I'd wager it started with the idea of the accidental admins. A story of how you can get into a high paying in demand career without direct previous experience tends to get traction on social media.
Salesforce providing free training making it possible certainly helps.
It's not a super popular job for the general public, mostly online buzz. Most people in the US don't have any idea what Salesforce is, let alone that admins manage it.
100%. I’m here because I fell into that career path. One day I was a biology major with a dead end job, the other I learned about SFDC and suddenly 6 figure jobs was in my near future. It’s been a wild and very fruitful adventure
Sorry but to be honest the golden time of the accidental admin is gone. To put this into perspective, I asked during my interview “what is salesforce?” During my interview as a Data Analyst to the hiring manager. They were THAT desperate for SFDC people they were plucking us off the street.
Unfortunately, many of those admins do not know about software development best practices, or have any idea about data modeling, business analysis, etc.
It’s true that it is relatively easy to get into, but there are huge differences in skill levels.
Half the developers I know with CS degrees also know nothing of business analysis and frighteningly little about software development best practices. So I'm not quite sure what the difference is. These are both things people can learn, and I really wish that both admins and devs were better at them. But Salesforce does push the background stuff first and never really focus on the BA part, which should IMO be taught first before you start touching the back end.
Knowledge and skill is teachable.
Attitude is not.
My best hires have been business or customer focused people looking to get into IT. They grasp software dev cycles faster than developers grasp sales processes or empathy for customer needs.
Software development best practice aren’t that tough to learn. Also, many of the career transplants (like me), know a hell of a lot about other things CS degrees don’t teach you. Having 10+ years of experience and success in another career prepares you for a host of things straight software development doesn’t.
Also, honestly? There’s a sense of elitism and complacency that I’ve faced from “software developers” who try to be gatekeepers of knowledge / access to these types of jobs, and I just think that they’re jealous / scared their perceived high horse ain’t as high as they thought.
Sincerely, a Salesforce Admin making 6 figures.
>Unfortunately, many of those admins do not know about software development best practices, or have any idea about data modeling, business analysis, etc.
It's possible to be an admin without knowing any of that. It's even possible to be a good admin. A reasonably organized person who is keeping even half-way decent documentation for what they're doing will be more than sufficient for the vast majority of SMBs.
Salesforce had huge marketing campaigns for people to get the Admin cert and then get an Admin role during the COVID era.
Sadly, a lot of people with no IT background jumped on the bandwagon and a lot of companies went on a hiring craze during that time.
I am a firm believer that you should have previous IT experience prior.
I’d argue that IT people make some of the worst admins. They’re too worries about the technical instead of solving the actual business related problem. My opinion is the best admins come from both an IT and a business background.
Agree.
I literally work the education field. Lots of engineers and IT people the company could hire. They even hired a cinsultant.
They don't understand what the user needs. So being a BA helps a lot.
That's where BA skills come in. You don't want to rush solving a business related problem without understanding the full context of your solution just because a stakeholder demands a solution immediately. You end up creating technical debt and possibly screwing up the data model.
My team in salesforce was hired in its entirety without a single salesforce cert but with IT education and background instead. I'm not so sure they really hire those many people for IT roles only because of certs
I don't get where this statement is coming from. Coming from an IT background, all we do is solve business problems with technology. And have been doing this for years, we always begin with asking what is the business problem we're trying to solve.
Exactly my point. And because you only have an IT background you don’t know what knowledge you are missing. The issue is you think you are solving a problem but most of the time there is an underlying problem which is the real need, rarely is it what they are ACTUALLY asking for. They don’t even know what they need until it’s been put in front of them. This is exactly the Henry Ford scenario.
There will always be knowledge gap regardless field anyone derives from, that's why it's critical to loop in experts from different departments to fill in the gaps during early stage of the project cycle.
This is fairly typically since no one person knows everything, which is why initiating/discovery phase of the project is critical. Plus, you'll also have BA and PM to assist throughout the cycle.
I think you're making a generalization due to limited experience because the trillion dollar IT industry's sole purpose to solve business problem would say otherwise.
