It represented just 5% of Salesforce’s $31.4 billion in annual sales, and the omnipresent messaging tool didn’t overlap much with Jones’s duties. The 43-year-old was a Boston-based executive vice president overseeing Salesforce’s experience cloud, commerce cloud, and marketing cloud products-all key pieces of Salesforce’s product offering to enterprise customers. For one, she didn’t work for Slack, the workplace productivity platform Salesforce acquired in 2021 for $27.7 billion. Jones was a somewhat unlikely contender for the role. But she worried she “wasn’t going to be picked.” “I was so emotionally invested because I was so excited,” she says.

Jones was blindsided by the news but immediately interested in the “dream job” that combined her love of consumer-focused design with enterprise technology.

More from Fortune: 5 side hustles where you may earn over $20,000 per year-all while working from home Looking to make extra cash? This CD has a 5.15% APY right now Buying a house? Here's how much to save This is how much money you need to earn annually to comfortably buy a $600,000 home Last fall, Lidiane Jones discovered that Slack founder and CEO Stewart Butterfield was leaving Salesforce-by learning that she was a candidate for his job.

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