7 Years at Salesforce: The Life of a Technical Architect in Morocco

To find out what it’s like to work at Salesforce Morocco, we spoke to Senior Technical Architect, Mustapha El Hassak. Below, he shares his career journey and why he wouldn’t want to work anywhere else.

I joined Salesforce as a Senior Technical Consultant over seven years ago. My journey to my current role as Senior Technical Architect in Morocco has been fulfilling. People often ask what I love so much about working at Salesforce, and I’m delighted to be able to share all the reasons for this blog.

Working at Salesforce Morocco means working in a community, a family. It’s a technical and challenging role, where I learn new things every day. But there’s more to it than just a satisfying job and excellent Salesforce employee benefits. Let me explain all about it.

Salesforce career development: from consultant to technical architect

Whatever your role at Salesforce, you’ll find great learning paths. For example, I was the first employee in Morocco to achieve the certified technical architect path, a huge achievement for me during the pandemic.

And ‘technical’ people don’t just have to stick to ‘technical’ learning. We’re also able to learn soft skills in world-class learning programs like:

• 7 Habits of Effective People
• Fearless Feedback
• Emotional Intelligence
• Presentation Skills

This helps us become better professionals in the future, not only from a technical perspective but also from a management/leadership perspective.

There are coaching programmes for architectural domains like identity management and data management, where you present to senior architects for judging and feedback. Learning from this interaction with experts is so intuitive and much easier than learning from books and doing things on your own. You don’t just have to hope you’re getting it right, you’re getting live feedback.

Why I love Salesforce employee benefits

Well, where to start?

There are so many valuable benefits but I have to mention parental leave first. The official amount of parental leave in Morocco is three days for fathers and 14 weeks for mothers. When I had my first child I was working at another company, so I only got three days off after my wife gave birth. Fast forward to my second born in 2019, and I was able to take 12 weeks off as the secondary caregiver. Almost as much time as most mothers in Morocco (not working at Salesforce) get! Salesforce gives primary caregivers an amazing 26 weeks of parental leave.

Similarly incredible is Salesforce’s sick pay. I suffered a knee injury in 2018 that meant I needed 30 days off work for surgery and recovery time. The general process in Morocco for sick pay is that employees get four paid sick days per year, and longer sickness needs to be covered by insurance. Even then, you have to provide proof of your illness/injury. When I told my managers at Salesforce about my injury, their immediate reaction was that I take care of myself. And I got paid for the full 30 days I had off, and without the worry of it affecting my bonus.

As I’ve already said, being a Salesforce Senior Technical Architect in Morocco is a rewarding yet challenging role. Salesforce offers a number of wellness benefits so we make taking care of our health, and the wellness of our families, a priority. It’s ingrained in the company culture.

The growth of Salesforce Morocco

I’ve seen incredible growth at Salesforce Morocco, even from the start of the pandemic. We have tripled our workforce in the last two years, and there’s a real need for Salesforce here.

Morocco only really started embracing the cloud over the last five to ten years. But cloud computing is in everybody’s future, we’ll see more and more companies embracing it. Salesforce is always working on new technologies, and when more companies in Morocco see the need, we’ll be perfectly positioned to help them utilise this technology.

Why I like working as a Salesforce technical architect

I mentioned at the start that working at Salesforce is like working in a community, a family. That’s what Ohana is all about and what makes Salesforce the best place to work. It’s a fantastic support system for the whole Salesforce ecosystem, no matter where you’re from or what level you’re at.

For example, I was a presenter at the North Africa Dreamin conference and met Houssam Saoudy (the first Salesforce MVP in Africa and co-organiser of Salesforce Casablanca Developer Group). He gave me the opportunity to visit the university where I studied and present a session about Machine Learning and Deep learning in the Salesforce Platform. The sense of achievement I felt doing that was unbelievable!

Even in the current ‘new world’, Salesforce technology helps keep everyone connected, even if they don’t see each other. And of course, with so many employees starting during the pandemic, many have never even met! Slack, with its different channels and apps, is a great way to connect.

One Slack app, Donuts, is something I like to use. It picks two people randomly from the channel and sets up a 15-minute meeting from their calendars. I’ve been using this for a few months now and I’ve got to talk with five people I’ve never met yet!

Working at Salesforce Morocco is genuinely the best career choice I’ve ever made. I can’t wait to continue as the business here thrives and grows.