Salesforce coding lessons for the 99%Finally, Apex tutorials for point-and-click admins! Written by a self-taught Google engineer.
Salesforce coding lessons for the 99%
Preface: this post is part of The Definitive Salesforce Careers Guide series.
Do you see yourself coding up until retirement?
For many of us, coding is the endgame. You’ll certainly make plenty of money and live a comfortable life doing so. Nothing wrong with that.
But for some of us, coding is merely a stepping stone. A stepping stone into the prime phases of our career where it’s difficult to imagine spending 40 hours a week behind a computer.
And that feeling is understandable. Think about the most influential people at your companies. They probably spend very little of their time coding, if any. Don’t get me wrong, they could have spent a majority of their lives coding, but in the current peak of their careers, they’re likely not coding at all.
So what’s next after development? I see four common paths.
Management
This is the most counter-intuitive path to me. I went into coding to work less with people, but as a manager, you primarily work with people. That said, this is the realistic path for most. Every company needs managers, and, you can officially take yourself out of the rat race of keeping up with technology hard skills. For many, our backgrounds and growing maturity will naturally lead us here.
Technical Architect
This is the pinnacle of the individual contributor ladder. It’s the path I hear most up-and-coming developers refer to as their endgame. Make no mistake, it’s the most challenging technical path and it requires you to be world class in a broad range of technical skills. On top of this, you will need to have the soft skills to influence teams without having a formal team of your own to supervise.
Start Your Own Company
Here, you do exactly what you want and forget about what anyone else might say. This is the only position where no one still tells you what to do. It’s perhaps the most fulfilling path of them all, but it’s also the riskiest by far. Few of us have what it takes to be successful here, but the ones who are will probably be the envy of us all.
Switch Careers
I hate to say but this is probably the path of least resistance. Forgo much of your experience, value, and earning potential, then find the next best thing to learn and master. This is not the ideal path to be on, but it’s the path many of us will be forced onto if we do not plan carefully. There’s nothing wrong choosing this path, it’s just a tough pill to swallow hitting the reset button on your career.
In Conclusion
This decision is a difficult and courageous one to make at any phase of your career.
I often wonder for myself what I’ll be doing down the line, and, I often catch myself running away from the question entirely.
One thing I do know – NOT planning my career is the riskiest path of them all.
David
I really enjoyed reading this article. It’s something I often think about but don’t see much written about it. I feel like the developers I know and work with are all relatively young, what’s going to happen when they’re in their 50’s and 60’s – will they still be desired? Or will they be replaced be younger blood especially in the tech industry where things change so fast. This is what I understood when you mentioned ‘This is not the ideal path to be on, but it’s the path many of us will be forced onto if we do not plan carefully.’
In my opinion, Technical Architect path has it’s own glass ceiling. Let’s say you became a CTA. And… what’s next? The best you could have is to become a CTA, though it’s harder to achieve with Salesforce background. IMO, it’s better to switch to a Management position IF you really plan to expand and extend your career, because at Management sky is the limit.
That’s from Developer’s perspective, would be glad to hear Manager’s or Architect’s opinion
Even if you become a Salesforce CTA, that doesn’t preclude you from moving into other technical architecture roles. You could move into an Enterprise Architecture role that deals with all of the business systems, integrations, and governance. You could move into the product side and work on the architecture of an application. You could be a technical architecture consultant. I know plenty of people further in their careers doing all of these things.
I think narrowing your options into 4 directions is actually a little short-sided. To succeed in Salesforce you need a solid combination of business, technical, and analytical skills. This sets you up for many different career paths that may or may not be closely tied to Salesforce. Especially when you consider Salesforce is trying to be less proprietary and use more standard development methodologies and frameworks. Examples may include consulting, project management, product development/management, network security, devops, business analysis… and so on.
I love you comment ‘NOT planning my career is the riskiest path of them all’. That is sooo true. You have to think of where you want to go and make a plan to get there.
I think it also depends on your family life too. Most people spend their 30s-40s building their career and their family at the same time. My priority is my kids. You may have 20 years, hopefully at least 15 years, with them before they don’t want to hang out with you ;( Once that happens, then I will jump back in and go for the Technical Architect roles where I can dedicate more time.
Dave, I love you, but you when I read the part about self-employment, I almost choked on my coffee…
“Here, you do exactly what you want and forget about what anyone else might say.”
…Let’s just call that what it is – wrong. When you start your own firm you do everything, not just what you want. You do the finance, marketing, accounting, product sourcing, IT, HR, strategy, tactics. Everything, whether you like it or not. And you have to care what other people say, particularly your prospects and customers. Your survival depends on it.
I get the thought you’re trying to communicate, but what you said there is just flat wrong.
The self employment option sounds even worse now. LOL
Note that Dave does say it’s the riskiest and the riskiest part is that some people just do not have the self-discipline to succeed because they need to do and be all that you mention. I think Dave is just saying “you are your own boss” and within the context of internal operations, yes, no one is telling you what to do.
Customers, market forces, etc. on the other hand, Yes, they are constantly going to be telling you what to do.
Right on!
Good post David. In the current market condition it’s better to be technical than management as slowly but surely machines are taking away management work. Unless a manager brings value to the team, he/she becomes redundant and soon sees end of the road.
awesome as always david. next time when my non-coder friends ask me whats next ?? i will have a befitting reply !!!!! yepiiiiiiiii
I love this post, David! I think you are absolutely right about the need to think ahead and realize that each possible that has its ups and downs. Thank you for putting it out there.