In Silicon Valley, that magical and mystical utopia where tech CEOs and entrepreneurs describe their companies as one big happy family, the biggest family man of them all has always been Marc Benioff. To the Salesforce Inc. chief executive officer, the cloud-based software enterprise company he co-founded isn't just a company but what he calls Ohana — a Hawaiian word meaning family and support system. Its massive annual Dreamforce event that takes over San Francisco isn't a conference but a family reunion. Even earnings calls and investor days can feel a little bit like Dad presiding over a family dinner. On Jan. 4, the company announced that it would lay off 10% of its workforce, or about 8,000 people. "The employees being affected aren't just colleagues. They're friends. They're family," Benioff wrote in a memo announcing the cuts. "Please reach out to them. Offer the compassion and love they and their families deserve and need now more than ever." The conflicting messages in Benioff's staff memo were jarring. If the people impacted really were family, wasn't it kind of awkward and heartless to put them out of a job? The answer is a resounding yes. And not just to retiring Ohana, but to all the family metaphors and tropes that Silicon Valley now relies on as shorthand for the culture it wants to project.
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