Stuck in a Spare Room, Running a Company

On a conference call the other day, Marc Benioff, the Salesforce chief executive and co-founder, made an insensitive remark. Describing how the company was meeting customer demand during the coronavirus crisis, he said, “We have a full Chinese menu of options for our customers.” The blowback was swift, with employees around the country reprimanding him via email.

“I am learning new levels of sensitivity,” Mr. Benioff said via FaceTime from his home office in San Francisco, where he is holed up amid the region’s shelter-in-place order.

Mr. Benioff apologized, but the gaffe wasn’t particularly surprising. Like most of his 50,000 employees, he is juggling professional demands and personal life from home.

Mr. Benioff, already a rampant networker, said the volume of inbound communication he is receiving surpasses anything he has experienced before. “It’s everything from working with our management team to planning the fiscal year,” he said. “I’m having to adjust what my priorities are.”

Also: His father-in-law is staying with him, and his mother comes over for dinner every night. To cope, Mr. Benioff, a Buddhist, has been meditating more.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/business/corner-office-coronavirus.html