Last week, John Mulaney looked out at a crowd of Salesforce corporate employees and told them they were “imminently replaceable.”
“You look like a group that looked at the CVS self-checkout and thought, ‘This is the future,’” the comedian said. “If AI is really smarter than us and telling us that (humans) should die, then I think we should die. A lot of you feel imminently replaceable.”
Among its Eccentric CEOGiven its militant-sounding name and the fact that most people have a hard time understanding what exactly the tech company does, Salesforce is an easy target. (It’s a cloud-based customer relations platform powered by artificial intelligence.) But whoever hired Mulaney to perform at Dreamforce, the company’s annual convention in San Francisco, probably didn’t think the former Saturday Night Live writer would say that to their face.
But roasting employees is exactly what Mulaney did, on a set that had his audience “groaning,” as the San Francisco Standard reported. reportedMulaney mocked corporate speak — “the fact that there are 45,000 ‘pioneers’ here couldn’t devalue the title any more” — and stereotypes of tech bros: “Can AI sit there in a fleece vest? Can AI not go to events and spend all day at a bar?” He also referenced his son, who is almost three, saying: “We’re just two guys hitting wiffle balls badly and yelling ‘good job’ at each other. It’s like the same energy here at Dreamforce.”
The comedian’s appearance quickly became popular on social media, with users praising his brutal honesty. “We should bully tech nerds a lot more often,” said one X user. wroteSoftware developer and technology commentator Dare Obasanjo tweeted“John Mulaney at Dreamforce is what I feel every time I log on to LinkedIn.”
Last year, comedian Seth Meyers speak At Dreamforce, the company was also mocked for using words like “pioneer,” “roadmap,” and “architect.”
“I saw the word ‘architect’ used as a verb. I don’t even think architects use the word ‘architect’ as a verb,” Meyers joked. “If you were at a party and you asked, ‘What do you do?’ and someone said, ‘I’m an architect,’ you’d think, ‘No, that’s not what you do! ’”
Companies often hire working comedians to entertain employees at corporate events. These jobs tend to pay better than comedy clubs, where raunchy material is the norm — “ten to twenty times more,” says Jason Douglas, founder of the Comedian Company, a corporate events booking agency (Salesforce is a client, along with Facebook, Google and General Motors). “There are real and significant differences in tax brackets.” But working comedians have to be more careful with their jokes than their famous counterparts if they don’t want to cut themselves off from the revenue stream.
“A very rich comedian can do whatever they want,” Douglas said. “When you hire a celebrity, you have to take what they’re going to give you. But a comedian who does corporate events all the time really knows how to read the room and what its parameters are.”
Douglas’s advice to artists on not causing a stir: “I tell them to act like they actually work for the company. Think about the jokes they’re making. Would they get you fired if you worked there?”
When Douglas speaks at Salesforce events, he often starts with a tried-and-true joke that references a company quirk without going straight for the jugular. “The Salesforce building in San Francisco is the tallest building in the city, but it’s still the tallest building in the city.” sinking “Every year, the ground gets buried a few inches,” he said. “I always start with something about that, and it gets laughs, it breaks the ice, like, ‘Oh, this guy knows about us.’”
Simon Mandel, a magician and comedian who has appeared at events hosted by Google, Harvard and Goldman Sachs, said he always tries to communicate with his bookers ahead of time to make sure he knows what “tone” they want to strike and whether he should avoid certain uncomfortable topics. “I once performed at a New Year’s Eve party where the audience knew half of them were going to be fired after the show,” he said. “No one told me.”
Mandel said his work tends to be “wholesome,” more suitable for all audiences, which goes down better with bosses. “(When I perform), I always hear that last year’s comedian annoyed half the audience,” he said.
Gianna Gaudini, a San Francisco event planner who used to host events for Google, AirTable and Amazon Web Services, said it’s important to inform comedians about event specifics and include rules in legal contracts. “Off-the-cuff jokes can touch on sensitive company or industry topics, so include clauses in your contract outlining topics that are off-limits and could be offensive to certain groups,” she said.
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After 25 years of experience in corporate comedy, Greg Schwem believes audiences want to laugh at themselves — to a certain extent. “I think they find it therapeutic,” he said. “A lot of times when comedians get on stage, they say things that audiences wish they could say.”
More than a decade ago, Schwem spoke at a McDonald’s corporate meeting. The fast-food chain had just spent millions of dollars on advertising to launch a new breakfast sandwich that flopped. “[The hiring managers]told me a couple of jokes about the sandwich were OK, but not to push it,” Schwem recalled. “They didn’t want me to talk for 10 minutes. I think it was their way of saying, ‘We’d rather you talk about something else. ’ In the end I didn’t do anything with the sandwich.”
Schwem doesn’t think Mulaney has “crossed the line” with his performance, but said he has learned there is a difference between “having fun with the audience and putting them down.”
“I have to remember that no matter how dumb a company seems to me privately or how much I don’t understand what they do, this is about people’s livelihoods and how they support their families,” Schwem said. “So it’s not my job to go on stage and say, ‘What the heck is this and why are you spending so much time on it? ’ I want the audience to walk away from the event saying, ‘This is a really cool place to work because they hired that guy. ’”
Mulaney commented A few days later, on his Dreamforce set, during a performance at the Golden Gate Theatre in San Francisco. “They gave me so much money,” said Mulaney, who just welcomed his second child with actress Olivia Munn. “The whole time I was there, I was thinking about all the money they were giving me, and that made me so happy.” He did not specify how much money.
While Douglas can’t speak for Salesforce, he said top brass probably don’t mind getting hammered. (Salesforce representatives did not respond to a request for comment.)
“When a company hires a celebrity, all they want to do is post those pictures after the show on Instagram,” he said. “They love the monologue, but the important thing is to meet a celebrity.”