Podcasts Technology Screaming in the Cloud The World of Salesforce Cloud Development with Evelyn Grizzle

The World of Salesforce Cloud Development with Evelyn Grizzle

Published: July 27, 2023, 10 a.m.

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Evelyn Grizzle, Senior Salesforce Developer, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss the often-misunderstood and always exciting world of Salesforce development. Evelyn explains why Salesforce Development is still seen as separate from traditional cloud development, and describes the work of breaking down barriers and silos between Salesforce developers and engineering departments. Corey and Evelyn discuss how a non-traditional background can benefit people who want to break into tech careers, and Evelyn reveals the best parts of joining the Salesforce community.\\xa0

About Evelyn

Evelyn is a Salesforce Certified Developer and Application Architect and 2023 Salesforce MVP Nominee. They enjoy full stack Salesforce development, most recently having built a series of Lightning Web Components that utilize a REST callout to a governmental database to verify the licensure status of a cannabis dispensary. An aspiring Certified Technical Architect candidate, Evelyn prides themself on deploying secure and scalable architecture. With over ten years of customer service experience prior to becoming a Salesforce Developer, Evelyn is adept at communicating with both technical and non-technical internal and external stakeholders. When they are not writing code, Evelyn enjoys coaching for RADWomenCode, mentoring through the Trailblazer Mentorship Program, and rollerskating.


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Transcript


Announcer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.



Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I\\u2019m Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. But what do we mean by cloud? Well, people have the snarky answer of, it\\u2019s always someone else\\u2019s computer. I tend to view it through a lens of being someone else\\u2019s call center, which is neither here nor there.



But it all seems to come back to Infrastructure as a Service, which is maddeningly incomplete. Today, we\\u2019re going in a slightly different direction in the world of cloud. My guest today is Evelyn Grizzle, who, among many other things, is also the author of anothersalesforceblog.com. I want to be clear, that is not me being dismissive. That is the actual name of the blog. Evelyn, thank you for joining me.



Evelyn: Hi, Corey. Thank you for having me.



Corey: So, I want to talk a little bit about one of the great unacknowledged secrets of the industry, which is that every company out there, sooner or later, uses Salesforce. They talk about their cloud infrastructure, but Salesforce is nowhere to be seen in it. But, for God\\u2019s sake, at The Duckbill Group, we are a Salesforce customer. Everyone uses Salesforce. How do you think that wound up not being included in the narrative of cloud in quite the same way as AWS or, heaven forbid, Azure?



Evelyn: So, Salesforce is kind of at the proverbial kid\\u2019s table in terms of the cloud infrastructure at most companies. And this is relatively because the end-users are, you know, sales reps. We\\u2019ve got people in call centers who are working on Salesforce, taking in information, taking in leads, opportunities, creating accounts for folks. And it\\u2019s kind of seen as a lesser service because the primary users of Salesforce are not necessarily the techiest people on the planet. So, I am really passionate about, like, making sure that end-users are respected.



Salesforce actually just added a new certification, the Sales Representative Certification that you can get. That kind of gives you insight to what it\\u2019s like to use Salesforce as an end-user. And given that Salesforce is for sales, a lot of times Salesforce is kind of grouped under the Financial Services portion of a company as opposed to, like, engineering. So again, kind of at the proverbial kid\\u2019s table; we\\u2019re over in finance, and the engineering team who\\u2019s working on the website, they have their engineering stuff.



And a lot of people don\\u2019t really know what Salesforce is. So, to give a rundown, basically, Salesforce development is, I lovingly referred to it as bastard Java full-stack development. Apex, the proprietary language, is based in Java, so you have your server-side Java interface with the Salesforce relational database. There\\u2019s the Salesforce Object Query Language and Salesforce Object Search Language that you can use to interact with the database. And then you build out front-end components using HTML and JavaScript, which a lot of people don\\u2019t know.



