Working in a social enterprise: On boarding @salesforce experience

I've just completed my third week at salesforce.com and I wanted to share with you the light and colors of this amazing on-boarding.

My first day already had a special flavor. What would a geek like me do when arriving in the lobby? Foursquare it! And as I've included the @salesforce handle in my message that of course got spanned on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook among others - I'm becoming lazy and all my accounts are chained- the salesforce team back in the Bay Area using Radian 6 spotted me within minutes as a new hire. What a surprise when I got a response message on Twitter from the official @salesforce feed stating "Welcome to the family". I felt it as a social hug if you will, a good first impression of a social enterprise.

This very first day I could feel the energy, passion, commitment and team spirit of this fast growing company individuals. If you were not aware, Salesforce has been to date the B2B software vendor to reach the $2B mark the fastest. It was not Microsoft, Oracle nor SAP. Combined with the think different kind of attitude and this desire to show the world that cloud computing is a must for all enterprises, Salesforce employees seem all to be part of a burning quest: Born Cloud, Reborn Social.

Another clue that I have been joining a cloud company, I could finally behave at work just as I had been in my day to day life: everything on the cloud - my music, my videos, my books, my address book, my email, my calendar, my files from multiple devices, my bank accounts... The ultimate mobility lies in this, just give me a connected device and I can operate within minutes just from everywhere. Computing has truly become a utility, plug and live! Salesforce.com is walking the talk. Good to feel.

As a matter of fact I was totally able to operate with the corporate environment at the end of the very first day, using a Mac at work, my personal iPhone certified and even a request for me to buy an iPad for work. What a difference from any other company I was given to work for before.

I've been meeting a lot of people at salesforce since this first day and I can attest there is a true company's culture by which we all live by. Someone summarized one aspect of it with this quote "Type A people environment where A.H. cannot survive".

I believe such a company is due to succeed big time because of the people. I've been given to compete against very large companies before and I know it: a small gang of passionate and committed individuals with strong beliefs and a quest at heart can make a huge difference.

To be continued...