Interview with Ryan Choi, Engineer #7 at Salesforce

This interview is part of a series revealing the stories of early employees from the most successful tech companies of the past few years. You’ll walk away having learned about what these individuals experienced, what they wish they knew, and the advice they’d give to others joining high-growth startups. Key takeaways are at the top and you can find the full interview below.

This interview is with Ryan Choi, the seventh engineer at Salesforce. Today, Ryan is a Director at Y Combinator, leading the Work at a Startup program, which runs a job board of over 6,000 jobs at top YC startups. YC also runs regular events to help job seekers learn about startups, improve their resume & interview skills and meet great founders.

Key Takeaways

• Shipping faster, simple, and right the first time at Salesforce – “And more than just technology, I learned how to build products. Parker Harris’ (Co-founder and CTO of Salesforce) mantra was “Fast, simple, right the first time.” It was as much a philosophy about building products as it was about tech. Early at salesforce, we’d have really great debates on what the “simplest” thing we could build was: quickly, for the customer, and always iterating based on customer feedback. In many ways, the early team at Salesforce were building MVPs before MVPs were even a thing.”
• The job market in 2000 vs. today – “It’s a pretty stark difference from today, where founders are much smarter about building companies, raising money, and managing their capital. There are so many great ideas being funded, there’s a continuous demand for really great technical talent. A good software engineer has tons of options, even in this down market. On YC’s hiring platform Work at a Startup, there are over 6,000 open roles alone." 
• Building Salesforce for scale from day one – “We all knew that one sloppy SQL query could take down the whole app for the entire system, and that was unacceptable for our customers. Salesforce was one of the first companies to design with multi-tenancy first, meaning we shared a single database with multiple customers. Even when we had just 100 customers, we expected our system to scale to tens of thousands of customers sharing a single database.”
• On the product Ryan was most proud of helping build – “I was one of the first engineers on the Salesforce API. It was a pretty complex project, and one you’d typically give to a senior engineer. But at a startup, you don’t always have that luxury, so they gave it to me, just two years out of college. And with light mentorship, we build something that has really become a cornerstone of the platform – and really, of the company.”
• Lessons in transitioning from engineer to product manager – “People always ask me what it’s like to be a Product Manager. I tell them they have to be comfortable having 100% of the decision making and accountability, but zero authority and say in how things get done. If this terrifies them, I tell them they shouldn’t be a PM.”
• Y Combinator’s Work at a Startup program – “The platform is the best way to connect directly with YC founders to learn about their companies. But it’s so much more: YC runs events to help job seekers improve their resume and interview skills, we host expos and tech talks to meet 1-1 with founders, and we’re building a community of people who love startups – and might want to start one someday. YC has grown so much in 15 years, and we’re looking to do more for people in our extended network, including future YC employees and founders.”

What it was like to join Salesforce during the dotcom days

Getting to work at a startup like Salesforce in 2000 was an amazing and formative experience. Even though the team was only 7 people, I got to learn best practices from some of the best engineers in the industry. And everyone on the team was full-stack from the start: I remember building Javascript UIs and tuning PL/SQL queries in the same day. Being at a startup prepared me to be an army-of-one when it came to building apps and solving any problem, and I hear the same from early engineers all the time. 

And more than just technology, I learned how to build products. Parker Harris’ (Co-founder and CTO of Salesforce) mantra was “Fast, simple, right the first time.” It was as much a philosophy about building products as it was about tech. Early at salesforce, we’d have really great debates on what the “simplest” thing we could build was: quickly, for the customer, and always iterating based on customer feedback. In many ways, the early team at Salesforce were building MVPs before MVPs were even a thing.

One thing we absolutely agreed on was that “right” wasn’t waterfall software and 9 month development cycles. That was what made our competition like Oracle and Siebel slow and unable to compete. One of the biggest things I learned at Salesforce: startups compete by being faster and more agile than larger competitors, and can play that to their advantage over and over again.

You know, some people think that startups don’t know what they’re doing, and that’s such a naive view of startups. Especially in 2022. At YC, we have founders who formerly built and ran engineering teams at Dropbox and Facebook, and others that scaled $1B businesses. I meet with founders regularly, and many are as tenacious and formidable as Marc (Benioff) and Parker. Working with our founders would help you learn faster, and maybe even set you up to start your own startup someday. 

The job market in 2000 vs. today

When I graduated in 2000, it was the peak of the first dot-com bubble. Tons of money was being poured into startups like Webvan and Pets.com, and people were moving to the Bay Area from all over the US for these new internet jobs. And when the market crashed a couple years later, the market pulled back and a lot of those people had to move back to where they came from. 