So, it\\u2019s not only an issue of the end-users are call center reps, their analysts, they\\u2019re working on stuff that isn\\u2019t necessarily considered techie, but there\\u2019s also kind of an institutional breakdown of, like, what is Salesforce? This person is just dragging and dropping when that isn\\u2019t true. It\\u2019s actually, you know, we\\u2019re writing code, we\\u2019re doing stuff, we\\u2019re basically writing full-stack Java. So, I like to call that out.



Corey: I mean, your undergraduate degree is in network engineering, let\\u2019s be very clear. This is\\u2014I\\u2019m not speaking to you as someone who\\u2019s non-technical trying to justify what they do as being technical. You have come from a very deep place that no one would argue is, \\u201cWell, that\\u2019s not real computering.\\u201d Oh, I assure you, networking is very much real computering, and so is Salesforce. I have zero patience for this gatekeeping nonsense we see in so many areas of tech, but I found this out firsthand when we started trying to get set up with Salesforce here. It took wailing and gnashing of teeth and contractor upon contractor. Some agencies did not do super well, some people had to come in and rescue the project. And now it mostly\\u2014I think\\u2014works.



Evelyn: Yeah, and that\\u2019s what we go for. And actually, so my degree is in network engineering, but an interesting story about me. I actually went to school for chemical engineering. I hated it. It was the worst. And I dropped out of school did, like, data analytics for a while. Worked my way up as a call center rep at a telephone company and made a play into database administration. And because I was working at the phone company, my degree is in network engineering because I was like, \\u201cI want to work at the phone company forever.\\u201d Of course that did not pan out. I got a job doing Salesforce development and really enjoy it. There\\u2019s always something to learn. I taught myself Salesforce while I was working at IBM, and with the Blue Wolf department that\\u2026 they\\u2019re a big Salesforce consulting shop at IBM, and through their guidance and tutelage, I guess, I did a lot of training and worked up on Salesforce. And it\\u2019s been a lot of fun.



Corey: I do feel that I need to raise my hand here and say that I am in the group you described earlier of not really understanding what Salesforce is. My first real exposure to Salesforce in anything approaching a modern era was when I was at a small consulting company that has since been bought by IBM, which rather than opine on that, what I found interesting was the Salesforce use case where we wound up using that internally to track where all the consultants were deployed, how they wound up doing on their most recent refresher skills assessment, et cetera, so that when we had something strange, like a customer coming in with, \\u201cI need someone who knows the AS/400 really well,\\u201d we could query that database internally and say, \\u201cAh. We happen to have someone coming off of a project who does in fact, know how that system works. Let\\u2019s throw them into the mix.\\u201d And that was incredibly powerful, but I never thought of it as being a problem that a tool that was aimed primarily at sales would be effective at solving. I was very clearly wrong.



Evelyn: Yeah. So, the thing about Salesforce is there\\u2019s a bunch of different clouds that you can access. So there\\u2019s, like, Health Cloud, Service Cloud, Sales Cloud is the most common, you know, Salesforce, Sales Cloud, obviously. But Service Cloud is going to be a service-based Salesforce organization that allows you to track folks, your HR components, you\\u2019re going to track your people. There\\u2019s also Field Service Lightning.



And an interesting use case I had for Field Service Lightning, which is a application that\\u2019s built on top of Salesforce that allows field technicians to access Salesforce, one of the coolest projects I\\u2019ve built in my career so far is, the use case is, there\\u2019s an HVAC company that wants to be able to charge customers when they go out into the field. And they want to have their technician pull out an iPad, swipe the credit card, and it charges the customer for however much duct tape they used, however much piping, whatever, duct work they do. Like I said, I\\u2019m a software engineer, I\\u2019m not a HVAC person, but\\u2014



Corey: It\\u2019s the AWS building equivalent for HVAC, as best I can tell. It\\u2019s like all right, \\u201cBy the metric foot-pound\\u2014\\u201d \\u201cIsn\\u2019t that a torque measurement?\\u201d \\u201cNot anymore.\\u201d Yeah, that\\u2019s how we\\u2019re going to bill you for time and materials. It\\u2019ll be great.



