'Upbeat energy' drives Salesforce employees
If it wasn’t for a former co-worker, Julia Pastor might not have ever worked for Salesforce.
She worked for another company at the time and a co-worker was friends with one of the co-founders of Salesforce, a cloud computing company that specializes in customer relationship management software. Pastor’s friend mentioned her job skills to Salesforce, which reached out to her and then hired her in July 2002.
“And so it was sort of a Kevin Bacon, six degrees of separation,” Pastor said. “I was super lucky. Every time I see the friend that brought me to Salesforce, I thank him.”
She worked out of the company’s headquarters in San Francisco for about 10 years and then worked remotely from her home in Lake Tahoe, Nev., before she moved to Atlanta in 2015 to be near her fiance.
Pastor, director of services development and enablement, chatted about working for Salesforce, which has an office in Buckhead with about 600 employees.
Q: How has the company showed that it cares about both your professional and personal welfare?
A: Wow. So I’ll start off by saying I do feel incredibly well cared for by the company, just whether it’s benefits or attentiveness or flexibility. It’s hard to just pick one example. Even the ability to be here today to talk about it, it’s like, “You’re really special. You’re really contributive.” And even today, I spend some time in the office, but I also have the flexibility to work from my home when you’re juggling kids and dogs and activities, and things like that.
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Q: Obviously, there are obligations to fulfill, but you feel that if you continue to produce and meet the expectations of the job, that trust will continue to grow?
A: Yeah. You’re really left to accomplish what you agree is the end goal in your own way, whether that’s working odd hours because you need to go to somebody’s field trip or winter concert, as the case was the other night, or if it’s just you approach things differently. You know, you do 18 drafts or your first draft is your final draft, whatever it is, they just don’t tend to micromanage how you get things done, and I value that so, so much.
Q: Do you have ways to frequently share your knowledge with newer employees?
A: People say, “What does Salesforce do best?” A lot of people would say we have the best product in the world, right? Actually, no. We are the best company I’ve ever worked with at recruiting the right people and then getting them started. So I would argue … and I’ve been at several software companies. Our onboarding program is, bar none, the best I’ve ever seen. We released a campaign on the importance of mentorship (the program was developed in 2012). It’s called +1 (Plus One). Everybody’s got a plus one.
Q: How did you get to your current position?
A: I had a very, very full plate, and really one of my frustrations was I wanted to spend more time mentoring, building and growing my people. It’s the most important part of any job, is managing other people and helping them be their best, and so, for me, it was just this feeling of I’m not spending enough time helping my people be the best they can be. So I had talked to a VP at the time and said I think I want to try to do something different, and we just got to talking, and it happened in one phone call.
Q: In terms of the look of the offices and the setting, is there a big difference?
A: I think the company works really hard to keep the look and feel of the offices very consistent, but I also think that the type of people we hire drive that type of consistency. The look and feel is very consistent, but again, the hardest thing to do with a big company is (keep a) consistent feel. So I don’t know if you felt it, but it’s a really positive, upbeat energy. I get that out of every office I’m in. Each one kind of has its own story and its own personality, but generally speaking, you feel a lot of — I don’t know what it is — motivation, progress, energy, optimism. That’s what I pick up on almost from every office I visit.
