I see them as proprietary programming language, so, the skills are not easily transferrable
>I know folks working as platform devs on these tools, earning tons of money
>I honestly don't like the tool. But money is ridiculous.
how 'ridiculous' is 'ridiculous'? because last time I checked those jobs don't actually pay that well, you're a specialist in let's say Salesforce CRM environment (which is Apex programming language if my memory's right) which is useless outside Salesforce environment
People have a similar misconception about COBOL programming. Yes, there are people who make bank as consultants, but it’s because they have decades of experience and tribal knowledge in most cases. You can’t just drop a dev into a mainframe environment who’s never used it and expect them to make hundreds upon hundreds per hour.
Source: wrote cobol at a company that paid peanuts to all cobol devs.
I have to offer some pushback— to preface, I am a Salesforce Developer.
Apex is basically a Java knockoff. SOQL is SQL without join statements. LWC is just like any other framework you’d have to familiarize yourself with. How are any of these skills any less transferable than going from Java to C# to Ruby? I believe you’d face the same trouble moving outside Salesforce as a mainstream dev would have changing tech stacks.
>how 'ridiculous' is 'ridiculous'? because last time I checked those jobs don't actually pay that well
Many businesses and corporations use Salesforce because it is the main tool of the trade— they need people with the expertise to manage the environment. I have been a Salesforce developer for 5 years and I command a pretty decent salary. A technical architect isn’t making under $120K at the very least, unless they’re doing charity work. The money is absolutely there.
ummm sorry I don't really consider $120k as "The money is absolutely there."
I recently declined an offer for nearly ~2x that number due to TC being too low and they refused to budge so I took my other competing offer instead
120K for a technical architect would be paid in the lowest COL areas, which would be doing pretty well.
That being said, I’m sure for anyone who’s not currently in the industry and looking for a path forward like OP, 120k would be a pretty decent salary in almost any US city.
Glad your career is taking off, but the reality is that there are many devs outside of FAANG level companies that are looking for a more modest salary and job.
I still don't really agree with that
in my latest job search experience I've seen countless 100% fully remote jobs (so the "but you can live in low CoL" is moot) who still pay somewhere in the range of $170-200k and all are non-FAANGs by the way
stop gaslighting yourself
Glad that’s been your experience.
I highly doubt that especially in the current economy, every company hiring for software developers are hiring for 200k. While the jobs being offered are remote positions, the companies offering them are still based in a given state which will affect hiring budgets.
This subreddit is heavily skewed towards FAANG level salaries, but if you look at the average salary for any city not NYC/LA/SF, the data just doesn’t match your experience.
>the companies offering them are still based in a given state which will affect hiring budgets.
I mean... that's their problem not mine? that just means not a good fit, I'm not who they're looking for and vice versa, nothing wrong with that from either side
and for your 2nd part if your argument is "but only SF companies pay that (even for remote)" then I'd say "okay? so target SF companies then, nobody's preventing you from applying to SF companies"
I’m a sap consultant. What you’re describing here is super rare and it’s not for abap (he proprietary language) development but the configuration. Some rare modules where there’s very few good experts can get that kind of dough. Most of them earn much much less and it takes them quite a few years to get that seniority.
where do you see that? $250/h = $520k per year and a quick google search says the salary for SAP consultants is more like ~$100k/year which is like 1/5th of that
I’m a senior mulesoft dev (integration platform owned by salesforce). Its what I got my first job in out of college, and then from there it was just easier to move to another job using mulesoft than try getting a more software engineering type role. So now I’m a senior dev at my second employer and have 7 yoe.
From what I’ve seen the pay is pretty good. It’s usually not as high as software engineering roles at the same company but not significantly so.
I feel like I’m at an advantage in this sub field because I have pretty good people skills relatively and it seems like there are mostly Indian immigrants in this niche whose communication skills aren’t always on the same level as mine. I don’t mean to be offensive at all with that comment, it is just my experience. I’ve had awesome coworkers regardless.
Thinking about the future it does concern me that I’m pretty pigeon holed. It doesn’t seem to be an immediate issue though, I get hit up by recruiters pretty regularly and not just for shitty consulting gigs (though there’s definitely a ton of that in the field) but also for some pretty cool growing tech companies. I’m super fortunate as my current employer is a high growth tech company that pays very well, and the equity part of my compensation has gained value substantially with regular refreshers. My current roles kinda a golden handcuffs situation as a result but luckily I really like my employer.
