Developers / Admins / Career

8 Important Lessons from the Salesforce Ben Developer Survey

By Ben McCarthy

The results from our first annual Developer Survey are in, and we’re thrilled with the insights that have been uncovered. These insights may not come as a surprise to you, as many recurring themes came up that Salesforce professionals are probably experiencing every day.

However, they still give us clear insight into some of the most common problems and solutions that Salesforce professionals are implementing, as well as some lessons we can learn off the back of the results…

1. Developers Aren’t Satisfied With Their Skill Levels

Overall, developers don’t feel satisfied with their skill level of the Salesforce platform. Only 34% of respondents stated they were satisfied, with 43% expressing a neutral sentiment and 23% stating they were not satisfied.

In addition, 28% of developers state that knowledge and training deficiencies are holding their team back in 2024. This probably isn’t helped by the fact that 44% of people mention resource constraints as an additional factor.

Although there isn’t much good news in these stats, one saving grace is that the Salesforce platform seems to be stabilizing. The Lightning platform has gone through so many changes over the past ten years or so that Salesforce looks to now be tweaking the platform for the better, as opposed to bringing in huge sweeping changes.

Trailhead is obviously the go-to learning platform for anything Salesforce, developers may feel that the platform doesn’t cater to them, especially when it comes to more senior topics.

This is something we are trying to solve with our very own SF Ben Developer courses.

2. Salesforce Implementations Are Hard to Get Right

One of the best aspects of Salesforce is that you can do anything with it, but conversely, this can sometimes be a hindrance.

If you were to get two different Salesforce consultancies to implement the same requirements into two orgs, it’s very likely you would get two completely different solutions provided, completely based on the individual knowledge of the consultants and what they have seen work before.

If there is a skill gap issue in 2024, then there has probably been one for quite some time. This would have been amplified further by all the major platform changes, such as Flow and Lightning migrations.

This is why, when we asked developers what the most challenging thing to get right in Salesforce was, the front-runner was dealing with existing technical debt.

3. Is the Ecosystem Ready for AI?

According to most experts, artificial intelligence is here to stay, and it’s bound to have such a profound impact on the global economy that it’s going to increase global GDP output by 14%.

Of course, this is yet to be seen, but almost all software companies, including Salesforce, are now positioning their customers for the next wave of AI-enabled technologies.

But with 27% of developers worried about technical debt, 25% struggling with platform limitations and challenges, and 44% under resource constraints, are we even ready to implement this next wave of technology?

I have as much optimism as the next Salesforce professional when it comes to AI, but it seems sensible to ensure the foundations of our org are secure before we look to add another layer of complex automation.

4. DevOps Is Here, and It Is Here to Stay!

DevOps has slowly been adopted in the Salesforce ecosystem over the past ten years or so, as some proponents of this movement knew there was a better way to deploy changes in the ecosystem.

Although we have nothing to compare this year’s data to, we were still astounded to see that 70% of Salesforce Developers are using some kind of DevOps tooling, with only 23% using change sets. The majority of developers are using SFDX and CI jobs with a Git repository, followed by third-party vendors, and lastly by the Salesforce DevOps Center.

5. How to Stand Out as a Salesforce Developer

There is no doubt that the Salesforce ecosystem is becoming more competitive. With the tech industry slowing down, an increased amount of talent, coupled with layoffs, is creating a hyper-competitive environment.

Although developers may have it better than admins, whose skills are becoming somewhat commoditized, it’s still a good idea to attempt to stand out from the crowd.

Some of the top skills developers felt less confident in were Lightning Web Components and front-end development, integration with other platforms, and advanced object-oriented design patterns.

Interestingly, DevOps is well adopted, but it seems developers aren’t as confident as they could be, with one in five noting it was an area for improvement. When you drill down into some of the more detailed statistics, only 25% of developers felt that they know skills such as Git, SFDX, and CLI “very well”, with the vast majority saying they know how to use basic commands.

6. Contractors Are Disappearing

Salesforce contracting was big business for many years. As the Salesforce ecosystem expanded over the last ten years from $4B in revenue to nearly $40B this year, there were a huge amount of new Salesforce projects that needed staffing.

Contracting was an easy solution for this – bring in highly skilled, experienced professionals on a high daily wage, but ultimately with a flexible 6 to 12-month contract that could be extended.

However, due to the general economic climate and the expensive nature of contractors, it seems like this profession is being eroded away. Using data from the Mason Frank Salary Survey, we can see a steep decline from 11% of their survey respondents in 2019, to 8% in 2022, to roughly 5% in our own survey in 2024.

7. Developers Are Generally Happy Working With Salesforce

Although our developer survey points out many things wrong with Salesforce org and working with the platform, we must give credit where it’s due to Salesforce, as they have created an incredible platform with both low-code and pro-code features.

The number of changes and migrations that have taken place over the past decade has to be seen as a necessary evil, as we are now in a place where Salesforce has a fantastic platform for developers and admins alike. So much so that roughly 75% of respondents gave Salesforce a four or five-star rating (out of five) when they were asked to rate working with the programmatic and declarative side of the platform. This is a far cry from the infamous 2015 survey from Stack Overflow that crowned Salesforce “The most dreaded platform to work with.”

8. Get Onboard the AI Train or Get Left Behind

Although we may not be ready for the AI transformation wave that is coming to a Salesforce org near you, there is one AI tool that has been adopted like crazy – and that is developers using ChatGPT or tools such as GitHub Copilot to assist with coding.

In fact, over 72% of our respondents are using AI tools on a semi-regular basis. They are finding that these tools increase productivity, allow you to learn faster, and provide greater efficiency in coding.

52% of respondents are concerned about security. There is a strong correlation between those who aren’t using AI tools and those who work for larger corporations. It does show that AI can be used in your day-to-day role, and the vast majority see a huge boost in productivity.

It may be difficult to convince your boss to start using ChatGPT to support coding if you work for a huge enterprise; however, there are plenty of people who have a big head start on using these types of tools to augment their work, and they may leave you in the dust.

Summary

Have you found some of these insights interesting? Be sure to download the full 2024 SF Ben Developer Survey report to discover even more trends of how Salesforce Developers are working in the ecosystem.

The Author

Ben McCarthy

Ben is the Founder of Salesforce Ben. He also works as a Non-Exec Director & Advisor for various companies within the Salesforce Ecosystem.

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