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The Salesforce Spotlight feat. Marjan and Hamza 08/14/2019

The Salesforce Spotlight feat. Marjan and Hamza Music by Robert Reid Hosted by Barbara Alberts --- Marjan Josenia: I had meetings with my manager, with my mentors, and I had the opportunity to get lots of information from them, and learn a lot from them because they're experience, initial learning and [inaudible 00:00:11] They gave me lots of insight when I look at the problem and look at the project, and help me, how can I approach a problem that is kind of challenging, and was very helpful for me, actually. Hanslei Cuoscia: My team is here for me and has my back, unconditionally. They just want me to succeed, so that feeling of the team just generally wanting your success instead of wanting their product built alone is really huge, right there. I think this is growing my career, significantly and there is no better internship that I've seen. Barbara Alberts: Curious about what it's like to be an intern at Salesforce? Welcome to the Salesforce Spotlight: A podcast series that highlights the extraordinary stories of the Salesforce employees and Futureforce interns. I'm Barbara Alberts, and on this episode of the Salesforce Spotlight, APM Intern Hanslei Cuoscia and PhD Intern Marchian Josenia talk all things Einstein and what it's like to work with artificial intelligence. Tune in for more, and happy listening. So on this week's podcast, we have APM Intern Hanslei Cuoscia and Software Engineering Intern Marjan Josenia, and they're here to talk about their projects this summer and what they've been working on in their internships. Thank you guys for joining. Hanslei Cuoscia: Of course. Marjan Josenia: Thank you. Barbara Alberts: So first thing's first, can you guys just tell me a little bit about yourselves: where you went to school, wheat you majored in, things like that? Hanslei Cuoscia: Yeah, sure. So Hanslei, as you mentioned. I go to the University of California, Berkeley, right now, and I am majoring in Data Science with a minor in Computer Science, and I'm currently in the Associate Product Membership Program over here at Salesforce, and I'm on the Einstein Modeling Axiom. Marjan Josenia: My name is Marjan, I am majoring in Culture Science. I am a PhD student in the University of Houston. Currently I am working on improving semantic parsing for [inaudible 00:02:00] labeling in Salesforce. Barbara Alberts: How did you guys find out about Salesforce and about this internship program? Hanslei Cuoscia: I found out about Salesforce from a friend that was a Software Engineering Intern here, a year before I interned here in the summer. He told me great things about it, so I looked into it and then I got an interview. That's when I fully understood what [inaudible 00:02:21] business meant, and what all the clouds do. Marjan Josenia: Last year I attended Grace Hopper Celebration in Houston and was able to attend the career fair there, and Salesforce was there and I talked to the Salesforce people there and find out what Salesforce was doing, exactly. I liked the culture there because I have heard from my friends that Salesforce has an open culture, and I really like that. Barbara Alberts: Getting these internships is a pretty big deal. They really help give you a good foundation for what's to come. Why did you guys decide you wanted to intern at Salesforce? Hanslei Cuoscia: One main reason for why I picked Salesforce over other APM programs, and just other internships in general, was the things I heard about the APM program from the Inaugural Batch which was last year's APM program. What they told me was there's a ton of executive exposure and interaction with executive leaders, both in product and engineering, just all around. There are regular APM Thursdays, in which you and all the other 11 interns in your batch meet up on a regular basis, have workshops, meetings, and just question and answer sessions with a lot of these general managers, executive vice presidents and all these people that are literally setting and creating the vision for the next few quarters, or even years of Salesforce. I heard about that, I thought it was pretty crazy to be in a room with them, not only once or twice in an internship, but once a week. That was definitely a huge factor. In addition to that, I also think that the network for our program is pretty awesome. By network, I mean that it's a 12 person program. Other programs are either one or two people for APM's, or maybe even a 50-person program for a couple other companies. I thought 12 was a perfect size to genuinely and personally know everyone else in the program, and just have a good time and be able build a quality, lasting friendship that would go years onwards, after this. Marjan Josenia: For me, I was looking for a challenging internship for the summer, and my majors actually: Mission Learning, DIP Learning, and Natural Language Processing. I was able to find out there are less options using [inaudible 00:04:20] Stat, or related to Surge, which I realize on the DIP Learning and Natural Language Processing. That's why I found that opportunity and I chose that opportunity at Salesforce. Barbara Alberts: Can you tell me a little bit about the projects that you guys are working on? You're both working within Einstein a little bit, but can you just expand on what, specifically, you guys are working on, and maybe how that relates to Einstein overall? Hanslei Cuoscia: This summer, I'm working on Einstein's first Business Card Scanner, meaning that you upload a picture of a business card currently as for web, and later on we're going to expand to mobile. After uploading that picture, then essentially all that information's parsed and pulled out of it, and you automatically have a new lead, record or a contact created in your Salesforce dashboard. Couple of the technologies use our Optical Character Recognition to pull the text from the image. Then, after the text is pulled, then we use Name Entity Recognition to pull the names, and locations, and organizations from that text. Finally, the end product is a new lead that's automatically added to your Salesforce records. So, that's what I've been working on this summer. In addition that, one other thing I did was a Sentiment Analysis Lightning Web Component, meaning that it's just one of those components that you can easily drag around in your Salesforce set-up and embed it onto the screen, and you can literally have that tell you the sentiment, whether it be positive, neutral, or negative sentiment, of any customer's survey response, or any field that you want to get the general vibe of. Barbara Alberts: So, instead of having to go into Salesforce type in from this business card, the name and everything like that, it kind of automates that process? Hanslei Cuoscia: Exactly. Instead of creating a lead all manually by yourself, and filling out the five, to even 12 fields, you can just scan a card, and most of them will be filled out for you. You even have the option, as the user to edit whichever fields were incorrectly scanned, or even just completely add some fields from scratch. But it does most of the work for you. Barbara Alberts: Yeah. And Marjan, can you explain a little bit about what your internship project has been? Marjan Josenia: My project is about the instant search. In the instant search, we are giving two types of the queries: conceptual queries and non-conceptual queries. My project was to improve the parsing of the conceptual queries. The conceptual queries include some name entities, and in order to find out the name entities we need, and digital network that can identify the long names of the organization, the name of the persons, to create the final sequel. In order to retrieve the information that the user requests. So, my project was to improve that part, that name entity recognition. Barbara Alberts: Correct me if I'm wrong: so your project is a little bit more internally-facing, and you're working on an external feature, correct? Hanslei Cuoscia: Correct, yeah. Barbara Alberts: Yeah, so that's pretty cool. Can you guys tell me in your own words though, what is Einstein? I know people are like okay, it's AI, but can you expand a little bit on how that relates to your project, particularly? Hanslei Cuoscia: True. Einstein, in my opinion, is just the brain behind all of Salesforce's products. It's how the machine learning, embedded in every single cloud, or in every single functionality of the product that can potentially have predictions made, or can be a little smarter than just a simple row-based kind of system. That's what Einstein is, from what I've seen, but my team particularly creates 8-pix AI services, meaning that we create simple API's from which, with one line of code, you can easily have a machine learning API call, and on the Salesforce platform. Literally, in any field or any standard custom object, you can instantly get a response for translation, you can use that API. You can also use Sentiment Analysis. You can also use name Entity Recognition. You can also use Optical Character Recognition. So, these are all things that, with one line, you can easily utilize that power of machine learning. It can essentially be democratized for any Salesforce admin, any Salesforce user, or even an internal Salesforce user. So, that's what I'm working on with Einstein, but as an overview, Einstein is essentially the brain behind all of Salesforce's products, and is embedding machine learning in a seamless manner throughout the entire platform. Marjan Josenia: I like to answer this question related to instant search, because from instant search previously, you were able to only search for the key words, but now you can search for the queries, which are conversational queries. So I just love having opportunities, you can say my opportunity last month, which is very similar to the conversational query. And that's what, actually, Einstein is. Convert query, maybe statical things, some very dynamic queries, and make the life easier for the in-users. Barbara Alberts: These queries don't have to be perfect, pristine, very formal rigid sentences, you can have a conversational sentence, go in there and kind of understand it. It's understanding the way that a person would actually talk, versus a textbook. Hanslei Cuoscia: Sure, casual and colloquial, instead of formal, right? Marjan Josenia: Exactly. Barbara Alberts: What were some challenges that came up during your projects you had to work through this summer? Marjan Josenia: The challenge that we had in the Lexus Word Search was that the name of the inquisition that are too long for us. 13 words, or maybe even 15 words. The current models cannot identify the name of the long [inaudible 00:09:37] So we needed to have a model that can identify them in order to search, convert the query to a sequel query. I tried to read lots of papers, and try different models, and I found, finally, model that can identify these long name entities. Hanslei Cuoscia: So, when modeling this business card scanner out, the name entity recognition that I mentioned earlier was definitely difficult to, not only get the names, not only get the organizations, but it was difficult to get the location and address from a business card. There's no way to easily identify the address, unless you have some very, very large database of addresses and some maps API that it's linked to, which we didn't want to go into because that would be outside of the scale of my internship. We only had around eight weeks to develop this product. So, keeping that in mind, we decided not to go with address right now, but we instead decided to optimize for the other fields that we could, in time, have a very high accuracy for. So that includes something that regular expressions can do, which is email addresses and phone numbers. In addition to that, we could focus more on fine tuning the name that pulled with the NER, or Name Entity Recognition API, and also the organization name, which was also successfully pulled at