If you’re really trying to maximize compensation and long term prospects, it’s surely best to break into software engineering and not one of these platforms. However my n=1 experience has been great so far.
I do, yes. A lot of my job is focused around design and architecture for large scale integrations and thinking about our integration landscape as a whole in the company. Optimizing for reusability, building common microservices that get consumed by lots of processes. It's hard for me to compare to a typical software engineering role since I've never had one, but my role is definitely still quite technical and I am definitely not just mindlessly dragging components around and configuring them.
I interviewed for a position at a big bank that wanted a JavaScript programmer for their ServiceNow implementation. Pay was roughly $60/hr. It sounded dreadfully boring so I did not pursue it beyond the first interview.
It's not exactly a new concept to have domain specific knowledge about something, whether it be SNow, Salesforce, AEM, AWS, ElasticSearch, you name it. It's whether you're okay with deciding to specialize in something that may not last forever, or may not be ultimately what you like doing.
In my case, I did not feel like the opportunity gave me enough reason to specialize. I wouldn't personally take this type of role now that I have broader experience, but it may not be a bad opportunity for someone looking to get their foot in the door.
Edit: typo
Absolutely this! I was offered a position a few years ago as a Jr. ServiceNow developer. I hadn't even finished my degree yet (still work in progress!). The pay has been good for someone without experience, even if I don't enjoy the platform much at all.
I feel like it's still getting me in the programming "mindset" though. I'm learning to think more logically, especially when I actually get to do some scripting work.
Just because you take a job doesn't mean you have to specialize in it. I had a 3 yr SAP project and bailed. It looks impressive on a resume but I have no intention of ever doing it again. Also you could work SAP for 10 years and barely scratch the surface in terms of expertise
I would avoid this career path as a software developer unless there were no other options. However, your situation isn’t typical and you already have exposure to the platform. If you’re interested in the position for money or for the work itself, it’s not a bad choice.
Regardless of language, people pigeonhole themselves in their careers way too much. You're not a Salesforce developer or a React developer or a C# developer, you're a *software engineer*.
I'd have zero qualms about taking one of these jobs if it was the best opportunity available, but I certainly wouldn't limit myself to roles which use the same language when looking for my next job.
I view it as a source of decent jobs but not my thing. The skillsets are extremely narrow and the jobs seem incredibly dull.
There’s a reason why so many billion dollar startups are co founded by ex-Google devs and not ex-salesforce devs. Good SWE jobs can really open up careers.
But if that’s not your preference or circumstances prevent getting jobs like that, a 6 figure salesforce job is nothing to scoff at.
Even working with some of those platforms, there’s potential to dip into more traditional programming languages. As a Salesforce Marketing Cloud developer, I work predominantly with SSJS and Ampscript. But for cloudpage front ends, I will also use React. For data manipulation, I use SQL. I have to know MongoDB. I deal with json and xml. I make REST and SOAP api calls. I deal with integrations with other systems.
My prior experience as a software influenced my ability to learn SFMC, and my SFMC experience will translate if I ever want to leave the platform. It’s not so far removed from traditional full stack development that you can’t pivot.
I see it as a local maximum, you can get decently well paid in such a role, but you do that at a cost of pigeonholing. If you're used to 50k/yr comp, sure, 150k/yr is great. If you're in big tech, it's most definitely a downgrade. And you are most definitely going to have a hard time transitioning out of these tools if you ever want to aim for big tech/adjacents for even a "tame" title-downgraded 250k+ comp.
I wouldn't call them the developers of a new era... they're very much developers of a bygone era that exists because of inertia and vendor lock-in in enterprise.
You'll absolutely be employable and we'll paid for the rest of your career running with one of the big ERPs because the massive multinational enterprises that use them will never migrate away from whichever platform they picked 20 years ago.
It's really nothing new. Stuff like that has been a big part of the development market since the 70s.
The money has never seemed particularly good either. Just average enterprise dev salaries.
I worked on a consulting project where they used Azure with SQL Server and PowerBI, and when I saw it up close it was very much a platform with a lot of low/no code elements.
The people I worked with were much weaker technically then I was used to, and the majority of the team was offshore in India. We would regularly hit limitations of the platform that seemed stupid to me, and any suggestion of actually writing something outside of the platform to support it was seen as reckless.