It’s a pretty stark difference from today, where founders are much smarter about building companies, raising money, and managing their capital. There are so many great ideas being funded, there’s a continuous demand for really great technical talent. A good software engineer has tons of options, even in this down market. On YC’s hiring platform Work at a Startup, there are over 6,000 open roles alone. 

From where we sit at YC, we’re fortunate to have over 500 startups raise a strong round each year. There’s a constant influx of great jobs being brought into the market. Add that to the tens of thousands of employees across Dropbox, Airbnb, Stripe and Instacart, and it’s a real testament to how different things are from 20 years ago, and to the power of YC more broadly.  

Building Salesforce for scale from day one

Because a lot of early Salesforce employees came from Oracle, we had a lot of experience building for scale. The “fast” part of the mantra made sure we constantly had performance top of mind. Our early product always maintained millisecond response times, and we monitored and query-tuned every aspect of our system. We all knew that one sloppy SQL query could take down the whole app for the entire system, and that was unacceptable for our customers. 

Salesforce was one of the first companies to design with multi-tenancy first, meaning we shared a single database with multiple customers. Even when we had just 100 customers, we expected our system to scale to tens of thousands of customers sharing a single database. Nowadays, modern tech stacks are either service-oriented or sharded in some other fashion, but back then multi-tenancy was a new thing and Salesforce pioneered a lot of it. From day one, our ambition was to host tens of thousands of companies on a single database, and that hadn’t really been done before.

The product Ryan was most proud of building

I was one of the first engineers on the Salesforce API. It was a pretty complex project, and one you’d typically give to a senior engineer. But at a startup, you don’t always have that luxury, so they gave it to me, just two years out of college. And with light mentorship, we build something that has really become a cornerstone of the platform – and really, of the company.

It was a great experience for me, too. That was my first time talking to customers, understanding requirements and effectively being the PM. I got to better understand how people wanted their data to flow in and out of our system and how important salesforce was for running their business. As a first job out of college, being at a startup gave me more exposure to all the workings of a business than I’ve really ever experienced at a larger company. 

A little later on, we started seeing early signs of an ecosystem: customers were building solutions and then reselling them to other customers. That was fascinating to me. I thought, “You're going to build an application on top of our application and then sell it? That made me realize how important it was to own the platform, and not just be a player in somebody else’s platform.” A few years later, we launched the AppExchange, and that’s how I really learned about marketplaces, partnerships, and incentive models. Again, all stuff it would take me years as an engineer to learn about at a big company. 

Lessons in transitioning from engineer to product manager

People always ask me what it’s like to be a Product Manager. I tell them they have to be comfortable having 100% of the decision making and accountability, but zero authority and say in how things get done. If this terrifies them, I tell them they shouldn’t be a PM.

My first PM job was at Lyft, where I got to run Platform and Identity. There were a lot of similarities to my days at Salesforce: there were only ten PMs at the time (and nearly six hundred engineers), and I got to learn from people who were experts in analytics, experimentation, storytelling and so much more. Being at a later stage startup had tons of really bright people to learn from, and a collaborative environment for us to knowledge share and get things done. 

Similar to Salesforce, I definitely felt like I was given more responsibility than I deserved. My final task was to lead the product side of our IPO, and I had to become a subject matter expert in accounting and revenue recognition from a standstill. That’s where I learned the power of tapping into motivations for alignment. Everyone had a stake in helping the company go public. (And conversely, nobody wanted to be the one holding up the entire company!) 

In reflecting on my time at Lyft, I realize the value of having a Product-focused CEO. Logan (Lyft’s CEO) was a product-minded leader, and always had the customer’s best interest in mind. That resonates with my time at YC, where our motto is ‘Build something people want.’ YC founders take this to heart, and that’s how product-driven YC companies like Airbnb, Stripe and Doordash took off. In many of our startups, there’s almost a mission-like drive to help customers succeed, and sometimes it has a huge payoff for everyone involved. 

Y Combinator’s Work at a Startup program

I’m really lucky to have landed at YC, and to be building YC’s hiring platform Work at a Startup. As a product manager and former engineer myself, I’m trying to build a job platform that my own friends and colleagues would use. And with over 6,000 open roles across YC startups, we’re in a great spot to be helping drive employment and learning opportunities. 

The platform is the best way to connect directly with YC founders to learn about their companies. But it’s so much more: YC runs events to help job seekers improve their resume and interview skills, we host expos and tech talks to meet 1-1 with founders, and we’re building a community of people who love startups – and might want to start one someday. YC has grown so much in 15 years, and we’re looking to do more for people in our extended network, including future YC employees and founders.

Similar to Lyft, my time at YC has been a steep learning curve – there’s so much to stay on top of regarding the job market, new industries, and more. And knowing that we’re helping people find great startups to accelerate their career – and maybe find the next Coinbase, Instacart or Dropbox – is a product and mission I’m excited to tuck into every day. 

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