a high accuracy, as well. So we optimize for those, and we had five to six fields that were with very high quality populated every time, any business card was pretty much scanned. We focused on getting a really good NVP out, instead of focusing on a very difficult and longer term problem, which was address, and I think that was definitely the right decision to do. Barbara Alberts: What are the next steps going to be for your projects once you guys hand them off, or once are at a place where you can hand it off, maybe not necessarily completed, but in a better place than where you found it? Hanslei Cuoscia: I think some potential avenues for my business card scanner product would be: there's a few. The first one could be that we could put it on the app exchange, which is Salesforce's apps. A second thing could be, we could create an unmanaged package for it, meaning that it's an unmanaged snippet of code that people can instantly run on their Salesforce platform without needing it to be actively maintained, or bugs-patched, or any of that. It's kind of like the [inaudible 00:11:45] where they can make modifications to it themselves, or if they feel like it's kind of lacking any features that they really need for their specific customer use case. And the third thing would be, we could create a managed package, which, based off of customer requests, we could add more features to it. So, unmanaged package, managed package, or just put it on the app exchange as a whole. Those are three possible avenues for my project, and what that means is we, of course, want customers to use this scanner as much as possible. Zooming out even more, I think a next step, on the larger scale of things, would be to extend this to mobile, because business cards are generally scanned on phones. Because a lot of the technology, in terms of Optical Character Recognition and Name Entity Recognition, has already been developed over the course's internship, it's simply a matter of extending this use case to mobile and focusing more on the UI. Where as the back end has pretty much stayed the same. Because we've also done a lot of quality and metric testing and it seems like the quality's doing pretty well, so far. So it can easily be exposed to the public. Marjan Josenia: One part of my project was about how can we have more conversational queries and more compositional queries. So I think the second part of my project, I focus on parsing the complex queries. This is only the beginning of the instant search, and there are lots of rooms for improvement of this parse because when we see the user feedback, we see that they ask us to have more conversational queries and more complex queries. So in the second part, I try to represent the queries in a very different way, which is, I don't want to go into the details here, but just something similar that Amazon's Alexa is doing. Then, with this, we can add more flexibility to our queries, and help users with every query that they want in the instant platform. Barbara Alberts: One thing I'm genuinely just curious about is how do you guys handle foreign languages in these projects? Because Einstein and Salesforce have global products, and so how have you guys been working around that? Is there anything that you've been doing to expand on the abilities in terms of recognizing words or recognizing search queries? Hanslei Cuoscia: International relations is definitely a very, very important and high priority task for every single product on Einstein and throughout the company, as a whole. We really value our customers that speak different languages and that are in different countries. So, for my team particularly, this business card scanner will most definitely, with full intent, be extended to non-English speakers and people that have business cards in other languages. One quick way on how to do that is, remember how I mentioned that we have easy, simple, one-line machine learning services, right? What we're going to do is, first of all, we want to build the English product first, right? Simply in one language, to have an NVP, and approval concept that this business card scanner can in fact be made on the Salesforce platform, for [inaudible 00:14:33] And then after that, then we'll extend it to the next most popular language, which right now it seems like it will be Chinese, and what we'll do is, we'll still use Optical Character Recognition. We'll use that API to pull the text from an image, and after that text is pulled, then we already have the Translation API that has been built a few months back. We'll then translate that text, so then it's in the given language of interest. And once we have that translated, then we can pull all of the entities using Name Entity Recognition, and then service and populate all of the fields in the Salesforce object. So that's exactly how we would go about doing it. This is something that we actually have thought about from the beginning, because a lot of people on my team, and on other sister teams of mine, have told us that internationalization is a huge priority, is very important for Einstein and Salesforce as a whole, and that's something that we should definitely keep in mind, moving forward. We're glad to say that we're definitely working on that right now. Marjan Josenia: For instant search, as I said, we have two types of queries: conceptual queries and non-conceptual queries. For conceptual queries, currently, we do not cover the non-English words because it needs completely new model to train on the language model of, for example, the Chinese model. But for the key word search, which is non-conceptual queries, we do have [inaudible 00:15:46] that can tokenize the words for us and we can search for that in the Einstein search. Barbara Alberts: Part of the goal for this podcast too, is just to highlight the diversity of jobs that are available, and the opportunities that exist on just one product, in one cloud. So can you guys both just tell me how these projects have helped make Einstein a better product? Marjan Josenia: In instant search, when a person wants to find its opportunity, or its slates, it's usually put lots of name entities into the query. So, in order to make a sequel query, which is relevant to the actual query, we need to identify that name entity. And, if it can improve that name entity recognition, we can have a better sequel final query that can retrieve the required information for the user. That's how it helps the instant search. Hanslei Cuoscia: I'd say that the engine's pretty simple for the business card scanner because that just adds another tool to the tool kit of Einstein, and, especially in the form of a lightning web component, which is a component that can easily be dragged and dropped into a Salesforce display, or a Salesforce grid set-up, where you have your file upload area, where you have your main panel, where you can have your dashboard leads, or any cases, or anything that you're viewing as a Salesforce user, which would be our customers. You could instantly just drag and drop that business card scanning lightning component. That could just be something that they instantly upload files into and get a response from. That's one thing that, I think, it's useful for Einstein for, just expands its tool kit from the existing number of lightning components that they already have. In addition to that, I think the other project I worked on, which is the Sentiment Analysis Lightning Component, that also adds another really cutting edge and avant garde kind of technology to the Einstein tool belt, which is getting the sentiment for any case or any snippet of text, for our customers. One really useful case that this could be seen in, in the industry, is when a customer wants to look at all of the surveys that have been filled out by their customers, they don't care about the servers that are really good in sentiment or really happy, or really neutral. They want to see the... /episode/index/show/futureforce/id/10881759

The Salesforce Spotlight feat. Dario 08/13/2019

The Salesforce Spotlight feat. Dario Music by Robert Reid Hosted by Barbara Alberts --- Dario Molina: Do it. Go for it. Who cares about all these other students coming from more recognizable schools? You are you. They are them. From my own experience before I applied to Salesforce, I only had two years of experience in coding in general, and I was in the same position that some of these students might be like, "Hmm, can I do this?" But my answer to you is "Yes you can." Apply yourself, work hard, and from your work, your success will come. Your work is going to speak for you. Barbara Alberts: Curious to know what it's like to be an intern at Salesforce? Welcome to the Salesforce spotlight, the podcast series that highlights the extraordinary stories of Salesforce employees and Futureforce interns. I'm Barbara Alberts, and on this episode of the Salesforce spotlight, I sit down with software engineer Dario Molina, as he shares how he got to Salesforce, and overcame challenges and obstacles to get to where he is today. Tune in for more, and happy listening. Barbara Alberts: So with me on the podcast today is Dario Molina. He came to Salesforce after spending one of his summers as a Futureforce intern, and he's just here to talk to us about his experience as an intern, and also his transition into a full time employee, and just what he's been up to since then. So Dario thank you for joining. Dario Molina: No Barbara, thank you for the invite. Pleasure to be here. Barbara Alberts: Why don't you just tell me a little about your background and how you got to where you are today? Dario Molina: I graduated last May, and I did my major in computer science, and I was part of this cohort down in Monterey Bay where you get your Bachelors in three years. Essentially I came from a math major. I really liked the critical thinking, logic, problem solving, and my last semester before transferring I had to take computer science. Within the first classes, I was like, "Oh my gosh, what is this?" Like all the awesomeness of logical thinking, of the rational was in there, and it was tangible because I could see whatever I put into the computer was coming out, and it was amazing. From that semester I decided to transfer over my major. Barbara Alberts: So you came to Salesforce through Futureforce, how did you find out about that opportunity? Yeah, how did you find out about that opportunity? Dario Molina: So in the cohort that I previously mentioned on... The cohort a year before me, some of the students were entering in here at Salesforce, and I really liked that aspect from Salesforce of the giving back their 1-1-1 model. And I was really touched by this company who's top in the Forbes, really caring about their community. So I asked one of my friends, "Hey, what's it like interning at Salesforce? Can I get more information?" And part of your Futureforce is, there's a day where you can invite friends over. Right? She invited me, I came over, I met her manager, and long story short, her manager became my manager. A blessing. Barbara Alberts: Absolutely. So you talk about Salesforce's values and things like that. Is that something that you had thought of previously when you were looking at places to intern, in terms of like what does this company value and what is their purpose behind their business? Dario Molina: Definitely, definitely. Most of the students, I can relate. When we're looking for internships, a lot of the times it's like, "Ah, let me just apply and whichever one calls me back, I'll go with that one." Right? But I really wanted a place where I can relate to, in terms of what they stood as a company, their philosophy, their mentality, and the impact that they're having, not only in tech but outside of it. And that's I think the number one thing that pushed me over, "Do you know what? Salesforce is way to go." And I'm thankful, thankful to God, thankful for the way things turned out, and where I'm at today. Barbara Alberts: Absolutely. So you came to that Futureforce event, you started talking