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Salesforce - worth getting into?

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    Salesforce - worth getting into?

    I've been doing control engineering for over 12 years, mostly messing around with programmable industrial controllers and all sorts of data collection and visualisation packages (SCADA). I've dabbled in microcontrollers and C / ASM as a hobby, done fairly heavy scripting in smth similar to C so I'm fairly good with programming in general. Done a fair amount of VM based work (setting up and config of servers and VMs) on both VMware and Hyper-V, networking etc. After a while it all looks very similar and gets boring quickly, plus pay is tulipe in the industry (contracts pay better but mostly only in niche areas), so I'm looking to re-train in smth else. Friend of mine works with Salesforce and at least on the surface it looks very similar to some of the packages I've used in terms of a mixed bag of scripts / config. I've read mixed comments on how popular it is and that it is slowly dying being replaced by dynamics or other stuff I've never heard of.

    Thought I'd ask around here, surely there's people who use it and have their opinions? Looking at permie roles of course, most likely junior, with my mate helping to push my CV in front of some people. Main advantage is that most roles offer a tulip ton of remote work which would suit me very well at the moment.

    #2
    I would probably look at both, while Salesforce is falling behind it certainly isn’t dead.

    A couple of extra bows to your string is certainly a good idea.
    "I can put any old tat in my sig, put quotes around it and attribute to someone of whom I've heard, to make it sound true."
    - Voltaire/Benjamin Franklin/Anne Frank...

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      #3
      After doing a fair bit of work with SalesForce and it's Enterprise API, I could not imagine working with it on a full time basis. So from me it's a no, its not worth getting into.

      Comment


        #4
        Originally posted by cojak View Post
        I would probably look at both, while Salesforce is falling behind it certainly isn’t dead.

        A couple of extra bows to your string is certainly a good idea.
        Both as in Dynamics and Salesforce?

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          #5
          Originally posted by woohoo View Post
          After doing a fair bit of work with SalesForce and it's Enterprise API, I could not imagine working with it on a full time basis. So from me it's a no, its not worth getting into.
          Am I correct to think that it's kind of a mix of scripting and configuration?

          What makes you say that you couldn't imagine doing it full time? I kind of have a feeling that it gets repetitive and boring after a while...

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            #6
            Originally posted by dsc View Post
            Am I correct to think that it's kind of a mix of scripting and configuration?

            What makes you say that you couldn't imagine doing it full time? I kind of have a feeling that it gets repetitive and boring after a while...
            Mainly configuring SalesForce fields, setting up Sandboxes and updating SalesForce via it's API, so programming. It's incredibly frustrating and the docs are poor.

            The actual application is crap to use, not user friendly. Setting up sandboxes and deleting them was frustrating, sometimes it worked sometimes it didnt, would just hang.

            The API was amazingly bad, just bad.

            Customer seems to like it though.

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              #7
              Dealing with a lot of things here so I'll keep it to a single comment

              Originally posted by cojak View Post
              I would probably look at both, while Salesforce is falling behind it certainly isn’t dead.

              A couple of extra bows to your string is certainly a good idea.
              You aren't really going to be able to do both - it's impossible now to be an expert in more than a couple of bits of Dynamics let alone all of the Dynamics and Salesforce.

              As for picking which one - a quick look at Jobserve brings up more Dynamics contracts and chatting today with an agent there isn't enough people to meet current Dynamics demand let alone the forecast demand (and personally the forecast is too low anyway).

              Originally posted by dsc View Post
              Am I correct to think that it's kind of a mix of scripting and configuration?

              What makes you say that you couldn't imagine doing it full time? I kind of have a feeling that it gets repetitive and boring after a while...
              It's a combination of both but I find new requirements always bring something you need to figure out how best to do (and that best way could be a three or 4 step process - one I have at the moment is 2 screens (configuration), some business rules, 7 custom controls (for usability, all Javascript but 6 of them are variations on a theme) and a few plugins (C#) to do backend stuff and that is just the admin screens for a $1 a user / month add-on. The target market is however 5 million and expanding so there is method in that seeming piece of madness.

              Also you don't actually need to do that - you can do a lot with just a couple of forms and Microsoft Flow / Power Automate running some business logic (I just do more complex things because I can and I like doing so).

              Originally posted by woohoo View Post
              Mainly configuring SalesForce fields, setting up Sandboxes and updating SalesForce via it's API, so programming. It's incredibly frustrating and the docs are poor.

              The actual application is crap to use, not user friendly. Setting up sandboxes and deleting them was frustrating, sometimes it worked sometimes it didnt, would just hang.

              The API was amazingly bad, just bad.

              Customer seems to like it though.
              Customer's don't care - buying Salesforce is currently like buying IBM - you can't go wrong for doing so until someone points out how much cheaper Dynamics is (and then I'll show you the PowerApps solution I'm working on which gives you 80% of Dynamics Sales and core Customer Service functionality for $1000 less per user per year).

              As for picking SalesForce / Dynamics take your pick. The both have fairly complete platforms nowadays Microsoft has PowerApps/ Power Automate / Power BI and Salesforce has Salesforce Cloud / Mulesoft / Tableau.

              And Microsoft is investing $1bn or so a year in Dynamics and the Power Platform as it's long term No / Low code solution to be the current version of VB6 while Salesforce is spending fortunes on Sales staff as they do seem to be more proactive on the selling front.

              And yes if you haven't guessed I am biased I've been doing Dynamics since 2013 and I'm now an ISV specialising in PowerApps but that only began because I was a C# developer previously.
              Last edited by eek; 6 February 2020, 19:46. Reason: As I had probably unintentionally scared everyone none techie.
              merely at clientco for the entertainment

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                #8
                All the salesforce consultants I've had the misfortune to work with have been completely useless. If you've any technical competence, you should do well.

                Got one odata query from the bozos where they were querying every field of a table in the database, to see if it matched their search string. Even the fields that were numeric, or date. They were wondering why the query was taking so long.
                Down with racism. Long live miscegenation!

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                  #9
                  Originally posted by eek View Post
                  Salesforce is spending fortunes on Sales staff as they do seem to be more proactive on the selling front.
                  Truism for many a crap IT software product where they don't need to keep the techies and everyday users happy when they can get the best sales people (aka bullshiners, they shine the product that is a load of bull, may have just invented that ) to sell to the management that are in the main clueless about IT, they just want to look good to their boss and up the chain that goes.

                  So from a techy point of view try to find skills that don't cause an undue amount of stress in the daily usage, unless it's short term and the money makes it worth while. If you can get similar money for a better worklife experience then only a masochist chooses the harder path.

                  Crap software is the bane of many an IT career, choose your path wisely.
                  Maybe tomorrow, I'll want to settle down. Until tomorrow, I'll just keep moving on.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Originally posted by Hobosapien View Post
                    Truism for many a crap IT software product where they don't need to keep the techies and everyday users happy when they can get the best sales people (aka bullshiners, they shine the product that is a load of bull, may have just invented that ) to sell to the management that are in the main clueless about IT, they just want to look good to their boss and up the chain that goes.

                    So from a techy point of view try to find skills that don't cause an undue amount of stress in the daily usage, unless it's short term and the money makes it worth while. If you can get similar money for a better worklife experience then only a masochist chooses the harder path.

                    Crap software is the bane of many an IT career, choose your path wisely.
                    You can say things about SalesForce I won't upset potential customers until they tell me why they hate their current system.
                    merely at clientco for the entertainment

                    Comment

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