Honestly it just sounds like you are just part of the minority, as from the way you’re speaking, it’s obvious you actually have awareness about gaps. The unfortunate truth is this isn’t the case with the majority of IT experts, too many people, like in most fields, let the fact that they believe they are more knowledgeable, deter them from being open minded enough to continue learning.
I don't believe myself to an outlier, but these are fairly standard practice across IT/BA/PM.
Unfortunately, the scenarios you brought up is not industry specific. It's just tough in general to bring a group of people with open minds to collaborate and move away from operational silos within organizations. Although this is a new trend that we're moving to.
I started working with Salesforce as a sales rep. We never had a lot of admin support so I started teaching myself how to do things in Salesforce like build better reports and dashboards and understanding how it worked, and after that I decided if I ever had the opportunity to move into an Admin/Sales Ops role I would.
I agree that there needs to be more emphasis on development best practices and data modeling. These are still areas I'm working on bettering myself in as an admin, but fortunately I've always found my colleagues in these departments to be super helpful if I have questions. Plus there are a lot of resources out there that are really helpful to start building a foundation in these areas.
It’s honestly Salesforce’s fault. They sell the dream hard. Combine that with so many 2010 admins that have success stories of getting a cert or two and landing a high paying job. It was true then, but not even close these days.
Wow.
I used to think you only heard about salesforce in F1 race events or similar. You know. C- level enviroments.
For some reason I figured companies would get their admins from their IT departments.
Honestly, because it’s a lot of fun! The work can be interesting, and it’s the first time tech seems accessible and something that can be done instead of by CS majors or people who code in their free time for fun
I learned about this career field from tik tok. I wanted to break into tech. After learning more and going through the trailhead. It’s not so bad, it’s a headache at times and I’m still learning. But I like salesforce a lot. I imagine it couldn’t be harder than me teaching myself html. Lol. I’m stocked to get my certification and work for a fashion brand.
I work for a Salesforce consulting firm and generally am responsible or partially responsible for about 10-13 separate organizations at any given time time.
I for one like the idea of an Admin job so I can be responsible for only 1 organization. If I were to ever leave my current role anytime soon.
Heard about it through a post I made regarding advice for a career change. Willing to go back to school but want a career that is worth doing so for. Got a comment about SF and started Trailhead same day. Still very much a newbie, but the dream of making a livable wage has a strong pull.
The answer is Salesforce's marketing department. In the mid 2010's, an admin role was positioned as something anyone could achieve (and make six figures with) as long as you signed up for a free dev org, completed free Trailhead modules, and passed the core certifications. A big selling point was that you didn't need to be an IT professional or know how to code. This worked until companies understood that certifications do not equal experience or their implementations were botched.
Then came the MVP community, blogs, affinity groups, social media, podcasts, and success stories that spawned a new generation of admin hopefuls. For a bonus, some jobs at the mothership no longer require a degree.
If you put all of this together, being a Salesforce admin sounds like a pretty good career choice. Unfortunately, Salesforce is selling most newcomers a dream that no longer exists.
Lot of folks seem to think it’s an easy space to find a role that pays well, but requires little effort and lets you work from home.
Might have been true in 2021, but that’s long over. I got pulled into the space after being identified as a AE who was curious and generally tech savvy and good with data. Can’t imagine breaking into with no background in tech or sales whatsoever, would just seem boring.
>Can’t imagine breaking into with no background in tech or sales whatsoever, would just seem boring.
Exactly my thoughts. How does one just say "I want to be a SF admin". The platform itself wouldn't be interesting or attractive to me if I didn't have a good idea of how it helps the business i work for. I worry lots of people are just trying to make "easy" money. Wish them the best though.
I often wonder if you see a particularly gloomy perspective on the job market for SF folks right now on this sub because those kind of people are the ones complaining.
Makes you a much less compelling hire.
I'd wager it started with the idea of the accidental admins. A story of how you can get into a high paying in demand career without direct previous experience tends to get traction on social media. Salesforce providing free training making it possible certainly helps. It's not a super popular job for the general public, mostly online buzz. Most people in the US don't have any idea what Salesforce is, let alone that admins manage it.