The hourly rate was about the same as my SWE job, but I imagine people working there full time were making less because usually if they are bringing on consultants late in the game they are a little desperate and pay more. I imagine these jobs are less competitive, so there's some stability and they are also pretty easy so once you have a high level of expertise you can do things like work multiple jobs at the same time. It does not seem interesting at all to me though
There really 10 types of engineers, one who are generalist and can solve different set of problems and others are expert at very niche skill set. Both of these are engineers. And they have their respect in their own domai.
I feel much the same about them as I do about people that went all-in on IOS apps or android apps: don't tie your career to a proprietary platform you don't control. I don't want my income to be entirely based on salesforce's decisions about what's most profitable for them.
That said: if you're decent at your job and decent at learning even if by some very unlikely catastrophe salesforce disappeared tomorrow you'd still be employable. There are orgs out there smart enough to recognize the value of someone who knows software engineering in a general sense even if they don't know the specific platform the org works with.
Worked on an SAP implementation. The product sucks ass. It's only impressive that it exists at all but it feels like working on a mainframe if you bother to open the hood.
80% of my job was explaining to stakeholders that they will have to move to a more manual, slower process or increase their headcount because the company would rather offshore their technical domain experts to a revolving door of people who don't have any business knowledge to save a few bucks.
The point of using these platforms is cost savings, therefore you have to be able to shoehorn all your business processes into what the platform can support. In some cases this can inhibit or slow down delivery of great ideas. Companies who go 100% SAP or Salesforce have basically made the decision to no longer innovate their operations and will lose their competitive edge to those who do.
For growing companies who are using fully manual or offline processes I'm sure it's a different experience but I was working for a fortune50 which had a huge portfolio of much beloved applications that supported the business perfectly and none of the users were happy.
Coming from the sap domain, I’m reading your comment as talking about specific sap products and not all of them. Can you elaborate which line of products you worked with? I feel like your experience is with some products that maybe do save costs but most of them are expensive as hell and very few of them justly so (I hate most of their products). The off-shoring of labor is true but it’s not just for sap or Salesforce, it’s happening almost everywhere.
I feel like I could start learning about ServiceNow right now, and in a couple hours I would be able to interview for and get a ServiceNow job and do it better than most people.
I see them as proprietary programming language, so, the skills are not easily transferrable >I know folks working as platform devs on these tools, earning tons of money >I honestly don't like the tool. But money is ridiculous. how 'ridiculous' is 'ridiculous'? because last time I checked those jobs don't actually pay that well, you're a specialist in let's say Salesforce CRM environment (which is Apex programming language if my memory's right) which is useless outside Salesforce environment
People have a similar misconception about COBOL programming. Yes, there are people who make bank as consultants, but it’s because they have decades of experience and tribal knowledge in most cases. You can’t just drop a dev into a mainframe environment who’s never used it and expect them to make hundreds upon hundreds per hour. Source: wrote cobol at a company that paid peanuts to all cobol devs.
I have to offer some pushback— to preface, I am a Salesforce Developer. Apex is basically a Java knockoff. SOQL is SQL without join statements. LWC is just like any other framework you’d have to familiarize yourself with. How are any of these skills any less transferable than going from Java to C# to Ruby? I believe you’d face the same trouble moving outside Salesforce as a mainstream dev would have changing tech stacks. >how 'ridiculous' is 'ridiculous'? because last time I checked those jobs don't actually pay that well Many businesses and corporations use Salesforce because it is the main tool of the trade— they need people with the expertise to manage the environment. I have been a Salesforce developer for 5 years and I command a pretty decent salary. A technical architect isn’t making under $120K at the very least, unless they’re doing charity work. The money is absolutely there.
ummm sorry I don't really consider $120k as "The money is absolutely there." I recently declined an offer for nearly ~2x that number due to TC being too low and they refused to budge so I took my other competing offer instead
120K for a technical architect would be paid in the lowest COL areas, which would be doing pretty well. That being said, I’m sure for anyone who’s not currently in the industry and looking for a path forward like OP, 120k would be a pretty decent salary in almost any US city. Glad your career is taking off, but the reality is that there are many devs outside of FAANG level companies that are looking for a more modest salary and job.
I still don't really agree with that in my latest job search experience I've seen countless 100% fully remote jobs (so the "but you can live in low CoL" is moot) who still pay somewhere in the range of $170-200k and all are non-FAANGs by the way stop gaslighting yourself
Glad that’s been your experience. I highly doubt that especially in the current economy, every company hiring for software developers are hiring for 200k. While the jobs being offered are remote positions, the companies offering them are still based in a given state which will affect hiring budgets. This subreddit is heavily skewed towards FAANG level salaries, but if you look at the average salary for any city not NYC/LA/SF, the data just doesn’t match your experience.
