager or in a team meeting. I was pretty focused on just my team’s goals and until full company meetings or demos I did not really think much outside my team’s task. Sometimes I got to drive some projects, but for the most part it was taking on as many tasks as I could within a two week work period, referred to as a sprint, and then going from there. As a manager I worked with the product managers and user experience workers to make sure my team was taking on a realistic set of things and that the development was still given a seat at the table to innovate and be creative. I did not want my developers to be “code monkeys”, a term I heard around the office often, where people just wanted to give developers designs and have them create it without input or creativity.

ANNA: Did you ever have issues with what you were building and did you ever address them to your manager?

LENA: Oh yeah. Most definitely. Mostly concerned around how we were building only for our biggest customers who paid the most, and then the UX team would get in trouble for the bad ratings on the usability of the software for the smaller customers who were were originally told to not take into consideration. However, then you saw at most conferences it was how these small companies used Salesforce software to help grow their businesses.

ANNA: I also remember one project I had for the email team. We were developing this tool that allowed companies to send information to potential customers emails that were different for every customer, with portions of the email being machine generated based off past purchases or browsing history. Due to this machine generation, marketers couldn’t see each variation of an email being sent to individuals Instead emails they would send off were blank boxes where that content would eventually be generated and inserted into by a machine . In retrospect, considering that these clients couldn’t even look at what they were sending out, it is clear to me how easily this could be turned into a platform for delivering misinformation. Later when I began learning about algorithmic biases, I realized I was never concerned with their dangerous repercussions while working at Salesforce and developing these tools. Have you ever been concerned with how these algorithms that gave predictions were influencing other parts of people’s lives?

LENA: Honestly, no. And until you brought it up, not so much. I am really focused on our customer and helping them achieve their goals without as many frustrations and complications. In terms of reflecting on how they are using our software, I guess I haven’t thought too much about that. The only one I really remember standing out to me is when we were asking CMO’s about their ideas with our software using new technologies in the market, and Hallmark was coming up with all these ideas about sending cards with Drones based on customer’s journey. A customer journey is the steps between getting a person interested in a product or service, buying, and then retaining them as continuous customers, and ideally getting their friends interested as well. That scenario with Hallmark was a bit ridiculous, but I guess it goes to show how people will think up anything with technology they are given, without so much thinking if it feels invasive.

ANNA: Did people ever bring concerns to you about the impact of what they were developing as a Manager?

THOMAS: Only once or twice. I remember once someone realized that there were some weird things with permissions and what was visible to various members of a business and that there may be privacy breaches for that. I don’t think other than small people arguments and daily tasks that there was anything specific in terms of development, unless it was something that they built and UX wanted something changed and they were being stubborn and didn’t want to change it. Also, despite most of the developers being invited to UX interviews/research sessions, many did not jump into those calls and only the development managers were invited to the readouts. So I don’t think there was too much on the impact back then other than what they saw at conferences. During my last year working there though, only development managers were allowed to go to the conferences so again it took that away from them. However, we also didn’t own the roadmap, it was passed down from our “clouds” or company pillars and we chose which parts to take on as a team to prioritize.

While the problematic aspects of this company may seem glaringly obvious, it was not always so apparent while working in that environment. Some issues, like unconscious algorithmic biases when creating software, occur often without thought or recognition. Others problems occured from the employees at Salesforce not necessarily being bad people, but being humans who had to make money to survive. Much of the software we were creating seemed exciting and innovative, and sometimes it was hard to think beyond the neutral beneficial uses of it. The company may have not even had malicious motivations, but brewed a culture of unquestioning loyalty and a motivation of business goals. While I typically felt like an outsider to the company’s culture, even a few years later after quitting I find I still use the term “we” when referring to projects and teams I was apart of while working there. Sometimes it’s hard to reflect on what could have been changed to prevent some of these more malicious applications of technology, but they t may have originated in human error to see beyond achieving a business goal. □

Names have been changed to protect those employees who may or may not work there anymore.

Anna Doludenko is a graduate of MFA Design and Technology and enjoys advocating for retention of women in STEM.