First of all, I know MLM gets a bad rap because it's a pyramid scheme, but the pyramids have stood for over 4,000 years, so checkmate atheists. And Herbalife continues to prove the skeptics wrong year after year after year, even losing short sellers like Bill Ackman lots of money. Because at the end of the day pyramid schemes work, but they only work if they do it right and provide value in the form of a cultlike community. Greek life on college campuses is a pyramid scheme, and it works because it provides community in the form of getting invited to parties. Herbalife is a pyramid scheme, and it works because you are part of a community of believers which is proper encouragement to lose weight.

Salesforce has exploded across the country, and at first I was so impressed I figured I should hitch my wagon to this shining star and get a job with a tech company that seems to be doing it right. But after doing some research, I realized these aren't coding jobs like working for Google or Facebook or Apple or Microsoft, these are "your own boss" jobs where you find your own clients and get ahead by taking tests and passing certifications. And I have no idea if MLM works with something like b2c web applications, however this is not what I signed up for when I thought I was looking at the next big tech company. And now Marc Benioff's whole philanthropic take with the 1-1-1 model of doing community service and promoting it so hard as part of his business' philosophy may be well intentioned, but that straight up confirms any suspicions I had about whether or not this was MLM applied to tech because feeling good about the company is pivotal also to other MLM models.

Now with coding it's a lot harder to bullshit your way into sales like it is for life coaching or fitness coaching, however I find it fascinating that the MLM model was applied to tech, and I definitely want to see if this continues to grow like wildfire across cities, or eventually tapers out as people who gain real coding experience just start their own independent consulting firms and strike it out on their own, because with Herbalife the only reason the leaders don't is that Herbalife provides the supplies, business templates, and celebrity endorsements like Cristiano Ronaldo. What Salesforce brings to the table is most of this I guess, but with tech that's a whole nother animal.

For the record, I want Salesforce to succeed and while Herbalife and Greek life didn't do it for me, I do respect how the pyramid scheme model does work in these case studies.