5 Mistakes of a Salesforce Developer

Hey everyone! I want to make your Salesforce developer journey easier. I teach coding, and I’ve seen lots of people try to learn but face different outcomes. In this article, I’ll talk about 5 mistakes of Beginner Salesforce Developers. Especially, of those who just start their Development journey.

Let’s dive in and uncover these key aspects!

#1 You can’t become Developer on Trailhead

The biggest mistake people make is thinking that you can become a Salesforce developer on the Trailhead. It’s impossible. Yes, you can learn some things on the Trailhead, but don’t put too much faith into it. Trailhead doesn’t have nearly enough training materials to become a Salesforce developer. The main reason for that is that Salesforce development is not one skill. It’s two different skills. It’s coding, and then it’s programming, and you can’t mix them up.

What is coding and programming?

You cannot try to learn programming first and then coding like this. What is the difference, you will ask? So let’s take an analogy. You want to learn how to write a book. First, you need to learn how to put words, right? Only then you can learn how to take the skill of writing words and make a story out of it. For coding, just like in storytelling and book writing, you wouldn’t start with the storytelling first, correct? That’s because you can’t. And the same goes for programming, you cannot start with the programming first. You have to learn coding first.

Top 5 mistakes while learning how to code

Coding is learning how to speak in machine language. You need to learn all the stuff, like: What is a loop? What is a variable? What is a class object? And only once you learn it, you can start with the programming. When you already have your coding knowledge, you can take your coding knowledge and apply it to the real world. And coding might be just one of the tools, that you will be using to solve real business problems.

9

 

So programming, it’s solving real business problems with coding skills. When you’re starting, focus on the left part, focus on learning how to code. The best part about learning how to code, it doesn’t matter in which language you learn.

#2 Not having a plan

I’ve had so many students and so many people reaching out to me and I asked them: “What does it mean for you to become a Salesforce developer or learn Salesforce development?”. And for all people, it means a completely different thing. For some people, it means working full-time as a Salesforce developer, it means that you want to become an architect.

How do I plan my Salesforce Development career?

Ask “Why?”

When you want to learn Salesforce development, ask yourself why. Why do you want to learn it? And then ask yourself again, again and again. This way you can find your real motivation for why you want to learn coding. Once you understand your real motivation, you can use it to stay motivated for a longer time.

16

Focus on internal goals

Another typical mistake – focusing only on external goals that don’t depend on you. That’s a straight way to exhaustion and burnout. What is an external goal?

  • Get a job in 6 months
  • Get a raise
  • Change titles
  • Work at Google

You see, these goals depend mostly on external conditions. If Google doesn’t hire – you won’t be able to accomplish the goal, no matter how much you try. Instead, focus of process and performance goals.

17

 

Process goals

Goals that focus creating a system or a process. For example:

  • Study Apex for 1 hour every day
  • Have at least 10 hours of coding per week
  • Solve 100 tasks

Those goals depend completely on you. And there are no excuses to not perform them. They also don’t set any stressful deadlines on you. If you work for 1 hour on your coding, it doesn’t say anything about how efficient this one hour should be. You might spend the whole hour just fighting you IDE. That’s fine, you did achieve your goal though!

Performance goals

Goals that have a skill proficiency as a metric. For example:

  • I want to be able to write a simple trigger
  • I want to develop an LWC with an API callout
  • I want to be able write trigger handlers.

These goals are usually good for measuring progress. Everyone sometimes feels that the progress that we achieve during learning how to code could be a little bit quicker. It’s normal. The cure to it – think in terms what mini-skills you need and create a big

#3 Focusing on the wrong thing

 

22

Another mistake is focusing on the wrong things. By the wrong things, I mean all the things that people say on the internet about how you should focus on certifications, LinkedIn, networking on YouTube, and so on – none of that matters as much as they say on the internet. The only thing that really matters for you to get a job, to be where you want to be, is skills.

Certification are important, very important. But not THAT important. Imagine one person 5x certified, has 5 volunteer projects, and has 10,000 followers on LinkedIn. Nice, right? And imagine the second person. The second person is just good in Salesforce development. The second person says: “Hey, I don’t have any certifications, but I’m good at building stuff on Salesforce. Hire me and I will be able to build the stuff that you want”.

 

25

A lot of developers, and the best developers that I’ve ever seen, have zero certifications. They have never posted anything online, but they have impressive records of what they’ve done throughout their career. I know the market now is so hard for Salesforce professionals, but the point is that the most focus that you should give is on developing the skills and then let maybe 5 percent of everything else on telling about those skills or maybe passing a certification, but this is the second because if you have the skills, you will be able to find a job.

#4 Not learning Git

Not learning Git is another mistake for people who want to learn Salesforce Development. Git exists to make developers’ lives easier, not harder. Yes, it’s not very easy to learn, but it’s worth it. I think I’ve only learned it in my first year as a Salesforce developer, and I wish I’d learned it a little bit earlier in my career.

It amazes me that beginners don’t learn Git. But I’ll let you in on a little secret: you’ll be working with Git every time you write code. So, if you write code every day as a junior developer, you’ll be working with Git every day. How can you not learn a tool that you will use every day?

#5 Not asking questions

The last mistake is not asking for help. And that was one of the biggest mistakes that I’ve made. I could not understand that it was normal to ask questions. I wish I could go back and shout to myself: “Hey, it’s okay to ask questions because when you ask questions, you feel like you’re exposing yourself to something you don’t know.” It is normal to not know something. There’s not a single person on earth who knows everything that you need to ask people. And once you start asking, you’ll see that there are a lot of good people out there that people, especially the Salesforce community, are willing to help.

30

 

If you have a senior developer colleague or mentor, reach out to them and ask questions, and you’ll find that they want to help you. However, if you ask a CTA, how to become a Junior Salesforce Developer, chances are that the CTA won’t give you a good answer. But if you ask someone who just got their first job how to get that job, they can tell you what they did. You’ll be surprised how much you can learn if you ask.

<h4 class="item-title">admin</h4>

admin

Related Posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

t.me/ihor_igor

Subscribe for news about new courses or discounts.

No spam, we promise.


    © 2023 All Rights Reserved by site  igor@cloud-prism.com