to your future hiring manager. So what was the process like for you from that initial contact and just the application process, recruiting process, things like that? Dario Molina: Sure. So when I came over, I met up with my friend and then she's like, "Oh, you know what, come on, let me introduce to my manager. Her manager. And my manager's name is Jean Rivera and a great guy. He's like, "Oh my friend Hayley." She's like, this is Dario and Jean [inaudible 00:04:16] We had a five minute conversation. He had to leave from that point, we exchanged some emails and this was in the summer. Salesforce came to my school the following semester in November. And from those engineers and managers that came over, Jean was one of them and is like "Hey dude, you remember me?" It's like, "Oh yeah, you seem familiar. Was it Mario?" "No, dude, Dario. Dario." "Oh yeah. How's it going?" And pretty much, we did mock interviews from those mock interviews, the whole session and it went great. Dario Molina: And at the end of the event, Jean was like, "Hey dude, well here's my card, my email's right there. Shoot me your resume and then let's see what we can do." And sure enough, I applied. And in that meantime, while I was waiting for his response, Salesforce contact me and like "Hey dude, there's this engineering position on infrastructure. Do you want to try it?" I was like, sure. I applied. I went to the whole round and when it came on the onsite, I didn't do so well and I was like, "Aw man." I was really disappointed. Like, Aw man, my company, the one that I wanted for, I couldn't get into, but I put it all in God's hands. A week later, the recruiter Julie, she sends me an email, "Hey Dario, how's it going?" Great. And for me it was a surprise like, "Whoa, Salesforce again?" Dario Molina: "Yeah, now we want to reach out to you for this other engineering position." I applied, I had the interviews and I remember the Wednesday of Thanksgiving, I had my second round of interview with meeting a manager at sales cloud and the Monday following, after Thanksgiving I get a call from Julie and "Hey Dario, how's it going? Great, great." It's a funny story because when I first got the call, I had the areas on of a local town nearby and on that day I had a doctor's appointment for my wife and I said "Whoa, what? Like the... What? The clinic?" They call me and she... I answered hello. "Hey there. How's it going? You know, I'm part of Salesforce" and in my head like, what? This clinic is just in six stores and then it took me a little... "Hey, it's me." Julie's like "Oh Julie, how's it going? Hey listen, I just want to, how's your day going? I just wanted to let you know that we're pleased to offer you a position as an intern for the following summer" and I was like... "What?" Dario Molina: She was telling me all this information, right? But it was just coming in one ear and leaving on the other. I was just so excited and more than anything, thankful. Primarily thankful to God for, even though I got rejected shortly after, Here I am back at Salesforce and thankful for my manager Jean who... He gave me a shot. Let's see how it goes with this guy and- Barbara Alberts: Looks like it turns out well. I want to take a little bit of a step back and just kind of talk about... You mentioned that you didn't feel like you had done so great on that first onsite. Dario Molina: Right. Essentially there was a lot of... There were some questions that was in the text that they were asking me information about. I wasn't fully aware of, I wasn't exposed to and instead of pretty much guessing and lying to you, I told him "I'm not really familiar with this. Could you give me an example of a more thorough or elaborate example of how this is being used? How we can go from here?" And you know, the managers and engineers that interviewed me that day was really awesome, but it was just... I wasn't ready for that position at that time and I don't regret anything. It was a a good learning experience overall. Barbara Alberts: Yeah, no, definitely. I think it's important to really talk about, obstacles for lack of a better term or something like that. Or maybe if there's a setback, there is still the opportunity to join in this program and get in there and things like that. Yeah, definitely. Dario Molina: Like my case when one door closed, thankfully another one opened, right? And instead of seeing when I got rejected from my initial one, instead of being, yeah, I was bummed and I was like, "Oh man." But it wasn't the end of the day. It's not the end of the world, sorry. From this, what can I learn from this? When I went home, it was on a Friday and I drove down and I got here back at 10 in the night. When I got here 10 in the night I started looking at everything that they asked me, I started Googling, what is this? How is this being used? What companies are using this? When did this tech started? What is the long-term of how this is going to be used? And then just starting absorbing all this different... Pretty much the questions that they asked me, right. And knowledge is power. Barbara Alberts: So you know, you get that acceptance Thanksgiving week and then you fast forward to May or June when you start. What was that experience like for you? Just kind of stepping into the office, stepping into the team and kind of getting yourself oriented with what's going on. Dario Molina: It was very challenging. The first day that I came to Salesforce to start two weeks prior, my baby boy was born. So it was very like "Oh, like my baby's here, my wife's back in my hometown, three hours down South." So it was a little bit hard to leave them and come over here and putting that out there, I was very also very... You know, the imposter syndrome. Oh man. Like "Do I really belong here? Can I really do this?" I see all these students from top colleges, universities and I'm coming from a small university [inaudible 00:09:30] not many people know. And it was more like "Hmm, okay, all right Lord. Here I am. Put this in your hands. Here we go." And my manager at the time, he wasn't here, he was out on a flight out of town. Dario Molina: And the first manager that I spoke to on my second round of interview, [inaudible 00:09:51] He was pretty much "Oh yeah man, come over." They gave me like a quick round of what Salesforce was about, what they were working on and it was a good experience because my experience was a little bit different than most interns. I was part of the team [inaudible 00:10:10] foreign sales, in sales cloud. But I wasn't in the team, I didn't attend stand ups. Retro, grooming. It was more like [inaudible 00:10:17] "Here's a problem and figure it out. Show us, come up with some solutions. What's the best way to implement it and then come and give us an approach." And although my approach, although my situation was different, nevertheless it was an awesome experience and I'm thankful that my internship experience went that way because I learnt so much from that. Barbara Alberts: Can you tell me a little bit about that project you're working on? Dario Molina: Sure. So my project, what happened was that, you know Q3, Q4 they do a lot of testing performance, how the teams are doing. So my manager wanted to do, okay, from leading up to future freeze, what teams are... How many bugs are each teams logging? Which teams are on track, which teams are falling behind? What are the measure of these bugs that are coming [inaudible 00:11:04] their severity. Then coming along. So before what they would do is, my manager, he would sit down, open a spreadsheet, put this team, this date, this week of future freeze, this many bugs, right? And then he told me "You know what dude? Like I'm a manager, I should have been doing this." He gave this work to another engineer. And then pretty much we wanted to automate the whole process when clicking a few buttons or running just one simple terminal command, it will generate all these, all these records. Dario Molina: And yes, sure enough I used, I learned enough Salesforce APIs and pretty much what I implemented was based on this user run a terminal and then it would generate all from up to that week it would generate from all the teams, like what teams, what bugs are coming along. The number of bugs. And this was great information that even other managers from other clouds wanted to use that tool. And yeah, my manager was very "Wow, dude, I can't believe the approach that you used" and what took a matter of, could be hours, it took seconds. Barbara Alberts: Wow. So you really had the opportunity to work on a project that had impact. This wasn't busy work. This wasn't "Oh here, this is just what I don't want to do. This is something where you got to actually put your mark on it and have an impact. That's awesome. Dario Molina: Even though this wasn't a feature showing out to customers, it was an internal tools that a lot of the managers and teams needed. And when I was showcasing my project towards the end of my internship, a lot of other engineers that came and said "Oh that's an interesting... Can I use it?" I was like "Yeah it's okay, go ahead man." And even in my [inaudible 00:12:47] when I went back to school, I was in touch with my mentor and he was like "Yeah man, we're still using your tool. It's been awesome." And I implemented a thing, here and there, but it's working better than we expected. And I was like, "Oh man.". Barbara Alberts: That's great to hear. It's like you look back at that and you're like, that's awesome. But okay, so your internship ends as all of them do, which is sad, but just I guess after that internship, how did you or did you stay in touch with your team? Like what did that process look like for you once Futureforce was over? Dario Molina: So after Futureforce, after my internship was over, I went back to school and that meantime that I was in school, I get in touch with the manager, with my mentor, with my recruiter, my new recruiter Eva and Julie, my past recruiter, my previous recruiter. And essentially what I had learned in my internship, I was doing side projects to implement on top of what I had built. Not necessarily here in Salesforce, but the same mechanism of the APIs that I was using, the service, the server that I created. I was using those side projects. And one of the things that I use is, I created this website for my local church and although I wasn't using Salesforce APIs and although I wasn't using the same internal tech, I was using tech that was open source. And pretty much I would say "What okay, based on this, how many people are coming to church? How many people, during a time period, are the length of the people staying in church before, during and after the service." Dario Molina: And it was amazing. And then aside from that, I had time to improve on my new knowledge that I was getting in school. And honestly, I couldn't wait to come back to Salesforce. I had dreamed for it. It was my first day. And you know, the most exciting thing that I had is when I was an intern, I had my desk and I had a lever that had to rank it up to elevate, to make it go up and down. And in my dreams, I remember being so happy because I had my own desk and instead of pulling the lever, I could just press a button and go up and down and I would tell my wife "Wow." Of all the things you could be excited of going back to Salesforce, you're excited about the desk thing." Yeah, I know. Barbara Alberts: How long after your internship had ended did you kind of come back on full time? Dario Molina: So I graduated in May and I came back full time the last week of June. So about a month and a half after I graduated. Yeah. Barbara Alberts: Congratulations. Dario Molina: Thank you, thank you. Barbara Alberts: And so when you look at how your internship process went and how you got your foot into the door at Salesforce and things like that, what would you kind of tell somebody who is looking to get into the program? Looking for advice, looking for just something to kind of inspire them, inform them about the Futureforce program and how