What it's Like to Work at Salesforce.com

By Stefan Lopez | Mar 11, 2013 06:00 PM EDT

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Salesforce.com touts itself as the "enterprise cloud computing leader". With social and mobile cloud technologies that are helping to connect people in innovative new ways, they have started to really make a name for themselves over the past few years.

Let's take a look at what a potential employee can expect should they get hired by Salesforce.com. Last year they were a company that was:

- Ranked #27 on the "100 Best Companies to Work For" list

- Named Most Innovative Company in the World for the second consecutive year

-Awarded four CRM Magazine Service Awards including the prestigious Service Leader & Customer Case Mgmt.

-Added to the U.K. Government G-Cloud framework

And that's just a sampling of the laundry list of achievements Salesforce.com accomplished last year.

Clearly, this company is doing something right. If given the opportunity to work for Salesforce.com, potential applicants should not take the interview lightly. Here is a sampling of some of the Glassdoor statistics and reviews:

-93% approve of the CEO Marc Benioff

-77% recommended a Salesforce.com job to a friend

-67% said that they were at least 'satisfied' with their job there

As far as salaries go, it depends largely on the occupation you are applying for and how skilled you are at it. Many of their more tech-savvy and managerial positions are easily averaging in the six-figure range. They also have many sales jobs ranging from $20k a year all the way up to $200k.

Finally, we've taken a random sampling of four reviews from Salesforce.com employees. Here they are, ordered from most recently posted on Glassdoor:

"Nothing's black and white" - Four Stars

Current Lead Member of Technical Staff in San Francisco, CA - Reviewed Feb 22, 2013

Pros - SFDC is a company that has energy and good culture. The company treats employees well with competitive salary and perks and prides itself with the 1/1/1 charity model, which I think is pretty outstanding.

Cons - Lots of politics going on in the company, lots of frustration working through red-tapes to get things done. I guess when companies get big you can't avoid these things

"#Dreamjob - Great place to work!" - Five Stars

Current Account Executive in San Francisco, CA - Reviewed Feb 5, 2013

Pros - Management, people, benefits, pay and philanthropy.

Cons - There are some people that hang around too long

Advice to Senior Management - Keep up the good work

"Member of Technical Staff" - 2 Stars

Current Employee - Reviewed Feb 8, 2013

Pros - * You get to switch teams once a while.

Cons - * Engineers are not being treated as well as in most other companies.

* Weak leadership in engineering. CEO rarely discuss his vision with the engineers.

* Lousy coffee, the #1 friend for engineers.

* Not working on state-of-the-art technology problem.

* Very few group activities for Engineers.

* Very few tech talks for engineers to enrich their knowledge.

* The technology used is very old, you're not very likely to keep in touch with the latest technology trend.

* Not a good place for recent college graduations that wants to work on cutting edge stuff.

* Compensation is not competitive.

* There is an internal grievance board but no one is paying any attention.

Advice to Senior Management - * Pay more attention to retaining talented people.

* Show some respects to engineers. Try to promote innovation, collaborations, and encourage personal contribution

"Good pay, intense work hours, political environment"

Current Employee in San Francisco, CA - Reviewed Jan 1, 2013

Pros - * learn a lot within a short time

* achieve things faster because of quicker releases

* good pay

* great sf office location

Cons - * too process-heavy (you're pretty much rely on reading up tiny fonts of long winded wiki pages to get stuff done). Ask other teammates and it'll be used against you to measure your competency.

* a mirage of transparency. You don't have visibility beyond chatteresque updates and slowly you learn not to openly ask questions.

* folks are set up to compete every single day that it's hard to relax and enjoy genuinely working in a team.

* they roll out new initiatives every month even as you just start to wrap your head around one.

Advice to Senior Management - Think long-term, care about individual employee growth, embrace different working styles (truly be diverse)

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