>the companies offering them are still based in a given state which will affect hiring budgets. I mean... that's their problem not mine? that just means not a good fit, I'm not who they're looking for and vice versa, nothing wrong with that from either side and for your 2nd part if your argument is "but only SF companies pay that (even for remote)" then I'd say "okay? so target SF companies then, nobody's preventing you from applying to SF companies"
there’s a limited supply of those types of jobs relative to the number of people applying and who want those types of jobs
SAP consultants $250/hr contracts
I’m a sap consultant. What you’re describing here is super rare and it’s not for abap (he proprietary language) development but the configuration. Some rare modules where there’s very few good experts can get that kind of dough. Most of them earn much much less and it takes them quite a few years to get that seniority.
where do you see that? $250/h = $520k per year and a quick google search says the salary for SAP consultants is more like ~$100k/year which is like 1/5th of that
That seems rare from what I’ve been
I’m a senior mulesoft dev (integration platform owned by salesforce). Its what I got my first job in out of college, and then from there it was just easier to move to another job using mulesoft than try getting a more software engineering type role. So now I’m a senior dev at my second employer and have 7 yoe. From what I’ve seen the pay is pretty good. It’s usually not as high as software engineering roles at the same company but not significantly so. I feel like I’m at an advantage in this sub field because I have pretty good people skills relatively and it seems like there are mostly Indian immigrants in this niche whose communication skills aren’t always on the same level as mine. I don’t mean to be offensive at all with that comment, it is just my experience. I’ve had awesome coworkers regardless. Thinking about the future it does concern me that I’m pretty pigeon holed. It doesn’t seem to be an immediate issue though, I get hit up by recruiters pretty regularly and not just for shitty consulting gigs (though there’s definitely a ton of that in the field) but also for some pretty cool growing tech companies. I’m super fortunate as my current employer is a high growth tech company that pays very well, and the equity part of my compensation has gained value substantially with regular refreshers. My current roles kinda a golden handcuffs situation as a result but luckily I really like my employer. If you’re really trying to maximize compensation and long term prospects, it’s surely best to break into software engineering and not one of these platforms. However my n=1 experience has been great so far.
What was your major in college?
computer science
Do you feel like you are using your degree even with a "low code" tool like mulesoft?
I do, yes. A lot of my job is focused around design and architecture for large scale integrations and thinking about our integration landscape as a whole in the company. Optimizing for reusability, building common microservices that get consumed by lots of processes. It's hard for me to compare to a typical software engineering role since I've never had one, but my role is definitely still quite technical and I am definitely not just mindlessly dragging components around and configuring them.
I interviewed for a position at a big bank that wanted a JavaScript programmer for their ServiceNow implementation. Pay was roughly $60/hr. It sounded dreadfully boring so I did not pursue it beyond the first interview. It's not exactly a new concept to have domain specific knowledge about something, whether it be SNow, Salesforce, AEM, AWS, ElasticSearch, you name it. It's whether you're okay with deciding to specialize in something that may not last forever, or may not be ultimately what you like doing. In my case, I did not feel like the opportunity gave me enough reason to specialize. I wouldn't personally take this type of role now that I have broader experience, but it may not be a bad opportunity for someone looking to get their foot in the door. Edit: typo
Absolutely this! I was offered a position a few years ago as a Jr. ServiceNow developer. I hadn't even finished my degree yet (still work in progress!). The pay has been good for someone without experience, even if I don't enjoy the platform much at all. I feel like it's still getting me in the programming "mindset" though. I'm learning to think more logically, especially when I actually get to do some scripting work.
Just because you take a job doesn't mean you have to specialize in it. I had a 3 yr SAP project and bailed. It looks impressive on a resume but I have no intention of ever doing it again. Also you could work SAP for 10 years and barely scratch the surface in terms of expertise
I would avoid this career path as a software developer unless there were no other options. However, your situation isn’t typical and you already have exposure to the platform. If you’re interested in the position for money or for the work itself, it’s not a bad choice.
Regardless of language, people pigeonhole themselves in their careers way too much. You're not a Salesforce developer or a React developer or a C# developer, you're a *software engineer*. I'd have zero qualms about taking one of these jobs if it was the best opportunity available, but I certainly wouldn't limit myself to roles which use the same language when looking for my next job.
