Silicon Valley needs to get honest about its culture

In Silicon Valley, that magical and mystical utopia where tech CEOs and entrepreneurs describe their companies as one big happy family, the [Bloomberg]( Follow Us [Get the newsletter]( [8,000 Layoffs Don’t Exactly Scream Family Values]( — Beth Kowitt 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. Read the [whole thing](. [Russia Can’t Replace the Energy Market Putin Broke]( — Julian Lee [Adani Short Seller Has Opened a Pandora’s Box]( — Shuli Ren [The Colorado River Needs the Feds to Step In ASAP]( — Mark Gongloff [Republican Tax Proposals Aren’t as Bonkers as They Sound]( — Karl W. Smith [Economists Have Failed Middle-Class Americans]( — Eugene A. Ludwig and Philip Cornell [Why India’s Billionaires Banded Together for Adani]( — Andy Mukherjee [Trump’s Wall Settles Into a Strange, Costly Afterlife]( — Francis Wilkinson [Police That Ignore Federal Law Ignore Democracy]( — Noah Feldman [Johnson & Johnson’s Bankruptcy Didn’t Work]( — Matt Levine More From Bloomberg Opinion Here’s what we’ve been listening to this week. - [Crash Course: Donald Trump vs. the Republican Party]( with Timothy L. O’Brien (listen on [Apple]( and [Spotify]() - [Bloomberg Opinion With Vonnie Quinn: Tanks in Ukraine and China’s Reopening]( with James Stavridis, Justin Fox and Clara Ferreira Marques - [Why Ukraine needs the US more than ever]( with Bobby Ghosh and Andreas Kluth This is the Weekend Edition of Bloomberg Opinion Today, a roundup of the most popular stories Bloomberg Opinion published this week based on web readership. Like getting this newsletter? [Subscribe to Bloomberg.com]( for unlimited access to trusted, data-driven journalism and subscriber-only insights. Before it’s here, it’s on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals can’t find anywhere else. [Learn more](. You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Bloomberg Opinion Today newsletter. [Unsubscribe]( | [Bloomberg.com]( | [Contact Us]( [Ads Powered By Liveintent]( | [Ad Choices]( Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington, New York, NY, 10022