they can kind of best set themselves up for success. Dario Molina: Right. I think the number one thing would be to go out of your comfort zone. You know, for me the thing that got me started was that I was able to be social and talk to my friend Hayley and then introduced me to my [inaudible 00:16:02] who would become my manager, Jean. And for someone who's not very social, it's important to have connections. So my one thing would be step out of your comfort zone if you're not... If you're shy and speaking in public or reaching out to meeting new people, try it. Expand that comfort zone. If you feel like Salesforce is a big company, huge impact "Do I belong there?", you do. Kick that imposter syndrome out. Everyone has their own skills, their own qualities and all of those makes us unique. And bringing those different attributes into Salesforce is what makes it a great company. And one more thing, "I'm just an intern". You're not just an intern, you're an intern who's coming here to have an impact because you're part of Futureforce. Barbara Alberts: Absolutely. Why did you decide to come back to Salesforce full time? I mean you are in computer science. We're in Silicon Valley, we're in the heart of tech. There's a lot of options for you out there, but why did you decide "No, I'm going to stay with Salesforce. I'm going to continue working here"? Dario Molina: The main thing was that Salesforce gave me my first shot. I had applied to other companies and they're all telling me "You know what? Your assembling is good but we're not... We need someone with more experience." Many companies wouldn't even give me one interview opportunity and what it came down to was, Salesforce gave me that opportunity. They believed in me. My manager, my mentor, they believed in me and when I was an intern I didn't feel like "Oh, I'm just here as an intern." I was part of the team and I was speaking with engineers, lead engineers, POs who've been here for a long time. They have so much knowledge and we can talk about some tech and for me, like "Oh, I have this, this bug, right? Or I had this issue I'm not sure how to go around." Dario Molina: We have a conversation and it didn't matter that it was an engineer. What I had to say, they would listen. What I had to say was important and I felt valued here. So when I got the full time offers... This was a year ago. From a year to today, I've learned so much, have grown so much, and now that I'm going to be a full time, I can have a huge impact because I'm respected. I'm sure there's other companies that respect and value their employees, but with Salesforce, this was my home, and I had to come back home. Barbara Alberts: That's a great way to put it. So the upcoming Fall is a big recruiting push for Futureforce, for interns, for college students and stuff like that looking for their next summer internship. What skills do you recommend, given your experience, given what you know now that you think that people should really build on before applying to Futureforce? Dario Molina: I think the basics, understand your foundations in computer science, understand what [inaudible 00:19:11] is the fundamentals, right? And then aside, know the company that you're applying for. In this case, Salesforce. Know who they are, what they're doing, how long they've been in the [inaudible 00:19:25] what has been their impact before today, today and in the following years and aside from, I also learned what tech stack is Salesforce using? Do I have the skillset for, or do I have experience, some knowledge of the tech stack they are using? Yes. Cool. I'm going to dig deep down and learn some more. No? Well, I'm going to start learning to understand better what they're doing and be very prepared because Salesforce is not all... We're just hiring geniuses. They... /episode/index/show/futureforce/id/10874013

The Salesforce Spotlight feat. Samuel 08/13/2019

The Salesforce Spotlight feat. Samuel Music by Robert Reid Hosted by Barbara Alberts --- Samuel Gonzalez: I remember having my manager who flew from Dublin and he was telling as well these stories of him being gay and being after many companies in a place that valued him for what he was and who he was a how he could bring his full self to the office now. [inaudible 00:00:18] and there was basically a day that I had just goosebumps that day. I got very emotional at that point. It was like, wow! This is the first time I feel like this in a company. In [inaudible 00:00:32] basically. I had never felt that way in my school or my university or whatever but it was the first time in my life that it was like, wow! This is a warm welcome. Barbara Alberts: Curious about what it's like to be an intern at Salesforce? Welcome to the Salesforce Spotlight. The podcast series that highlights the extraordinary stories of Salesforce employees and future force interns. I'm Barbara Alberts and this episode of the Salesforce Spotlight features sales intern Samuel Gonzalez who helped establish an employee resource group in Madrid less than one month into his internship. Tune in for more and happy listening. With me now all the way from Madrid is Samuel Gonzalez. Thank you for joining! Samuel Gonzalez: No, thank you for the invitation. It's great to be in the feature for a podcast. Barbara Alberts: Yeah, I'm super excited to have this conversation but let's just dive right in. First and foremost, how did you find out about Futureforce? Samuel Gonzalez: So about Futureforce and Salesforce was basically, I am a third year now so I am a junior [inaudible 00:01:36] last year [inaudible 00:01:37] Salesforce. This happened basically because right now on Madrid, since a couple years or so, there is a booming start-up scene. So there isn't a lot of conversations and conference happening and at the same time everywhere about technology, about startups, about technology world change, you know? One of the big topics is customer centricity and actually one of the main start up hubs in Madrid which is a [inaudible 00:01:59]. Which is one of the account executives in Madrid came there and had a conference on customer centricity and how Salesforce was doing this. That was the moment I basically got to know Salesforce and then a week after that I got to go to the career firm, my university at IE and that's basically, Futureforce was there, I got to meet all the opportunities that happens at Futureforce specially and in Salesforce Madrid Office. That was a kick starting a great relationship with this amazing company. Barbara Alberts: Yeah, absolutely! And so you're in the Madrid Office. How many people are working out of that hub? Samuel Gonzalez: So in this hub, which is basically the area of Spain and Portugal and it's around 250 people or so. Barbara Alberts: So you find out about Futureforce and you apply and you obviously, you know, get the offer and you accept, what was the first day like on the job when you walked into Salesforce? Samuel Gonzalez: Well that was a goosebumps day I have to say, cause the first day we had this presentation this Ohana presentation of the values and basically what is the culture at Salesforce. Now I really love that that is the first thing that they say whenever you enter the Salesforce door right? So it's basically welcome to Ohana. What does it mean to be part of Ohana? What is Ohana? Basically now, so rather than focusing on your role or giving you a run up it's more business oriented. I love that it's culture oriented from the first day and more specifically for interns, which is basically a future with company, and you know it's basically creating a new environment for you personally. And yeah, it was a day of presenting values, what do we do at Salesforce, what are products, et cetera and I remember having my manager who flew from Dublin and he was my direct manager from all Futureforce basically, and he was telling us about these stories of him being gay and him being after many companies in a place that valued him for what he was, and who he was and how he could bring his full self to the office now. What all the programs around there without force and all the Ohana groups and that was basically a day that I had just goosebumps that day, I got very emotional at that point and was like, wow, this is the first time I feel like this in a company in somewhere basically. I had never felt that way in my school or my university or whatever but it was the first time in my life that it was like, wow! This is a warm welcome. Barbara Alberts: Yeah absolutely it's fantastic to hear. When you step in to Salesforce, and you kind of get introduced to the values and things like that, how did that influence you? Even just your first day on the job in terms of making an impact or doing something to better or help the community around you? Samuel Gonzalez: Yeah, so I'm going to get a little personal here. I think it's important because, well for anyone that hears, if it's from Salesforce and not from Salesforce or is thinking about coming to Salesforce I guess, it's that moment that tells you about the values and about what really matters to Salesforce like being who you are. 100% of you in every single place. Specifically for LGBT community it's super important because of one thing, because whenever you go, and you have this office tour around and that's the normal thing in your mind you're going to be thinking. Like, okay I need this social validation if IO can be here myself, we're going to talk about my personal stuff, which is the normal thing that everyone talks about, and that moment really empowers you. Whenever I tell you, okay, Salesforce is this way and this is the Ohana we value everyone, we respect everyone. Then, you go out, and you may be thinking, okay, this person may be a little less oriented to respectfulness or not, but you know, the company is protecting you in that sense, Barbara Alberts: Right! Samuel Gonzalez: And you feel very empowered. So that's how it completely changed everything. Actually, not just that day, but whenever you have a bad day, because everyone has bad days, even at Salesforce. In the fantastic Ohana you know! But, whenever you have a bad day in business or whatever, you start to think about what is a long term goal of the company you're working for and that really helps a lot. Barbara Alberts: Yeah, absolutely! Absolutely! I mean, you mentioned that your manager had spoken to you about the Ohana groups that are available for Salesforce employees who are looking for a community. Did Madrid at that time have Out force as an Ohana group available? Samuel Gonzalez: No. They had nothing, and it was like a midterm goal they had actually. I was today having lunch with the international CEO Arcenial, and he told me today two years ago we were actually talking with Nacha, which is like the office manager, the one who basically runs everything in the office, and he was like, "I was telling her we have to make something about this to happen". They thought it was super complicated, super difficult to make it happen in Madrid because there was no... Even though has one of the largest pride celebrations in the world, there was nothing of Out force or any Ohana groups, you know! Then, last year it happened exactly that way. We had this conversation with the manager. We did this Ohana presentation and that day I got out of the office, I was still talking to my manager and it was like, okay so we have this great LGBT, well we call it LGBT at work event, where we talk about basically the issues and all the situations of LGBT community in the workplace and we organize it every year in my university. We have great sponsors. It's been rolling since it was like, since 2006, and it's one of the biggest in the world and there's no Salesforce. We're going to try to work it out, and finally the following day they called me. They said okay you know it was the first time this happens for Futureforce but it's going to be a gold sponsorship and we're going to get a gold sponsored event and we're going to take a lot of people there. At that point they also told me okay, also