Johnny Rodgers 是 Slack 最初八名团队成员之一，他撰写了一份关于 Slack 在 Salesforce 内部前两年的第一手记录。文中多次引用了 Slack 联合创始人兼前首席执行官 Stewart Butterfield 的谈话。
Johnny Rodgers, one of Slack’s original eight team members, has written a first-hand account of Slack’s first two years inside Salesforce. It quotes Stewart Butterfield, Slack’s co-founder and former chief executive, throughout.
Rodgers 在 Slack 工作了 11 年，于 2023 年春季离职。他周五发布了“Building Slack”系列的第二部分，讲述 Salesforce 收购后的岁月。
Rodgers spent 11 years at Slack and left in the spring of 2023. He published the second part of his Building Slack series on the Salesforce years on Friday.
“在交易宣布前，我和 Marc 总共只见了一小时左右面。我最后一次和他开会被迫缩短，因为 McConaughey 到了，”Butterfield 对 Rodgers 说，指的是 Salesforce 的名人代言人之一 Matthew McConaughey。
“I only got about one hour of total facetime with Marc before the deal was announced. My last meeting with him was cut short because McConaughey arrived,” Butterfield told Rodgers, referring to Matthew McConaughey, one of Salesforce’s celebrity spokespeople.
Salesforce 于 2020 年 12 月宣布收购，价格为每股 45 美元。正如 Rodgers 在 3 月发布的第一部分所述，这比当时 Slack 的股价高出一倍多。
Salesforce announced the deal in December 2020 at $45 a share. That was more than double Slack’s stock price at the time, as Rodgers recounted in part one in March.
名人、工单和 交易于 2021 年完成后，Butterfield 在 Salesforce 发现的低效让他“感到困惑”，Rodgers 写道。他写道，Butterfield 看到高管们批准昂贵的名人亮相，却削减办公室间的差旅。
Celebrities, tickets and Once the deal closed in 2021, the inefficiency Butterfield found at Salesforce “baffled” him, Rodgers writes. He says Butterfield watched executives approve expensive celebrity appearances while cutting travel between offices.
Rodgers 还描述了副总裁们先招聘数千人，随后几个季度又裁掉数千人。他写道，面向高级员工的年度夏威夷之旅 Laulima 耗资数百万。据 Rodgers 称，Butterfield 曾向 Benioff 和当时的 Salesforce 联席首席执行官 Bret Taylor 提出这些问题，但“似乎充耳不闻”。
Rodgers also describes VPs hiring thousands of people and then laying off thousands in later quarters. An annual trip to Hawaii for senior staff, called Laulima, cost millions, he writes. Butterfield raised these issues with Benioff and Bret Taylor, then Salesforce’s co-CEO, but “it seemed to fall on deaf ears”, according to Rodgers.
Slack 员工必须提交工单，而不能在频道里直接提问；必须定期在 Salesforce 的 Trailhead 平台完成测验；又要重新使用电子邮件。Rodgers 写道，Slack 的首席执行官曾开玩笑说，谁要是发内部邮件他就开除谁。 不使用 Slack 的销售团队 最大的差距出在销售方面，Rodgers 写道。Salesforce 一次只向一个部门销售，而 Slack 需要整个领导团队的认可。
Slack staff had to file tickets instead of asking in a channel, complete regular quizzes on Salesforce’s Trailhead platform, and use email again. Rodgers writes that Slack’s CEO had once joked that he would fire anyone who sent internal A sales team that didn’t use Slack The biggest gap was in sales, Rodgers writes. Salesforce sells to one department at a time, while Slack needed buy-in from a whole leadership team.
“Salesforce 被安置到了 Slack [产品] 上，但并没有真正在使用它，尤其是在销售部门。他们不理解这个产品。所以他们销售那些自己理解、且更容易垂直销售的产品。Slack 不符合这种模式，”Slack 联合创始人兼前首席技术官 Cal Henderson 说。
“Salesforce got put onto Slack [the product], but weren’t really using it, especially in Sales. They didn’t understand the product. So they sold the products they understood and were easier to sell vertically. Slack didn’t fit the pattern,” said Cal Henderson, Slack’s co-founder and former chief technology officer.
Benioff 在一次公司全员大会上称赞了 Huddles，这是 Slack 在 Salesforce 旗下推出的首个重大功能。但公司内部清楚地知道，Benioff 自己并不使用 Slack，也不真正理解它，Rodgers 写道。
Benioff praised Huddles, Slack’s first big feature under Salesforce, at a company all-hands. But it was clear inside the company that Benioff himself did not use Slack and did not really understand it, Rodgers writes.
Butterfield 决定离职的达沃斯论坛小组讨论发生在 2022 年秋季。他告诉 Rodgers，转折点是一次达沃斯之行，代表 Slack 和 Salesforce 出席。他原本预期会见客户，结果却发现自己与 will.i.am 同台，参加一个关于创新的小组讨论，will.i.am 是另一位 Salesforce 代言人。
The Davos panel Butterfield decided to leave in the autumn of 2022. The tipping point, he told Rodgers, was a trip to Davos to represent Slack and Salesforce. He expected to meet customers. Instead, he found himself on a panel about innovation with will.i.am, another Salesforce spokesperson.
据《财富》杂志报道，在当时泄露的一份全员会议记录中，Butterfield 亲自描述了这个问题。
In a leaked all-hands at the time, reported by Fortune, Butterfield described the problem himself.
“问题在于，Slack 的文化没有融入 Salesforce 的文化。除非有这方面的因素，否则这不算任何意义上的整合。这只是消除，”Butterfield 说。
“The problem has been, there’s no incorporation of the Slack culture into the Salesforce culture. And unless there is some element of that, then it’s not integration in any sense. It’s just elimination,” Butterfield said.
Butterfield 计划于 2022 年 12 月 1 日宣布离职。前一天，促成该交易的 Taylor 宣布了他自己的离职。Rodgers 写道，没有人告诉过 Butterfield。
Butterfield planned to announce his exit on 1 December 2022. A day earlier, Taylor, who had brokered the deal, announced his own departure. Nobody had told Butterfield, Rodgers writes.
Slack 依然是 Salesforce 计划的核心。Slack 已为 Slackbot 增加了 30 项新的 AI 功能，Benioff 接下来希望在 Slack 内实现编程功能。9 月，Meta 表示将放弃 Google Chat 转用 Slack。
Slack has stayed central to Salesforce’s plans. It has given Slackbot 30 new AI features, and Benioff wants coding inside Slack next. In September, Meta said it was dropping Google Chat for Slack.
现正在创建名为 Supergroup 的公司的 Rodgers 表示，还将推出一篇“Building Slack”文章。
Rodgers, who is now building a company called Supergroup, says one more Building Slack post is to come.