Salesforce Guts Tableau After Spending $15.7 Billion in 2019 Deal 16
Salesforce division Tableau was hit harder than other units in the company's largest-ever round of jobs cuts this week, adding to a major reorganization that signals the $15.7 billion acquisition hasn't lived up to expectations. Bloomberg reports: Chief Executive Officer Mark Nelson was ousted from the data analytics division in late December and more senior staff were axed Wednesday as part of Salesforce's announcement that it would eliminate 10% of its workforce. Job reductions at Tableau were greater, proportionally, than the company at large thus far. After a half-decade of fast hiring and large acquisitions, Salesforce is trying to cut costs and better integrate the companies it has purchased. The software maker, which lost almost half of its value in 2022, has been pressured by investors to improve profit. The job cuts made public Wednesday -- about 8,000 workers -- are less than half of the number of employees hired in the pandemic and followed the announced exit in December of co-CEO Bret Taylor and the elimination of hundreds of sales positions in November.
Acquisitions fueled the company's headcount growth. Tableau, then Salesforce's most expensive deal when it was bought in 2019, came with 4,200 employees while Slack, purchased in 2021, and Mulesoft, acquired in 2018, together brought another 3,700, according to company filings. The three deals combined cost almost $50 billion with the estimated $27.7 billion for Slack leading the way. Workers across these acquired divisions were pummeled by the job reductions, particularly in recruiting and customer success roles, according to company employees. Tableau is increasingly being treated as a visualization tool for data contained in Salesforce's other services rather than a standalone program -- co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff highlighted the new integrations in a December keynote speech. The division has trailed the rest of the company in sales growth since the acquisition.
Salesforce also plans to pare back its office footprint. The company currently has four offices in the Seattle area, more than any other city, according to the company website. Three were inherited in the Tableau deal. Salesforce declined to comment on whether it would be reducing space in the Seattle area. Asked about the effect of Wednesday's job cuts on Tableau, a Salesforce spokesperson said the unit "is a vital part of our product strategy." Tableau contributes to a product that "processes over 100 billion customer records, and helps our customers understand and act on their data," the spokesperson said.
Acquisitions fueled the company's headcount growth. Tableau, then Salesforce's most expensive deal when it was bought in 2019, came with 4,200 employees while Slack, purchased in 2021, and Mulesoft, acquired in 2018, together brought another 3,700, according to company filings. The three deals combined cost almost $50 billion with the estimated $27.7 billion for Slack leading the way. Workers across these acquired divisions were pummeled by the job reductions, particularly in recruiting and customer success roles, according to company employees. Tableau is increasingly being treated as a visualization tool for data contained in Salesforce's other services rather than a standalone program -- co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff highlighted the new integrations in a December keynote speech. The division has trailed the rest of the company in sales growth since the acquisition.
Salesforce also plans to pare back its office footprint. The company currently has four offices in the Seattle area, more than any other city, according to the company website. Three were inherited in the Tableau deal. Salesforce declined to comment on whether it would be reducing space in the Seattle area. Asked about the effect of Wednesday's job cuts on Tableau, a Salesforce spokesperson said the unit "is a vital part of our product strategy." Tableau contributes to a product that "processes over 100 billion customer records, and helps our customers understand and act on their data," the spokesperson said.
That explains it (Score:4, Informative)
We're trying to get some Tableau licenses renewed and it is taking forever.
Anyone who uses Tableau knows what an absolute nightmare their license portal is to navigate. There is no reference to any PO number, no indication what license goes where. The only thing you have to go on is the date of when you think something was purchased. Even getting with their "support" sucks because they can't see any more than you can.
Considering the exhorbitant price one pays to use Tableau, it appears it's run by monkeys. Gutting whatever zoo they have will not improve service.
Re: (Score:3)
Anyone who uses Tableau knows what an absolute nightmare their license portal is to navigate. There is no reference to any PO number, no indication what license goes where.
We've had to rejig a number of our processes to work around their licence portal and the way their licence updates work. They don't play that well with mid to enterprise levels of procurement and management.
Re: (Score:2)
There is no reference to any PO number, no indication what license goes where.
Salesforce should really outsource this to a company who understands how to collect, manage, analyse and display data ...
Re: That explains it (Score:1)
Acquisitions dont make sense? (Score:2)
Re:Acquisitions dont make sense? (Score:5, Insightful)
The CEO expressed a desire for a new dashboard, that escalated quickly.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Likewise Slack.
Salesforce has long had a reputation of having an atrocious UI. I'll go as far as to say I have no idea how Salesforce got so big - it's an unusable mess (it gives Jira a run for its money, and that's saying something). The funny thing is, all the major users of it have Stockholm syndrome - they will fully go to bat for how great it is, should anyone ever criticise it. What Salesforce is good at though, is data - that is, chewing over all of what's going on and presenting it to management so
Tableau - 21st century vaporware (Score:4, Insightful)
I was forced to use Tableau for almost 5 years as my FinTech company pushed it down everyone's throats.
It's a slick looking visualization package that is Douchebag MBA compliant... things look pretty.
However, Tableau is very much a tool for SMALL DATA. The internal SQL queries are slower than balls. We learned the hard way to NEVER rely on 'live' data connections during meetings or presentations or any other scenario where we couldn't afford to display the dreaded blue ring of death.
The only way to use tableau is to pre-bake your data set. Do all your joining and filtering in an actual SQL program, Get it down to a single, small table, and run your Viz off that.
Of course, at that point you might as well be using MS Excel, which has some relatively slick looking visualization of its own and is 'free' in corporate environments.
Re: (Score:2)
The only way to use tableau is to pre-bake your data set. Do all your joining and filtering in an actual SQL program, Get it down to a single, small table, and run your Viz off that
Yes. That's the entire point of data warehouses. You use ETL/OLAP to build up your dashboard data. You leave the OLTP real database alone.
Of course, at that point you might as well be using MS Excel, which has some relatively slick looking visualization of its own and is 'free' in corporate environments
Yes, hence the reason why a lot of these dashboard software things are just for Douchebag MBAs. Technically speaking you just run queries or Python into Excel and be done with your job, but your job is dictated by people who want more than just text on paper. So you have to have flashy shiny dashboards and they dictate which one you use.
So since there's usually a lac
Re: (Score:2)
Honestly, I wonder if you work at my old company!
I was the Wizard of Oz, as you put it, but I got the fuck out.
No paycheck is worth dying inside, which is a tradeoff 99% of people in FinTech seem happy to make. Several people I worked with, younger than me, actually died of cancer after I left, which I thought was just karma....
Re: (Score:2)
They paid $15B for something as broken as _that_? Incredible.
No tears. (Score:1)
Best wishes to the laid-off workers, but I'm shedding no tears for Salesforce.