Evelyn: Exactly. So, this project I built out, it connects with Square, which is awesome. And Field Service Lightning allows this technician to see where they\\u2019re supposed to go on the map, it pulls up all the information, a trigger in Salesforce, an automation, pulls all the information into Field Service Lightning, and then you run the card, it webhooks into Square, you send the information back. And it was a really fun project to work on. So, that was actually a use case I had not thought of for Salesforce is, you know, being able to do something like this in the field and making a technician\\u2019s job that much easier.



Corey: That\\u2019s really when I started to feel, as this Salesforce deployment we were doing here started rolling out, it wasn\\u2019t just\\u2014my opinion on it was like, \\u201cWait, isn\\u2019t this basically just that Excel sheet somewhere that we can have?\\u201d And it starts off that way, sure, but then you have people\\u2014for example, we\\u2019ve made extensive use of aspects of this over on the media side of our business, where we have different people that we\\u2019ve reached out to who then matriculate on to other companies and become sponsors in that side of the world. And how do we track this? How do we wind up figuring out what\\u2019s currently in flight that doesn\\u2019t live in someone\\u2019s head, or God forbid, email inbox? How do we start reasoning about these things in a more holistic way?



We went in a slightly different direction before rolling it out to handle all of the production pieces and the various things we have in flight, but I could have easily seen a path whereas we instead went down that rabbit hole and used it as more or less the ERP, for lack of a better term, for running a services business.



Evelyn: Yeah. And that is one thing you can use Salesforce as an ERP. FinancialForce, now Certinia, exists, so it is possible to use Salesforce as an ERP, but there\\u2019s so much more to it than that. And Salesforce, at its heart, is a relational database with a fancy user interface. And when I say, \\u201cI\\u2019m a Salesforce developer,\\u201d they\\u2019re like, \\u201cOh, you work at Salesforce?\\u201d And I\\u2019m like, \\u201cNo, not quite. I customize Salesforce for companies that purchase Salesforce as a Salesforce customer.\\u201d



And the extensibility of the platform is really awesome. And you know, speaking of the external clients that want to use Salesforce, there\\u2019s, like, Community Cloud where you can come in and have guest users. You can have your\\u2014if you are, say at a phone company, you can have a troubleshooting help center. You can have chatbots in Salesforce. I have a lot of friends who are working on AI chatbots with the Einstein AI within Salesforce, which is actually really cool. So, there is a lot of functionality that is extensible within Salesforce beyond just a basic Excel spreadsheet. And it\\u2019s a lot of fun.



Corey: If I pull up your website, anothersalesforceblog.com, one of the first things that you mentioned on the About the Author page just below the fold, is that you are an eight-time Salesforce Certified Developer and application architect. Like, wow, \\u201cEight different certifications? What is this, AWS, on some level?\\u201d



I think that there\\u2019s not a broad level of awareness in the ecosystem, just how vast the Salesforce-specific ecosystem really is. It seems like there\\u2019s an entire, I want to reprise the term that someone\\u2014I can\\u2019t recall who\\u2014used to describe Dark Matter developers, the people that you don\\u2019t generally see in most of the common developer watering holes like Stack Overflow, or historically shitposting on Twitter, but they\\u2019re out there. They rock in, they do their jobs. Why is it that we don\\u2019t see more Salesforce representation in, I guess, the usual tech watering holes?



Evelyn: So, we do have a Stack Overflow, a Stack Exchange as well. They are separate entities that are within the greater Stack websites. And I assure you, there\\u2019s lots of Salesforce shitposting on Twitter. I used to be very good at it, but no longer on Twitter due to personal reasons. We\\u2019ll leave it at that.



But yeah, Dreamforce is like a massive conference that happens in San Francisco every year. We are gearing up for that right now. And there\\u2019s not a lot of visibility into Salesforce outside of that it feels like. It\\u2019s kind of an insulated community. And that goes back to the Salesforce being at the kids\\u2019 table in the engineering departments.