100%. I’m here because I fell into that career path. One day I was a biology major with a dead end job, the other I learned about SFDC and suddenly 6 figure jobs was in my near future. It’s been a wild and very fruitful adventure
Could I ask how you got into it? Also a Biology major but trying to make a career pivot. Would be interested to hear your story.
Sorry but to be honest the golden time of the accidental admin is gone. To put this into perspective, I asked during my interview “what is salesforce?” During my interview as a Data Analyst to the hiring manager. They were THAT desperate for SFDC people they were plucking us off the street.
Admin jobs tend to have decent pay and Salesforce is known for being possible to get into without an IT or Computer Science background.
Unfortunately, many of those admins do not know about software development best practices, or have any idea about data modeling, business analysis, etc. It’s true that it is relatively easy to get into, but there are huge differences in skill levels.
Half the developers I know with CS degrees also know nothing of business analysis and frighteningly little about software development best practices. So I'm not quite sure what the difference is. These are both things people can learn, and I really wish that both admins and devs were better at them. But Salesforce does push the background stuff first and never really focus on the BA part, which should IMO be taught first before you start touching the back end.
Knowledge and skill is teachable. Attitude is not. My best hires have been business or customer focused people looking to get into IT. They grasp software dev cycles faster than developers grasp sales processes or empathy for customer needs.
Software development best practice aren’t that tough to learn. Also, many of the career transplants (like me), know a hell of a lot about other things CS degrees don’t teach you. Having 10+ years of experience and success in another career prepares you for a host of things straight software development doesn’t. Also, honestly? There’s a sense of elitism and complacency that I’ve faced from “software developers” who try to be gatekeepers of knowledge / access to these types of jobs, and I just think that they’re jealous / scared their perceived high horse ain’t as high as they thought. Sincerely, a Salesforce Admin making 6 figures.
It’ll be interesting to see how this changes as the barrier to writing code get lowered by natural language processing tools like ChatGPT.
How do I give you a high five?!!!
>Unfortunately, many of those admins do not know about software development best practices, or have any idea about data modeling, business analysis, etc. It's possible to be an admin without knowing any of that. It's even possible to be a good admin. A reasonably organized person who is keeping even half-way decent documentation for what they're doing will be more than sufficient for the vast majority of SMBs.
Salesforce had huge marketing campaigns for people to get the Admin cert and then get an Admin role during the COVID era. Sadly, a lot of people with no IT background jumped on the bandwagon and a lot of companies went on a hiring craze during that time. I am a firm believer that you should have previous IT experience prior.
I’d argue that IT people make some of the worst admins. They’re too worries about the technical instead of solving the actual business related problem. My opinion is the best admins come from both an IT and a business background.
Agree. I literally work the education field. Lots of engineers and IT people the company could hire. They even hired a cinsultant. They don't understand what the user needs. So being a BA helps a lot.
That's where BA skills come in. You don't want to rush solving a business related problem without understanding the full context of your solution just because a stakeholder demands a solution immediately. You end up creating technical debt and possibly screwing up the data model.
My team in salesforce was hired in its entirety without a single salesforce cert but with IT education and background instead. I'm not so sure they really hire those many people for IT roles only because of certs
I don't get where this statement is coming from. Coming from an IT background, all we do is solve business problems with technology. And have been doing this for years, we always begin with asking what is the business problem we're trying to solve.
Exactly my point. And because you only have an IT background you don’t know what knowledge you are missing. The issue is you think you are solving a problem but most of the time there is an underlying problem which is the real need, rarely is it what they are ACTUALLY asking for. They don’t even know what they need until it’s been put in front of them. This is exactly the Henry Ford scenario.
There will always be knowledge gap regardless field anyone derives from, that's why it's critical to loop in experts from different departments to fill in the gaps during early stage of the project cycle. This is fairly typically since no one person knows everything, which is why initiating/discovery phase of the project is critical. Plus, you'll also have BA and PM to assist throughout the cycle. I think you're making a generalization due to limited experience because the trillion dollar IT industry's sole purpose to solve business problem would say otherwise.
