Thousands of Layoffs Don’t Exactly Scream Family Values
In firing tens of thousands of workers, Silicon Valley is proving that such a utopia never existed and it's long past time to lose that tired trope.
“Ohana” is the Hawaiian term for family that Salesforce uses to refer to its workforce.
Photographer: Bloomberg/BloombergIn Silicon Valley, that magical and mystical utopia where tech CEOs and entrepreneurs describe their companies as one big happy family, the biggest family man of them all has always been Marc Benioff.
To the Salesforce Inc. chief executive officer, the cloud-based software enterprise company he co-founded isn’t just a company but what he calls Ohana — a Hawaiian word meaning family and support system. Its massive annual Dreamforce event that takes over San Francisco isn’t a conference but a family reunion. Even earnings calls and investor days — where Benioff has been known to wax poetic on everything from dolphins returning to the Venice canals during the pandemic to his Ukrainian ancestry — can feel a little bit like dad presiding over a family dinner.