if you want to make something happen for pride, go ahead and that was the moment it all started. Kicked off pride and then it kicked off the basic information of the Out force group itself. Barbara Alberts: Yeah, absolutely! So what was the response like from your co-workers and your peers around that first pride event? Samuel Gonzalez: It's was very tough because what I'm talking as if we had months of preparation, but it was really like two weeks away from that conversation. So, it was very crazy. We didn't have a budget for Out force because it was like two weeks away and that starts with one year of preparation. We had nothing at that point, so it was a lot of conversations happening with everyone. My manager told me okay, you want to do this? If you want to do this very well, prepare a plan, prepare a presentation a [inaudible 00:08:57] and not just for this pride, but for the whole year and you're going to present this to Arcenial, and you're going to present this to the country leader, and it was like, what? Okay, you remember I'm an intern right? And he was like, that doesn't matter at Salesforce and it's completely true. So, so yeah. I came up with his plan and prepared this for a whole year and there's all these angio communities and [inaudible 00:09:22] focused on this issue, and I got in touch with them. I got to talk to everyone, and I talked with all the organization of the pride itself and it was like okay so you're not accepting any longer new participants in pride right? Okay, you need to make one big acception. It finally worked out, and it was a massive response. We took like 80 people, employees and their families and everyone from the Salesforce office in Madrid. Which 80 it's insane because it basically you think about an office of just 250 and not just in Madrid but in Barcelona at this point. It's a very big number for the first time in two weeks just away from it. So, it was incredible. We have these Brazilian drums in Batuca. We have these incredible great balloons in there. Everyone's dancing! Wow! It was... It was... I get goosebumps! Barbara Alberts: Yeah, it sounds like you've been having a few goosebumps days but it's great to hear that. It's great to know that you know, interns have this ability to make and impact, work on a project that they're passionate about and kind of get in front of some higher-up people who are willing to support them in those projects which is really awesome! So, before you had come to Salesforce though, had you interned at any other companies before? Samuel Gonzalez: Not really, actually I have a past as an actor and a tool presenter, it's my other life. I have to say that I've been working for like Disney, I've been working for other big companies but as a tool presenter, or an actor or whatever, even though I have a... Yeah, I couldn't make a bachelor in technology. Barbara Alberts: Right! Samuel Gonzalez: It's a very different world. So, nothing related to internships in other companies. I had interned in start-ups before, but it wasn't nothing at all compared to this. There's nothing comparable but what I can say from other friends that I have that work in some big names out there now, I can say that the culture in Salesforce you can say many things but there is nothing you can say about it like it's not authentic. Even many other companies I have like eight posters in the wall saying that respect is the first thing, and then all these values now, but in like in big posters they have in every single wall they have in the office but in Salesforce we may not have as many posters but we live up to those values and that's something that no one understands out of Salesforce. Sometimes it takes a lot of time, but yeah! Actually this year that pride from 80 people grew to 230 people. Barbara Alberts: Wow! Samuel Gonzalez: They're all a couple of weeks. That was incredible! So yeah, we were actually the largest pride in Amea and you really feel that from an office that is 250 people. We have 230 employees and their families coming to pride. That's a culture that really lives up to their values and they want to stand for everyone that needs it, and support every single minority or every single body that they want to respect so, again authenticity. That's the thing I really like about this company. Barbara Alberts: Yeah, absolutely! Looking too at just your internship in general, you are a sales intern so how has your experience interning at Salesforce changed the way you think about the business in general and the purpose of just the business? Samuel Gonzalez: Well, in this case I need to actually I was before, I was solution engineering last summer for summer internships and then I changed to sales programs, which is more like analytics and basically building the sales strategy. That's kind of my role there. It's basically internal and integrated in to many state callers and not just in Madrid or Liberia, but throughout all Europe basically. It's a very interesting euro because you get to know different departments, you know. One of the things that has changed absolutely it's... I started in a university that used to be a business corporate, so the majority of my subjects are completely related to business, and I have this big marketing in finance and everything. Many times of course you're focusing on the numbers, you're focusing on the goal that the business has to be successfully is to be profitable, and it's basically to make money you know! Barbara Alberts: Right! Samuel Gonzalez: But, you know when you come to Salesforce it's basically okay, making money is important, but you need to think about the long term goal which is to have a better world. In I want to say a couple of years, but in many years I'm going to leave this world as every none of us and it's like we have this long term world, this long term goal which is to basically improve this place for the humans and all the animal species and everyone that is to come and experience it after us. It's very important to translate that to business and that's a message that is very clear and just branded in Salesforce. You're building and today you're doing a great sale and you're getting this big company to sign a contract with Salesforce and to use their software because you want them to do better, but a part from that you'll want to create a long term goal which is improving the world to do better you know. That is the role of the business, and that's the thing that Mark says to do better and that's the business of the business chain in the world and I totally feel identified with that. Actually, this year I had the opportunity to go to Stanford to other university things, and that's kind of the culture you live in the valley and the bay area everywhere with the start-ups it's like we're changing the world. We're making this a better place and that's something that Salesforce is taking to other places in the world and expanding that message. I'm super grateful they changed my mindset and that they are doing that! Barbara Alberts: Yeah! I was going to ask had that been something that you thought about or even took in to consideration before you joined Salesforce just looking at the values of the company and whether they align with yours? Samuel Gonzalez: So to be honest, I thought those values were more about like branding recruitment or recruitment branding and marketing of other companies and everything, but I didn't ever think that in a company the first thing was going to be those values. Barbara Alberts: Right! Samuel Gonzalez: No, I thought that again there was some big poster you stick on the wall and that's it, and then you brag about it and you do lots of marketing on it. But, not something that was going to be in every single decision that you take with the company., It's like you see these big decisions it's not only to a local place now, but you see this big decisions of Salesforce, well yeah, basically the direction of Salesforce saying that no we're not having a contract with a border's authority or whatever. The employees didn't want it to be like that so you feel okay, some massive company, there's so many employees worldwide and it's going to get so much bigger. You know, the values still matter and for every single decision like profit is nice, but profit is good for some big reason which is changing this for a better place. Barbara Alberts: Yeah! Samuel Gonzalez: That's very impactful for me actually. Barbara Alberts: So did you expect to have such a big impact on the business and on the Madrid office so quickly in to your internship or even at all as an intern? Samuel Gonzalez: No, not at all. I'm going to have to be honest here. Not at all. I didn't imagine this was going to happen. You know, the goals you have as an intern maybe are like at the start whenever you're in the university and they tell you, whenever you go to the internship you can do this and this and that, and your goal needs to be basically to insure they hire you afterwards you know. Then you go to the company and then you have a meeting with the CEO of the company and it's like, wow! What is it about? Pride! You're kidding me! Personally, it's always a great impact professionally, yes! Personally, it helped me a lot and I can just be as grateful as I can. The treatment I've had, and the help I've had with Salesforce, and thanks to Salesforce you know all these years that you have hearing these homophobic or whatever surround you and suddenly you go to a place where they value you and support you and not just that, but they escalate that so you can have higher support. It's just, wow! There's nothing out there like this. Barbara Alberts: It's been awesome speaking with you about your experience. Before we wrap this up, I do want to ask, given your experience what piece of advice would you give to someone who wants to become a Futureforce intern and just what makes interning at Salesales so special? Samuel Gonzalez: Well I guess it's been pretty clear throughout this podcast. There's something that you really shouldn't think about, and it's your role or whatever this role or what being an intern means somewhere else because in Salesforce it's completely different. So just don't go without prejudices, don't go asking and don't go trying to be a good intern or whatever it means outside, but just try to have a big impact. If you want to do something which is good for the company which is good for the culture and at the end of the day it's good for the world they're going to hear you. Just go out and do it. Don't ask many questions, they're going to support you and they're going to empower you to make that happen. At the end of the day, it will be a win, win for you. You will learn, you will be supported, you will be heard. It will help you a lot to grow and learn and you will be helping out great culture as is the Ohana! That's my number one and number a hundred advice because I think that is super important. Barbara Alberts: Yeah. Absolutely! So can you also tell me too how your internship at Salesforce has really helped you career wise and skill wise? Samuel Gonzalez: Yeah, so this is more like role related I guess. As I said, I've been a part of solution engineering, which is basically doing all the presale and designing the product for the cast members so that they can have a preview of what it's going to look like for them once they have Salesforce and to help the sales process basically. Then, being a part of sales programs which is more analytical and just understanding every single KPI and understanding the sales targets and with those trying to create some strategies to reach those... /episode/index/show/futureforce/id/10873875

The Salesforce Spotlight feat. Akshay 08/13/2019

