After many months of deliberating, planning, and analyzing, we are finally ready to release the findings from our first annual Salesforce Developer survey! This will be the first survey of many, as we attempt to understand the Salesforce ecosystem more deeply by analyzing quantitative and qualitative data.
Our first survey has not disappointed, and we’re thrilled at the insights we’ve received. We hope that this data will paint a more comprehensive picture of what is working in the Salesforce ecosystem, as well as what needs more attention. Let’s dive into some of the top findings from the white paper – you can download a free copy here.
1. Declarative vs. Programmatic
This is a debate that seems to rage on between Admins and Devs – what is the superior form of developing on the platform?
Declarative is the low-code way to develop quickly, mainly using Flows, whereas coding Apex is much more specialized, but can result in performance and scalability gains.

According to our survey, 34% of people who identify as Salesforce Developers use an equal mix of both programmatic and declarative tools. Presumably, because they are using the tool that is best suited for each specific job.
This is followed up by 25% of respondents who say they mainly use programmatic (which suggests they use declarative some of the time), and 22% of developers who mainly use declarative. Only 9% say they use declarative only, and 4.2% say they use programmatic only.
I have no doubt that Flow has had a huge effect on these ratios. Five years ago, we might have seen a very different picture, with more developers presumably choosing to use programmatic due to a lack in maturing of Flow or Process Builder.

2. Salesforce = Complex
This insight will come as no surprise to many, but it’s interesting to see the survey results confirm. A whopping 52.8% of respondents agree that Salesforce is becoming increasingly complicated to work with.
There are many reasons for this that we also found out from respondents, but overall, Salesforce is becoming a more mature product. It’s been around for many years now, and a lot of enterprise Orgs are probably approaching being a decade old or more.
There have also been many changes over the past ten years – lightning migrations, workflows and process builder becoming retired, and many new products and acquisitions that have to be implemented into the platform.
Check out the full whitepaper to learn the areas people struggle with the most.
3. DevOps Is Taking Over
DevOps has been one of the most talked about topics in the Salesforce ecosystem for a few years now. Although AI has firmly taken the spotlight, it’s still an extremely important topic, especially in light of the org complexities people are facing.
However, it seems that DevOps is well adopted in the Salesforce ecosystem, with 70% of respondents using some kind of DevOps tool, whether it be a 3rd party product such as Copado or Gearset, DevOps Center, or a blend of tools, including SFDX.
With this being said, DevOps was also one of the areas that many developers felt less confident in as a skill. 19.8% of respondents stated that this was an area they needed to skill up in. So whilst DevOps may be well-adopted, the Salesforce ecosystem may not be living up to its full potential.

4. Female Developers
There has been a big push over the past decade or so to ensure that there is more gender diversity in the tech ecosystems. Whilst development roles have been typically dominated by men, there are encouraging signs that the next generation of developers will have more females.
Overall, 76% of respondents were male, with 20% being female, and 1% identifying as non-binary (3% also omitted results). But when you drill down into age, 35% of male developers fit into the 25-34% age bracket, but this percentage increases to 45% for female developers. In addition, 4.4% of males fit into the 18-24 category, whilst this increases to 5.6% for females.
5. AI Is Ubiquitous
Artificial intelligence and ChatGPT have been the most quickly adopted technologies in history, so the results of our survey aren’t too surprising.
A whopping 30% of our respondents are using AI tools on a daily basis, whilst 41% are using it now and again, only 28% aren’t using it at all. Those who aren’t using it at all correlate with working for larger companies where security protocols will be much stricter. The benefits of using AI are also clear – higher productivity, faster learning, and overall better efficiency in coding.

Whilst this is great, there are concerns when it comes to security, and this will be the bigger conversation in the near future.
Summary
I hope you’ve found some of these as insightful as we have, and make sure to download the full report for free to learn all about what developers are up to the Salesforce ecosystem.
Next up, our global Salesforce salary survey is currently being analyzed – we look forward to sharing the results in a few months’ time.