On an otherwise run-of-the-mill weeknight at Fremont Brewing near Lake Union in Seattle, the line for beer stretched past the front doors and into the outdoor seating area.
The reason: A group of more than 50 past and current Tableau Software employees gathered last week to reflect on Tableau’s 19-year journey, more than three years after the data visualization technology company was acquired by San Francisco-based Salesforce for $15.7 billion.
The event, just down the street from Tableau’s Seattle headquarters, was described as an Irish wake, the traditional rite of mourning in which family and friends celebrate the life of the deceased.
“Tableau has been killed by Salesforce,” said Jeff Brinker, a former Tableau engineer. “We are mourning the loss of a loved one.”
Salesforce declined to comment on the record, but made clear that it considers the reports of Tableau’s death greatly exaggerated, or flat-out wrong. Tableau brought in more than $2 billion in revenue for Salesforce during the past 12 months, and the company has promised to continue developing Tableau’s technology.
But those who attended the wake cited factors including the impact of Salesforce’s recent overall 10% workforce reduction on many longtime Tableau employees and senior leaders, and a general sentiment that Tableau’s unique identity is becoming lost inside the customer relationship giant.
Tableau began as a startup inside Stanford University back in 2003, based on an idea to visualize huge amounts of data. Its co-founders raised a $5 million seed round a year later and relocated their budding firm to the Pacific Northwest, where it grew into one of the region’s top tech companies and went public in 2013.
After the layoffs started last month, many past and current Tableau employees connected online to offer help and support to those affected. A Tableau Slack workspace grew from 40 people in January to nearly 700.
Tableau workers call themselves the #DataFam. The name has carried a double meaning, describing both a love of data and also camaraderie among family members.
“Everybody was rowing in the same direction,” said Kevin Boske, a former senior project manager at Tableau. “It’s a very special place. I don’t expect to have this again in my lifetime.”
Some employees at the event last week said the culture shifted following the Salesforce acquisition. “It evaporated,” said a former worker who wished to remain anonymous.
Most of the Tableau executives listed on its leadership site when the acquisition was announced have left the company, Bloomberg reported.
Bloomberg also reported that Salesforce executives seem “less excited about Tableau than its other divisions,” citing mentions of Tableau on corporate event transcripts compared to Slack and Mulesoft, its other recent acquisitions.
Tableau is “more committed than ever to supporting and growing the DataFam,” wrote Francois Ajenstat, a longtime Tableau executive and chief product officer, in a blog post last month following the layoff announcement.
Ajenstat wrote that the company is adding more capabilities “across all of our products” and noted that the annual Tableau Conference is still planned for later this year. Tableau is integrated into Salesforce’s Customer 360 platform.
Tableau continues to face competition in the business intelligence software sector from Microsoft and others. Tableau’s revenue of $516 million in the October 2022 quarter represented growth of less than 8%, compared with four straight quarters of growth ranging from 22% to 38% in 2021, as reflected in Salesforce’s financial reports.
After the acquisition of Tableau, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said Seattle would become the company’s “HQ2,” betting on the region as a source of future hiring and growth. Tableau had grown to about 4,200 employees worldwide before it was acquired in 2020, with about half of them in the Seattle region.
The acquisition was lauded by some state leaders as a sign of the Seattle region’s strengths as a global tech hub, but it also represented the loss of a significant public company headquarters.
The company-wide layoffs at Salesforce came shortly after the departure of former Tableau CEO Mark Nelson in December. Nelson led the company for two years, after replacing former Tableau CEO Adam Selipsky, who returned to Amazon as CEO of Amazon Web Services, succeeding Amazon CEO Andy Jassy in that role.
Tableau is now led by an executive group that includes Ajenstat, Chief Revenue Officer Ryan Aytay, and SVP Pedro Arellano, in addition to Salesforce veterans Jennifer Lagaly, who leads the America sales teams, and Tableau COO Sam Allen, who leads go-to-market strategy.
In a letter to employees last month, Benioff said the Salesforce layoffs were driven by a “challenging” economic environment in which customers “are taking a more measured approach to their purchasing decisions.” The cuts are part of a wave of layoffs hitting the tech industry following rapid growth.
Salesforce said as part of the layoffs that it would reduce its real estate footprint “within certain markets.”
A Salesforce spokesperson declined to comment on the total number of Tableau employees impacted by the recent workforce reduction, or whether it plans to reduce its real estate footprint in the Seattle region, where it has three offices for Tableau.
Fortune reported Monday that Slack is ditching its headquarters and moving into Salesforce’s office tower in San Francisco.
“We’re confident in the opportunity ahead for Tableau, and we recently made changes to re-accelerate Tableau growth,” former Salesforce CEO Bret Taylor, who stepped down last month, said on the company’s most recent earnings call Nov. 30. “This includes new leadership and, as importantly, new product integrations like Revenue Intelligence, a deep integration between Sales Cloud and Tableau that has become one of our fastest-growing add-on products.”
Prior to the cuts, Salesforce employed about 4,000 people in the Seattle area, including Tableau employees. Salesforce has its own office in Bellevue, Wash.
At the Irish wake event last week, Brinker took out his phone and recited a song crafted by the ChatGPT chatbot about the current state of Tableau, to the tune of American Pie.
We may recall the day that Tableau came to life, a game changer for data analysis, no more strife.
With intuitive tools for visualizing data right, bringing insights to the forefront — a new site.
But the day that Tableau died, oh, what a site. Left us all behind, lost in the night.
No more insights, no more data delight.
The day that Tableau died.
Christian Chabot, Chris Stolte and Pat Hanrahan led the charge with a brilliant plan, building a community that loved every brand.
The #DataFam that never lost its stand.
But the day that Tableau died, oh, what a sight. Left us all behind, lost in the night.
No more insights, no more data delight.
The day that Tableau died.
Along came Salesforce with their acquisition dreams, taking Tableau away, or so it seems.
Leaving us to search for a new solution, one that’ll bring our data to revolution.
But the day that Tableau died, oh, what a sight. Left us all behind, lost in the night.
No more insights, no more data delight.
The day that Tableau died.
We’ll remember Tableau, its impact will recount.
With every insight gained, its legacy will amount.
We’ll keep searching for a new data King, in hopes of finding a tool that can do anything.