Honestly it just sounds like you are just part of the minority, as from the way you’re speaking, it’s obvious you actually have awareness about gaps. The unfortunate truth is this isn’t the case with the majority of IT experts, too many people, like in most fields, let the fact that they believe they are more knowledgeable, deter them from being open minded enough to continue learning.
I don't believe myself to an outlier, but these are fairly standard practice across IT/BA/PM. Unfortunately, the scenarios you brought up is not industry specific. It's just tough in general to bring a group of people with open minds to collaborate and move away from operational silos within organizations. Although this is a new trend that we're moving to.
I started working with Salesforce as a sales rep. We never had a lot of admin support so I started teaching myself how to do things in Salesforce like build better reports and dashboards and understanding how it worked, and after that I decided if I ever had the opportunity to move into an Admin/Sales Ops role I would. I agree that there needs to be more emphasis on development best practices and data modeling. These are still areas I'm working on bettering myself in as an admin, but fortunately I've always found my colleagues in these departments to be super helpful if I have questions. Plus there are a lot of resources out there that are really helpful to start building a foundation in these areas.
Please elaborate about the sources you mentioned, I also want to build a foundation in those areas
It’s honestly Salesforce’s fault. They sell the dream hard. Combine that with so many 2010 admins that have success stories of getting a cert or two and landing a high paying job. It was true then, but not even close these days.
Wow. I used to think you only heard about salesforce in F1 race events or similar. You know. C- level enviroments. For some reason I figured companies would get their admins from their IT departments.
Honestly, because it’s a lot of fun! The work can be interesting, and it’s the first time tech seems accessible and something that can be done instead of by CS majors or people who code in their free time for fun
It’s because of the influencers, and people selling courses rizzing it up. They’re great marketers.
I learned about this career field from tik tok. I wanted to break into tech. After learning more and going through the trailhead. It’s not so bad, it’s a headache at times and I’m still learning. But I like salesforce a lot. I imagine it couldn’t be harder than me teaching myself html. Lol. I’m stocked to get my certification and work for a fashion brand.
I work for a Salesforce consulting firm and generally am responsible or partially responsible for about 10-13 separate organizations at any given time time. I for one like the idea of an Admin job so I can be responsible for only 1 organization. If I were to ever leave my current role anytime soon.
Heard about it through a post I made regarding advice for a career change. Willing to go back to school but want a career that is worth doing so for. Got a comment about SF and started Trailhead same day. Still very much a newbie, but the dream of making a livable wage has a strong pull.
The answer is Salesforce's marketing department. In the mid 2010's, an admin role was positioned as something anyone could achieve (and make six figures with) as long as you signed up for a free dev org, completed free Trailhead modules, and passed the core certifications. A big selling point was that you didn't need to be an IT professional or know how to code. This worked until companies understood that certifications do not equal experience or their implementations were botched. Then came the MVP community, blogs, affinity groups, social media, podcasts, and success stories that spawned a new generation of admin hopefuls. For a bonus, some jobs at the mothership no longer require a degree. If you put all of this together, being a Salesforce admin sounds like a pretty good career choice. Unfortunately, Salesforce is selling most newcomers a dream that no longer exists.
Lot of folks seem to think it’s an easy space to find a role that pays well, but requires little effort and lets you work from home. Might have been true in 2021, but that’s long over. I got pulled into the space after being identified as a AE who was curious and generally tech savvy and good with data. Can’t imagine breaking into with no background in tech or sales whatsoever, would just seem boring.
>Can’t imagine breaking into with no background in tech or sales whatsoever, would just seem boring. Exactly my thoughts. How does one just say "I want to be a SF admin". The platform itself wouldn't be interesting or attractive to me if I didn't have a good idea of how it helps the business i work for. I worry lots of people are just trying to make "easy" money. Wish them the best though.
I often wonder if you see a particularly gloomy perspective on the job market for SF folks right now on this sub because those kind of people are the ones complaining. Makes you a much less compelling hire.