The Salesforce Spotlight feat. Akshay Music by Robert Reid Hosted by Barbara Alberts --- Akshay Mudgala: It's a million-dollar company and giving back to the society. Having the thought is probably very good in terms of humanity so I was inspired with that. So 1-1-1 model really inspired me. And that is the reason why I stepped ahead to give back to the society along with my peers. Barbara Alberts: Curious about what it's like to be an intern at Salesforce? Welcome to the Salesforce spotlight, the podcast series that highlights the extraordinary stories of Salesforce employees and Futureforce interns. I'm Barbara Alberts, and on this episode of The Salesforce Spotlight, we're going to India, where success agent Akshay Mudgala and his team have dedicated themselves to give it back to the Hyderabad community through volunteering and donating. Tune in for more and happy listening! On the podcast with me today is Akshay Mudgala. He is working at our India office and he has a great story about how his new grad class really kind of started to start this culture of giving back in India. So Akshay, thank you for joining me! Akshay Mudgala: Yes. Hi Barbara, this is Akshay. How are you? Barbara Alberts: I'm doing well, yeah! So why don't you just start by telling us a little bit about yourself and how you kind of came to find out about Salesforce? Akshay Mudgala: So, I've completed my Bachelors of Engineering in 2018 and probably joined Salesforce through campus recruitment as fresher. And my role here is success agent, which means I do technical support operations for Salesforce product. So let's say we have a customer who is developing a project on Salesforce platform, so if there is something going wrong technically or something is not working as expected, then customers will get back to us raising a case, and we do take the ownership of it and assist the customer in resolving that issue. So this is the overview of what my role is and what I do at Salesforce. Barbara Alberts: Yeah, absolutely! Can you tell me a little bit about your Day 1 experience when you first kind of stepped into the Salesforce office and got to know the company and the people that you'd be working with? Akshay Mudgala: Yes, yes. My Day 1 at Salesforce was very impressive and there are other 50 folks who joined along with me on the same day. And I think this is the first batch in the entire history of Salesforce where the recruitment was done in such a huge number. And probably I was astonished after entering the office by looking at the infrastructure, the cafeteria, the people around there, and the work culture. On Day 1 it was probably our orientation day and they walked us through what Salesforce is and what our job role is and what are all the core values of Salesforce. And we also have done few activities and we introduced each other to each other. So on Day 1, we were taught about the core values of Salesforce and I was a little bit impressed about the work that Salesforce does, the 1-1-1 model, how vast the Salesforce product is. So 'til my Day 1, I was not aware what Salesforce is and how big this product is. But after joining Salesforce, as days goes on, I've got to know the importance of this, and how big the product is. Barbara Alberts: So you know, you mentioned that you have been inspired by the 1-1-1 model and Salesforce's culture surrounding giving back to the communities and things like that. Was that something that they introduced to you Day 1 near the second you stepped on Salesforce as a new employee? Akshay Mudgala: Yes, yes. On probably the Day 1 or Day 2, I'm not sure, they walked us through what Salesforce is and how the workplace looks like, and what are all the cultures that we follow, the trust values, the Ohana, so everything was mentioned on the Day 1. Barbara Alberts: And so when you heard about that, and you heard about this emphasis to give back, did that inspire you to start participating in that 1-1-1 model? Akshay Mudgala: Yes, of course! That's a million-dollar company are giving back to the society. Having the thought is probably very good in terms of humanity, so I was inspired with that. So 1-1-1 model really inspired me. And that is the reason why I stepped ahead to give back to the society along with my peers. Barbara Alberts: Yeah, can you tell me a little bit more about that? Akshay Mudgala: Yeah, so with our first paychecks, so probably after a month joining the Salesforce, I've decided to do one volunteering activity wherein we will be giving back to the society. So what we thought is with our first paychecks, instead of going somewhere and partying, we thought of collecting 500 bucks. So let's say 500 and then we are around 50 people, so 500 into 50: 2500 bucks. That would be probably useful for any of the orphanages or old age homes. We thought of that and we have collected our first paychecks and everyone from the company, the vice-president, the directors, and all the managers came a step ahead and they helped us in contributing for the first VTO and that very successful. So… and from then, we have decided to do each VTO every quarter. And so far, it's been like almost one year and we have done four to five VTO's, one per quarter. And that's still going on, people are contributing to it, and yeah we are very happy in doing that. Barbara Alberts: When you say people are giving you like $500 a quarter, or something like that, is that from their own personal paychecks? Or is that from VTO hours that they've accrued? Akshay Mudgala: No, it's from their pocket… pocket money. Barbara Alberts: Okay, so people are giving money out of their pockets to donate? Akshay Mudgala: Yes. Barbara Alberts: Yeah, that sounds really cool! So when you had this idea to kind of donate your first paycheck, what was the response like from your co-workers and from everybody else in that office when you came to them with that idea? Akshay Mudgala: Most of us were happy. In fact, the first paycheck, we would be giving to our parents and we will be spending some of the amount on parties. This is probably… very few of… most of us will do. So we thought of initiating this and everyone felt happy but kind of… they are… not only they're taking care of the family and friends, but they are also involving in society, contributing to the society. So they felt happy. They feel like they are doing something to the society with their first paycheck. And yeah, after the volunteering activity, everyone was very satisfied with the 500 bucks that they spend. Barbara Alberts: Yeah, so you mentioned that this has been going on for about a year now because you do have one VTO per quarter. Has participation continued to be strong within these VTO activities? Akshay Mudgala: Yes, yes. It's like every quarter, I'd be putting a message in the group saying that let's initiate this quarter VTO. And the response will be amazing, if you believe it or not. I'll be getting a message, I mean, within five to six days, I will be getting amount credited to my account. I'll be taking a note of that and I'll be keeping account, will be telling everyone the amount collected and the groceries or probably the material that we are buying to donate the orphanage. So that'll be kept on a track. Barbara Alberts: Yeah, absolutely. So can you tell me a little bit about the impact that these donations are having in the community around Salesforce? Akshay Mudgala: Yes. So the first thing that I really considered about donating is it should be a long-term use. So if you are donating, let's say, 1,000 bucks and if that is lasting for just one day or two days then that'll be again put into end. So what I'll think of is if there 1,000 bucks, how to utilize that so that it'll be helpful in a long-term to some of the orphanage or some of the probably, old age homes. So what we have done, let's say I'll be giving you an example of what we have done. So with the amount collected in couple of quarters back, probably I think in the third quarter after joining, so we… there was a government school and we have repaired the taps. They are probably lacking water supply and we have repaired the water tanks, water taps [audio cuts out 00:08:08] the connectivity. And now that is still being useful. And that will be at least working without any problem for three to four years, if I'm not wrong. So that is again a long-term. And we also went to a government school where we have donated almost probably 20,000 worth notebooks, and that will be useful for almost 400 students for a year span. So again that is a long-term. So I'll be looking for a long-term help in terms of what we can do with the amount that we collect. Barbara Alberts: Do you have a general idea though of how much money your team has donated since you began running this VTO? Akshay Mudgala: Yes, so I keep a track on it and I have everything documented. If I'm not wrong, it's around one lakh, 20,000 bucks… Indian rupees so far… Barbara Alberts: Wow. Akshay Mudgala: For four to five quarters. Barbara Alberts: Wow. Akshay Mudgala: And I still have 5,000 bucks which are pending. So that I'll be transferring it to the next quarter amount… next quarter VTO. Barbara Alberts: So you know, you mentioned that people give you the money from the VTO and then you go and you donate it and you put it into good use into the community. Have people continued to give the same amount of money that they started with at a couple of quarters ago? Or have you seen an increase in how much people are willing to put toward these projects? Akshay Mudgala: There are different kinds of people, I mean, from the first quarter, they started giving the same amount so far as well. So let's say 500… started with 500, 500, 500, so they're continuing to keep that amount as it is. There are few people who increase the amount drastically, from let's say 500 bucks to 6,000, 5,000 bucks. So it depends… it depends on their money, their financial adjustments for that month. Barbara Alberts: Oh yeah, absolutely. But you're still getting involvement from people? Akshay Mudgala: Yes, yes. Barbara Alberts: One thing I do want to ask too is there are a lot of VTO options for people to explore. What inspired you to make this your VTO and this… how you choose to spend your time and give back to the community? Akshay Mudgala: Yeah, so if I initiate something… those kind of things then I feel satisfied. Instead of just getting into some other VTO, so I feel like I'm satisfied with what I'm doing if I initiate things because I'll be doing… it is about what I'm doing. So if I feel I'm not doing anything wrong, then it makes… it probably gives me a good sleep in the night, and I feel satisfied for what I do. Barbara Alberts: And so how do you choose which organizations that you're going to donate to and which organizations you're going to help out for that quarter? Akshay Mudgala: Yes, normally I do have friends and I used to work with a couple of NGO's when I was in college. So I'll be getting a requirement saying that this orphanage or this old age home, or this government school is in need. So, I'll be putting… I'll be keeping a note of that and in the next quarter, or probably in the same quarter, I'll try to help that particular organization. So through friends or through neighbors, I'll be getting to know which orphanage or probably which organization is in need. Over searching in social media, I've got to know that there is one particular orphanage which is looking for helping hands, and there are probably 11 to 12 children of… who were around…who are studying in around 6th to 7th class, and they're probably looking for helping hands to pay their school fees. So I've reached the orphanage head and I've talked to him, so he said that they are good with all the groceries or all the clothes, books and everything, but they are lacking to pay their school fees. So what we have done is I have intimated this in groups at Salesforce and people started contributing. And the first contribution I've got was 10,000 bucks. Barbara Alberts: Wow! Akshay Mudgala: So probably, with almost… almost I have collected 30,000-40,000 bucks for that… for two quarters. And I went to the school, along with the children and also the orphanage head, and we have paid the school fees that was useful for… school fees for almost six months, first semester let's say. Barbara Alberts: Wow! Akshay Mudgala: So yeah, for twelve children. Barbara Alberts: And which quarter was that in? Akshay Mudgala: That was in my second quarter… second quarter and also third quarter I think. Barbara Alberts: Wow. How does Salesforce's values really help you with this project in terms of people being willing to give money out of pocket? I don't think that there are very many companies out there where people are willingly giving up part of their paycheck to donate. And sp how do you think that Salesforce's values have helped you kind of keep up with these projects? Akshay Mudgala: So since Salesforce core value is probably giving back to the society, 1-1-1 model, everyone would be involved since that is one of the core principles of Salesforce. So… yeah, no one will oppose of what I'm doing since I'm doing for the betterment of the society. And probably, everyone, if not donating, they probably at least try to help me in pushing in terms of publicizing the VTO or spreading the word. So some or the other way, are helpful from Salesforce. Barbara Alberts: So you came up with this idea, and I mean you were only an employee for about a month. So what was the response from your manager when you brought this idea up? Akshay Mudgala: Everyone appreciated literally and I feel very happy for that. So the day that we have done VTO, the vice-president… and we got appreciation the Futureforce and IT Futureforce [indiscernible 00:13:24] appreciation for a work we have done with our first paycheck, and that is the reason why you are now interviewing me. Barbara Alberts: Yeah! (laughs) Akshay Mudgala: (laughs) Barbara Alberts: So I guess my last question for you would be, what kind of advice would you give to a newly hired employee or someone who's just joining Salesforce who's looking to make an impact to the community around them? Akshay Mudgala: It depends on an individual. If he wanted to do something or contribute something to the society, then he can do… or he or she can do wherever he's at. So it's not only about Salesforce, wherever he search or in any multinational company, if he put some time, placed three to four hours per month, then they can just do whatever they want to do to help the community… to help those who are in need. We are joining Salesforce and if you observe the infrastructure, the food, or the benefits, or the salary, or the pay package that we have. It's probably very good when compared with few of the people who are staying in huts on the roadside, or people who are begging or people who are looking for some help. It's not a big amount, if we contribute, at least let's say 500 bucks, 1,000 bucks per month from our salary or from our pocket. So, collectively that will become a big amount and will be useful for a lot of people out there who are actually looking for helping hands. So, this is what I've got to know and probably inspired from my dad. So, that is the reason why we are still… probably I'm still very active in doing volunteering activities. Barbara Alberts: Why was your dad the one who inspired you for this? Akshay Mudgala: Yeah, because he was from that stage who came from very low background, with little amount of food to eat from the stage when he was at my age. So, he didn't have proper clothes, proper food, proper shelter and from that stage he came to a betterment… better stage now. So, he knows the struggle that he has came across, so that's why he probably kept pushing me in studying well and getting a good job. And that is the reason maybe I'm here sitting now. Barbara Alberts: Yeah, absolutely! Akshay Mudgala: In Salesforce. Barbara Alberts: Yeah! Akshay, thank you so much for sharing your story with me and for talking to me a little bit about… just kind of the amazing work that you and your team are doing in India. So thank you so much for joining us! Akshay Mudgala: Yeah, thank you so much for your time as well. Barbara Alberts: Still want to know more about interning at Salesforce? Check out the rest of the Futureforce website or follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Thanks for listening. /episode/index/show/futureforce/id/10873863

The Salesforce Spotlight feat. Katherine 08/13/2019

The Salesforce Spotlight feat. Katherine Music by Robert Reid Hosted by Barbara Alberts --- Katherine Cass: I remember day one was full of smiles. There's pictures of me and my friends I met on that first day, and we're all still really close friends now, years later. It was like jumping, almost, into a sort of utopia. I know this is ... It sounds like I've drunk the Kool-Aid, but honestly, my previous internship before that had been pretty ... I don't want to say depressing, but a bit drab. The people weren't super happy all the time. Walking into Salesforce, before I was even talking about what work I was going to do, it was like this ... Walking into an utopia of bright light. I don't have to worry about running to get a snack, and everyone around me was smiling. I think that's pretty true, not just for your first day as an intern, but your first day full-time. Barbara Alberts: Curious about what it's like to be an intern at Salesforce? Welcome to the Salesforce Spotlight, the podcast series that highlights the extraordinary stories of Salesforce employees and Futureforce interns. I'm Barbara Alberts, and on this episode of the Salesforce Spotlight, I chat with Release Manager Katherine Cass about how a chance encounter at Grace Hopper led to her Futureforce internship. Tune in for more, and happy listening. Barbara Alberts: On the podcast with me today is Release Manager Katherine Cass. She was a former Futureforce intern, and now has kind of found her way into Salesforce as a full time employee. Katherine, thank you so much for joining. Katherine Cass: Yeah, of course. Barbara Alberts: I just want to start off first by asking: How did you find Salesforce? Katherine Cass: Salesforce was kind of an interesting journey, I found, mostly through Grace Hopper. I wasn't exactly looking for Salesforce. I found it because a recruiter had reached out to me. My resume had gone into the pool of resumes at Grace Hopper, and someone found it, and then that recruiter that found it got it to a team that happened to be the Release Management team at Salesforce, and hat's kinda how I ended up here. Barbara Alberts: Right. Katherine Cass: Yeah. Barbara Alberts: Salesforce really deals heavily in the B2B space, so sometimes it's a little bit unknown to people who aren't necessarily in that realm. What did you know about Salesforce when you applied? Katherine Cass: When I applied, I had done a bit of research once the ... The way it worked out was a recruiter had reached out to me, and then when I was interested in moving forward with application, I did a bit of research on my own, and then did a more formal application process. All of that, I've got to say, I had to look for online. I went to school in the middle of Cleveland, and I grew up in a very rural area in New York. The idea of tech wasn't really big on my mind. So, it was a lot of personal research. What I did find out about Salesforce was that it was a kind of nebulous B2B software company, and I didn't know what that meant. Honestly, I didn't know what that meant until I had been working here for a couple of weeks. But yeah, that's it. Barbara Alberts: Yeah. Can you walk me through a little bit about your Grace Hopper experience? Katherine Cass: Yeah, I've been ... My first time attending Grace Hopper was, I think, back in 2015. I had seen a stray post Facebook calling all girls interested in tech to come and attend this conference. It was going to be all-expenses-paid. This was organized by a fantastic woman named Stephanie [Hippo 00:00:03:10]. She was a year above me in college, she organized this trip. I had clicked on that Facebook link in a group. I was a freshman in college at the time. I had no idea what coding was, and by the time I attended, I had a couple months of coding under my belt. I was more interested, but that was my path to Grace Hopper the first time. Once I got there I immediately fell in love, and I've been going every year since. Barbara Alberts: Yeah, and at that Grace Hopper ... Or at that particular Grace Hopper conference, one of the speakers was from Salesforce. Can you just tell me about that interaction that you had with her after? Not to spoil it, but ... And just how that played into your eventual internship? Katherine Cass: Yeah. I attended attended a talk. The Salesforce employee, her name is Kate Gentry. I believe she's a director now on the release management team. She had given a fabulous talk about release management, and drones were involved. There were a bunch of really great metaphors, that was good for me as an undergrad student, not understanding, first, what Salesforce was, second, what tech was, and third, what release management was. So, having her ... Going to her talk at Grace Hopper gave me a lot of insight into what the role was, what Salesforce was, and then what kind of people worked at Salesforce. Katherine Cass: She was super kind, and then when I met her at the booth later for an informal interview, again, I was just like super kind. I knew that not only was it going to be a place I would be interning, it's a place where I would be mentored. Barbara Alberts: Yeah, absolutely. A recruiter reached out to you, and you applied to the position. Can you just tell me a little bit about that recruitment experience? Katherine Cass: Honestly, it was kind of a blur. I had applied to a lot of companies at that stage, and a lot got back to me. Even in my mind at all kind of blurs together. Barbara Alberts: Right. Katherine Cass: A couple of things that stood out about my application to Salesforce, and especially the recruitment process, was interviewing with my team before we got to the accepted offer stage. Something that was top of my mind was: I wanted a better internship experience than my previous one that was at a telecom company, and so I wanted to be sure that I was going to a good team with good people. The way Salesforce did that is they set up repeat calls with my future team members, my future manager, a previous intern, and I was able to talk to them as a person on the phone. That was like a cool, interesting thing I did outside of the recruitment process. Barbara Alberts: Yeah, absolutely. You're able to kind of get ... You were able to build that rapport and build that familiarity before you hop in day one and have to start feeling your way around, right? Katherine Cass: Yeah. Barbara Alberts: You go through the interview process, you accepted the offer. Would you tell me a little about what day one was like for you, in terms of just orienting yourself and really getting familiar with the space that you were in? Katherine Cass: Well, it was ... I remember day one was full of smiles. There's pictures of me and my friends I met on that first day, and we're all still really close friends now, years later. It was like jumping, almost, into a sort of utopia, and I know that this sounds like I've drunk the Kool-Aid, but honestly, my previous internship before that had been pretty ... I don't want to say depressing, but a bit drab. The clothes we had to wear were uncomfortable. The people weren't super happy all the time, and the offices we worked in weren't that great of an experience. Barbara Alberts: Right. Katherine Cass: So, walking into Salesforce before I was even talking about what work I was going to do, it was like this ... Walking into an utopia of bright lights. I don't have to worry about running to get a snack, and everyone around me was smiling, and I think that's pretty true, not just for your first day as an intern, but your first day full-time. Barbara Alberts: Yeah. You definitely noticed the culture and just ... Completely different from what you had previously experienced. Yeah. Can you walk me through the projects that you were working on as an intern, and what you were doing with your team? Katherine Cass: Yeah, my role was a release manager intern. I actually did kind of the same duties that a full-time release manager does at