5 ms·

I am the COO of Salesforce. Two of the top ten jobs on Indeed are Salesforce Admin and Salesforce Developer, and the jobs are distributed around the world. We h

I am the COO of Salesforce. Two of the top ten jobs on Indeed are Salesforce Admin and Salesforce Developer, and the jobs are distributed around the world. We have a ton of stories of folks transitioning into the ecosystem and developing an extremely successful career. Notably, our certifications are freely available at https://www.trailhead.com/ https://www.trailhead.com/. You can get started, learn, and get credentials for free. It is a great place to start, and we purposely made our learning and credentialing free so we could make it as easy as possible for folks pivoting mid-career into Salesforce. I would be happy to point you in the right direction. My email is bret.taylor@salesforce.com.

sz4kerto 5y ago
I love HN.
mattharney 5y ago
Seriously impressed by your responsiveness here.
karagenit 5y ago
Off topic, but really excited to intern with you this summer :)
- finiteloop 5y ago
  Excited to work with you!
geff82 5y ago
Screenshotted your response instantly. Thanks.
gtt 5y ago
What does Salesforce really do? I could never warp my head around it. Could you ELI5?
- duckfang 5y ago
  From what I gather, they're a: Expensive and hugely expansible webapp built on top of Oracle that allows admins to make and track customers through the sales pipeline using various methods. The software's intent is for marketing, sales, and execs to see how various campaigns are running and how to control them. They're usually outside of standard devops pipeline by a good distance. The downside: Salesforce seems to be at the whim of Oracle, who has their own competing product in the CRM category. And I'm also studying it, and working towards the certs myself. May not be looooong term, but people with this knowledge do tend to get paid well. (Anything connected with marketing/sales does)
  - ilikeerp 5y ago
    At the whim of oracle? Built 'on top' of oracle? Using an Oracle DB doesn't make you a slave to Oracle Corp. It's also not expensive. Some of the businesses cases I've seen for SF have a massive ROI.
  - gher-shyu3i 5y ago
    Haven't they moved off of Oracle? I recall seeing they had job openings for Postgres admins with the intention of moving off of Oracle.
    - jeremyrbrown 5y ago
      its in progress. there surely are a lot of dependencies to work through. That said - I don't think Oracle would be legally allowed to or capable of damaging Salesforce by witholding licenses or whatever. And the fact that they are on Oracle currently has no effect on the developer, admin, or user facing APIs. like any cloud provider all of that is abstracted away.
- quacked 5y ago
  (I am not affiliated with SFDC) The SalesForce product is essentially a large-scale set of software tools that can be used to manage data and communications (marketing, analytics, contracts, timelines, schedules, records, helpdesk tickets, payments, etc.) between vendors and clients. It's a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. The reason it's not clear what their product is to non-users is that there isn't really a "default SalesForce experience"; the point of buying their software is that they (or you) are supposed to be able to customize it to the point where you can use it in exactly the way your business requires. Whether or not that is actually true is the subject of many lengthy debates on HN.
vips7L 5y ago
Shameless plug, lots of good people (admins, devs, MVPs, SFDC internal) that can help you along your journey in the SFXD discord as well [0]. https://join.sfxd.org https://join.sfxd.org
lovetocode 5y ago
I thought Salesforce certifications had registration fees. Has that changed?
- slimbods 5y ago
  There's two kinds. The certs do need paying for and test centres. Trailheads are free and give you badges. These are great as an intro, but I think many employers want the real certs.

sz4kerto 5y ago

I love HN.

mattharney 5y ago

Seriously impressed by your responsiveness here.

karagenit 5y ago

Off topic, but really excited to intern with you this summer :)

finiteloop 5y ago
Excited to work with you!

geff82 5y ago

Screenshotted your response instantly. Thanks.

gtt 5y ago

What does Salesforce really do? I could never warp my head around it. Could you ELI5?

duckfang 5y ago
From what I gather, they're a: Expensive and hugely expansible webapp built on top of Oracle that allows admins to make and track customers through the sales pipeline using various methods. The software's intent is for marketing, sales, and execs to see how various campaigns are running and how to control them. They're usually outside of standard devops pipeline by a good distance. The downside: Salesforce seems to be at the whim of Oracle, who has their own competing product in the CRM category. And I'm also studying it, and working towards the certs myself. May not be looooong term, but people with this knowledge do tend to get paid well. (Anything connected with marketing/sales does)
- ilikeerp 5y ago
  At the whim of oracle? Built 'on top' of oracle? Using an Oracle DB doesn't make you a slave to Oracle Corp. It's also not expensive. Some of the businesses cases I've seen for SF have a massive ROI.
- gher-shyu3i 5y ago
  Haven't they moved off of Oracle? I recall seeing they had job openings for Postgres admins with the intention of moving off of Oracle.
  - jeremyrbrown 5y ago
    its in progress. there surely are a lot of dependencies to work through. That said - I don't think Oracle would be legally allowed to or capable of damaging Salesforce by witholding licenses or whatever. And the fact that they are on Oracle currently has no effect on the developer, admin, or user facing APIs. like any cloud provider all of that is abstracted away.
quacked 5y ago
(I am not affiliated with SFDC) The SalesForce product is essentially a large-scale set of software tools that can be used to manage data and communications (marketing, analytics, contracts, timelines, schedules, records, helpdesk tickets, payments, etc.) between vendors and clients. It's a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. The reason it's not clear what their product is to non-users is that there isn't really a "default SalesForce experience"; the point of buying their software is that they (or you) are supposed to be able to customize it to the point where you can use it in exactly the way your business requires. Whether or not that is actually true is the subject of many lengthy debates on HN.

vips7L 5y ago

Shameless plug, lots of good people (admins, devs, MVPs, SFDC internal) that can help you along your journey in the SFXD discord as well [0]. https://join.sfxd.org https://join.sfxd.org

lovetocode 5y ago

I thought Salesforce certifications had registration fees. Has that changed?

slimbods 5y ago
There's two kinds. The certs do need paying for and test centres. Trailheads are free and give you badges. These are great as an intro, but I think many employers want the real certs.