Exclusive: Slack CTO Cal Henderson is out and will be replaced by Salesforce cofounder Parker Harris
The cofounder and CTO of Slack is leaving the company, Fortune has learned, the latest in a string of leadership changes that puts executives from parent company Salesforce in near total control of the top ranks of its workplace chat subsidiary.
Cal Henderson, Slackโs chief technology officer and sole remaining cofounder, is stepping down from the role effective immediately, but will remain at the company until March 1, according to a memo viewed by Fortune. He will be replaced by Salesforce cofounder and CTO Parker Harris, who will shift his focus to the Slack business. It was not immediately clear who will replace Harris as the Salesforce CTO.
The change, which is being announced internally to employees on Friday morning, comes just three months after Slack CEO Lidiane Jones stepped down less than one year into the job, and 13 months after Slackโs founding CEO, Stewart Butterfield, announced that he was leaving the company.
โI think thereโs an average amount of time that founders stay after an acquisition, and this is way longer than that,โ a Salesforce spokesperson told Fortune in regards to Hendersonโs departure. โThis was not a surprise. This was something thatโs been talked about for quite some time.โ
Salesforce acquired Slack in 2021 for $27.7 billion. But the integration of the popular workplace chat app into Salesforce, one of the leading providers of cloud-based business software, has been marked by culture clashes and turnover.
โThe problem has been, thereโs no incorporation of the Slack culture into the Salesforce culture,โ Butterfield said in a Slack all-hands last January, according to an audio recording of the meeting obtained by Fortune. โAnd unless there is some element of that, then itโs not integration in any sense. Itโs just the elimination.โ
Last year, Salesforce abandoned Slackโs recently remodeled San Francisco headquarters and moved employees into its 61-story Salesforce Tower.
With Hendersonโs exit, Slack is officially devoid of all its cofounders, its senior leadership now composed of Salesforce executives aside from its chief product officer, Noah Weiss, whoโs been with Slack for eight years. Denise Dresser, a 12-year Salesforce veteran, took the reins as Slack CEO in November when Jones announced she was leaving to become CEO at dating app Bumble. Following this third CEO installment at Slack, Fortune exclusively reported three executives, including Neil Shah, who served as the workplace messaging serviceโs COO for the past eight years, left the company. The new Slack COO is also a Salesforce executive, Sarah Walker.
โItโs changing as a lot of the more tenured folks leave, but thereโs still a lot of long-term people that are rolling their eyes,โ a Slack employee who requested anonymity because they werenโt authorized to speak publicly told Fortune earlier this month. โEspecially considering execs have like a year shelf life here. A lot of jokes about what theyโre actually going to accomplish here. Lots of concerns around the pivot from product culture to sales culture, too.โ
Salesforce, which generated $25.6 billion in revenue in the nine months ended Oct. 31, does not break out Slack revenue. In 2021, the last full year for which Slack reported financials as a stand-alone company, it generated $900 million in annual revenue.
While Salesforceโs overall revenue growth rate has slowed in recent years, the company has boosted its operating profit margins, thanks in part to a focus on cost cutting, including reducing its office space and a round of layoffs in early 2023.
โWeโre one company, you know, weโve been one company for quite a few years now,โ the Salesforce spokesperson said. โWhen you think about the integration thatโs happened, particularly in the sales side, like, itโs actually embedded. So thatโs just kind of, I guess, the nature of how we kind of evolved, as one company.โ
Fridayโs leadership shake-up also comes after an apparent miscommunication in the C-suite, with Fortune reporting on a memo from Slack CTO Hendersonโs chief of staff that a strict hiring freeze has been implemented. A Salesforce spokesperson claimed this was a misstatement and that the company would continue to hire โstrategically.โ
โWe are not freezing hiring in any departments,โ the Salesforce spokesperson said.
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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com