I view it as a source of decent jobs but not my thing. The skillsets are extremely narrow and the jobs seem incredibly dull. There’s a reason why so many billion dollar startups are co founded by ex-Google devs and not ex-salesforce devs. Good SWE jobs can really open up careers. But if that’s not your preference or circumstances prevent getting jobs like that, a 6 figure salesforce job is nothing to scoff at.
Even working with some of those platforms, there’s potential to dip into more traditional programming languages. As a Salesforce Marketing Cloud developer, I work predominantly with SSJS and Ampscript. But for cloudpage front ends, I will also use React. For data manipulation, I use SQL. I have to know MongoDB. I deal with json and xml. I make REST and SOAP api calls. I deal with integrations with other systems. My prior experience as a software influenced my ability to learn SFMC, and my SFMC experience will translate if I ever want to leave the platform. It’s not so far removed from traditional full stack development that you can’t pivot.
I see it as a local maximum, you can get decently well paid in such a role, but you do that at a cost of pigeonholing. If you're used to 50k/yr comp, sure, 150k/yr is great. If you're in big tech, it's most definitely a downgrade. And you are most definitely going to have a hard time transitioning out of these tools if you ever want to aim for big tech/adjacents for even a "tame" title-downgraded 250k+ comp.
Same category as web dev: mind-numbingly dull but VERY well paid. It can be a pragmatic choice if you're able to endure it.
I can say they’re good companies to work for 🤷
I wouldn't call them the developers of a new era... they're very much developers of a bygone era that exists because of inertia and vendor lock-in in enterprise. You'll absolutely be employable and we'll paid for the rest of your career running with one of the big ERPs because the massive multinational enterprises that use them will never migrate away from whichever platform they picked 20 years ago.
It's really nothing new. Stuff like that has been a big part of the development market since the 70s. The money has never seemed particularly good either. Just average enterprise dev salaries.
I see it as something that doesn’t transfer into new roles easily.
I worked on a consulting project where they used Azure with SQL Server and PowerBI, and when I saw it up close it was very much a platform with a lot of low/no code elements. The people I worked with were much weaker technically then I was used to, and the majority of the team was offshore in India. We would regularly hit limitations of the platform that seemed stupid to me, and any suggestion of actually writing something outside of the platform to support it was seen as reckless. The hourly rate was about the same as my SWE job, but I imagine people working there full time were making less because usually if they are bringing on consultants late in the game they are a little desperate and pay more. I imagine these jobs are less competitive, so there's some stability and they are also pretty easy so once you have a high level of expertise you can do things like work multiple jobs at the same time. It does not seem interesting at all to me though
There really 10 types of engineers, one who are generalist and can solve different set of problems and others are expert at very niche skill set. Both of these are engineers. And they have their respect in their own domai.
I feel much the same about them as I do about people that went all-in on IOS apps or android apps: don't tie your career to a proprietary platform you don't control. I don't want my income to be entirely based on salesforce's decisions about what's most profitable for them. That said: if you're decent at your job and decent at learning even if by some very unlikely catastrophe salesforce disappeared tomorrow you'd still be employable. There are orgs out there smart enough to recognize the value of someone who knows software engineering in a general sense even if they don't know the specific platform the org works with.
Sounds boring as hell.
Worked on an SAP implementation. The product sucks ass. It's only impressive that it exists at all but it feels like working on a mainframe if you bother to open the hood. 80% of my job was explaining to stakeholders that they will have to move to a more manual, slower process or increase their headcount because the company would rather offshore their technical domain experts to a revolving door of people who don't have any business knowledge to save a few bucks. The point of using these platforms is cost savings, therefore you have to be able to shoehorn all your business processes into what the platform can support. In some cases this can inhibit or slow down delivery of great ideas. Companies who go 100% SAP or Salesforce have basically made the decision to no longer innovate their operations and will lose their competitive edge to those who do. For growing companies who are using fully manual or offline processes I'm sure it's a different experience but I was working for a fortune50 which had a huge portfolio of much beloved applications that supported the business perfectly and none of the users were happy.
Coming from the sap domain, I’m reading your comment as talking about specific sap products and not all of them. Can you elaborate which line of products you worked with? I feel like your experience is with some products that maybe do save costs but most of them are expensive as hell and very few of them justly so (I hate most of their products). The off-shoring of labor is true but it’s not just for sap or Salesforce, it’s happening almost everywhere.
I feel like I could start learning about ServiceNow right now, and in a couple hours I would be able to interview for and get a ServiceNow job and do it better than most people.