Salesforce, which made it really easy to transition into a full-time release manager role. Barbara Alberts: Right. Katherine Cass: Half of my time was spent on doing that. Release management, that's making sure that code is in a good state to be released to production, and then after you release it to production, it remains healthy. If things hit the fan, then you're the one that gets called, and you need to be able to lead people out of that mess. That's what I was being trained on, my entire internship by a phenomenal team. I was running a weekly patch release of the entire Salesforce application that goes out to hundreds of thousands of customers and I was able to stamp my name on that. Katherine Cass: That was a really cool big part of my internship that I'm proud of. Another side project I was doing on the internship, when I wasn't doing release management, was working on a software engineering project. I am a computer science major, even though that's not what I do now, that is something that I wanted to keep my feet wet with as an intern. That project, it started by picking something off of the backlog of the tools team, but after I'd been there a couple of weeks, I did not want to work on that. I'm super stubborn, and I think all my managers up to this point are familiar with it, but if I don't want to work on something, I'm going to find something that I can add value by working on it. Barbara Alberts: Right. Katherine Cass: Instead of working on the project originally assigned to me, I proposed a new project, which at the time, it was a console to manage emergency releases for the release manager. I made a proof of concept, and eventually, the tools team, which was already on the track to create a release console, picked it up as a bigger project. By the time I had returned, I saw that it was already rolling as a real project. That was another high-impact thing I did as a intern. Barbara Alberts: Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's so cool to be able to come back after your internship, and see that what you've been working on in the project that you proposed is being used by people, and it's helping people do their jobs better. Yeah, that sounds really cool. You mentioned a little bit earlier, mentorship and that you had wanted to go and work at a place where you'd be able to be mentored. What kind of guidance did you receive from your team while you were an intern at Salesforce? Katherine Cass: A big thing was project management and that, I think, is true across the board. You don't ... You're not taught that at school. That's why people go and get internships. As you learn about scope, you learn about time constraints. You learn about resources, and, "How do you push all of those together in the right ratios to have an end result?" That was a lot of the mentorship I got by my team. Another big thing was just ... I almost want to call it, "How to be an adult." How do you operate in a large company where you're talking to a bunch of different people with many different personalities, and you want to make sure they're understood and they're respected? Barbara Alberts: Right. Katherine Cass: Especially in times when there is a bug in production, and you need things wrapped up quickly. You might not be able to be super nice. As a college student, I was always ... I sugarcoated everything. Barbara Alberts: Yeah. Katherine Cass: I didn't want to make anyone upset, but sometimes you have to be direct, and that was another skill I learned from my internship. Barbara Alberts: Yeah. When you were interning, did you feel like you were not just an intern? I knew you had projects, you had people who you were working with, things like that. I know sometimes with internships it might just be, "Oh, here's the work that somebody else doesn't really want to do," or, "Here's something that will keep you busy, and maybe out of our hair." Here at Salesforce, did you feel like that was the case, or did you feel like you were really a part of the team that you were working with, and really having the ability to impact people? Katherine Cass: Yeah, I think a good way to answer that is just by pointing out the contrast between my previous internship experience and Salesforce. In my previous internship, I'd walked into kind of this drab company, gray walls, uncomfortable clothes, and I sat down every day for five days a week, for the entire summer. I was working on a project that I had felt was just, "Oh, here's something for the intern to work on.". Barbara Alberts: Right. Katherine Cass: I was given someone to talk to when I had issues, but beyond that I didn't see the impact of my project. I didn't get to talk to other people at the company through that project. On the complete other side of the spectrum, was Salesforce. When I walked in, I saw ... My manager sat me down. He told me, "By the end of your internship, you're going to be running releases, you're going to be doing the work of a full time engineer or program manager," and that was true. Again, that's why I had so many conversations during the recruitment process with the team. I didn't want to have my same experience at my previous internship, and Salesforce far exceeded my expectations on that. Barbara Alberts: I mean, you had mentioned that you were applying to other places to intern too, besides Salesforce, but why did you decide that you wanted to stay with Salesforce? Maybe, instead of exploring another opportunity or another big tech company here; why was Salesforce the one that you decided to start your career in? Katherine Cass: Yeah, there's several reasons. One thing I was wrestling with, especially as a college students, do I try a start-up or do I try a big company? The biggest thing for me, was, I wanted mentorship. I wanted training, and Salesforce provided that to me. It provided that to me as I was an intern, so I didn't even have to wait until I was full-time to go to these classes, and I knew that that was going to be there for the first five or 10 years of your career. Super important, and I wanted to be at a company that I know cared about me, and cared about my career success. That was made evident by my team and my manager, so that's why I chose Salesforce. Barbara Alberts: Yeah, absolutely. How did interning with Salesforce grow your skills both career-wise and also just technically? Katherine Cass: Career-wise? It was almost evident immediately when I returned to school, because I was a ... I did leadership in a lot of clubs at school. Before the internship, it was kind of crazy and chaotic. After the internship, I knew how to run the meetings. I knew how to keep everyone on time. I knew how to manage expectations and emotions. That was kind of the biggest plus to my career was giving me that basic tool-set to lead meetings and lead people in projects. From a technical standpoint, understanding how all of these things fit together that you're taught as an undergrad, and how that blends with the technology out. For example, we've got our AWS public cloud transition, and that's something that I wouldn't be able to put into words as an undergrad, but through my experience at Salesforce, I know how SAAS companies run now. Barbara Alberts: Can you kind of walk me through what your day to day looks like? If you have a set day-to-day, or things are kind of all over the place now that you're a full time employee here at Salesforce? Katherine Cass: I want to say things are all over the place, but I remember that answer drove me insane when I was an intern. I was like, "What do you do?" I want to point out there are days that you're firefighting, and there's days that you're not firefighting. Firefighting, that's when you're on-call. If something comes up, you need to deal with it. That, I can talk for an hour on how that goes. I want to mostly concentrate on what happens when I'm not firefighting. A lot of that is, again, working on leadership of projects and defining path and vision. I work at Einstein Platform, a big thing we're working on right now is to get more of a CI/CD pipeline. So, making sure that you can check something in and know that there's going to be a robust framework that's gonna take it from your laptop to production. Working on a project like that, you need to talk with a lot of people, you need to figure out what the obstacles are, and you need to put together a lot of presentations, and basically drive alignment through an organization of 200 people. That's what my day usually is, when I'm not doing firefighting, I'm doing more longterm vision work. Barbara Alberts: Do you have an intern on your team right now? Katherine Cass: Yeah. Yes, his name is Josh. Barbara Alberts: Just in terms of building those connections within Salesforce, how did being an intern help you grow your network, and in the same space, how do you think you're helping your intern or any other interns progressing throughout their career as well? Katherine Cass: The things you get when you're an intern, you get the intern card, and that goes away when you're full-time. But when you're an intern you can pretty much cold call or cold email anyone at any level in the company, and there's a high likelihood they're going to answer you because they see you as ... As their child that they can grow and mentor. That goes away when you're full-time, a little bit. Taking advantage of that during your internship is super important, because those relationships you build as an intern are going to be very important when you're full-time or when you're trying to negotiate your final offer, that those are good people to know and to feel comfortable talking to. Barbara Alberts: Absolutely. Katherine Cass: And then as far as helping our current intern and our past interns, I see this family of interns who have become Futureforce full-time employees, and we all are helping ... It's kind of like, you know, you've got your grandparents and your grandchildren. Barbara Alberts: Right, right. Katherine Cass: My internship grandparents did so much for me, and we ... I'm not the only one who's always trying to mentor new interns too. You don't have to worry about, "I can't find anyone else who's been through this internship." There's plenty of people and they know what advice to give. Barbara Alberts: Do you have a personal experience yourself of reaching out to someone during your internship and them being very receptive? Katherine Cass: Yeah. My SVP at the time, Craig Jennings, he ... I walked up to him with my co-intern at the time, Brian Powell. We were like, "Hi, we're the interns. Nice to meet you." It was just like a couple of weeks in. I remember him saying, "Oh, I meant to talk to you guys weeks ago. I just ..." They get so busy, their schedules are packed. We were just talking and he was like, "Well, I've always wanted to restart this Mission Burrito Hop with the interns." He ended up funding, just because we had gone and talked to him ... At the end of the meeting, he would take us and a couple other interns out every Friday to the Mission to try a new burrito place. Barbara Alberts: Wow. Katherine Cass: And that was just like, that's my favorite example. Reach out to someone. You never know what the answer is going to be, and you might learn something really cool. In this case I learned about the best taquerias in the mission. Barbara Alberts: Yeah, and that's kind of a contentious topic too. Everyone has their opinions, but yeah. Oh my goodness. You never know, you might get some free food? Katherine Cass: Yeah, yeah. It's at, very least, what we look for. Barbara Alberts: Yeah. Just looking at your experience in having gone through the internship program, and also making that transition into a full-time employee, what are some tips and tricks, pieces of advice, things like that, that you would give to both perspective interns; people who are looking to try to get into Salesforce, and also people who are looking to kind of make that transition or hoping to make that... /episode/index/show/futureforce/id/10873855

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