And one of the things that I\\u2019ve been working on in my current role is really breaking down the barriers and the silos between the engineering department who\\u2019s working on JavaScript, they\\u2019re working on Node, they\\u2019re working on HTML, they\\u2019re, you know, building websites with React or whatever, and I\\u2019m coming in and saying, like, hey, we do the same thing. I can build a Heroku app in React, if I want to, I can do PHP, I can do this. And that\\u2019s one of the cool things about Salesforce is some days I get to write in, like, five or six different languages if I want to. So, that is something that, there\\u2019s not a lot of understanding. Because again, relational database with a fancy user interface.



To the outside, it may seem like we\\u2019re dragging and dropping stuff. Which yes, there is some stuff. I love Flows, which are\\u2026 they\\u2019re drag-and-drop automations that you can do within Salesforce that are actually really powerful. In the most recent update, you can actually do an HTTP call-out in a Flow, which is something that\\u2019s, like, unheard of for a Salesforce admin with no coding background can come in, they can call an Apex class, they can do an HTTP call-out to an external resource and say, like, \\u201cHey, I want to grab this information, pull it back into Salesforce, and get running off the ground with, like, zero development resources, if there are none available.\\u201d



Corey: I want to call out just for people who think this is more niche than it really is. I live in San Francisco. And I remember back in pre-Covid times, back when Dreamforce was in town. I started seeing a bunch of, you know, nerdy-looking people with badges. Oh, it\\u2019s a tech conference, what conference is it? It\\u2019s something called Dreamforce for Salesforce.



Oh, is that like the sad small equivalent of re:Invent in Las Vegas? And it\\u2019s no, no, it\\u2019s actually about three times the size. 170,000 people descend on San Francisco to attend this conference. It is massive. And it was a real eye-opener for me just to understand that. I mean, I have a background in sales before I got into tech and I did not realize that this entire ecosystem existed. It really does feel like it is more or less invisible and made me wonder what the hell else I\\u2019m missing, as I am too myopically focused on one particular giant cloud company to the point where it has now become a major facet of my personality.



Evelyn: And that\\u2019s the thing is there\\u2019s all kinds of community events as well. So, I\\u2019m actually speaking at Forcelandia which, it\\u2019s a Salesforce developer-focused event that is in Portland\\u2014Forcelandia, obviously\\u2014and I\\u2019m going to be speaking on a project that I built for my current company that is, like, REST APIs, we\\u2019ve got some encryption, we\\u2019ve got a front-end widget that you drop into a Salesforce object. Which, a Salesforce object is a table within the relational database, and being able to use polymorphic object relationships within Salesforce and really extending the functionality of Salesforce. So, if you\\u2019re in Portland, I will be at Forcelandia on July 13th and I\\u2019m really excited about it.



But it\\u2019s this really cool ecosystem that, you know, there\\u2019s events all over the world, every month, happening. And we\\u2019ve got Mile High Dreamin\\u2019 coming up in August, which I\\u2019ll be at as well, speaking there on how to break into the ecosystem from a non-tech role, which will be exciting. But yeah, it\\u2019s a really vibrant community like, and it\\u2019s a really close-knit community as well. Everyone is so super helpful. If I have a question on Stack Exchange, or, you know, back in my Twittering days, if I\\u2019d have something on Twitter, I could just post out and blast out, and the whole Salesforce community would come in with answers, which is awesome. I feel like the Stack Exchange is not the friendliest place on the planet, so to be able to have people who, like, I recognize that username and this person is going to come and help me out. And that\\u2019s really cool. I like that about the Salesforce community.



Corey: Yeah, a ding for a second on the whole Stack Exchange thing. That the Stack Overflow survey was fascinating, and last year, they showed that 92% of their respondents were male. So, this year, they fixed that problem and did not ask the question. So, I just refer to it nowadays as Stack Broverflow because that\\u2019s exactly how it seems.



Evelyn: [laugh].



Corey: And that is a giant problem. I just didn\\u2019t want that to pass uncommented-on in public. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to basically\\u2014



Evelyn: Fair enough.



Corey: \\u2014mouth off about that crappy misbehavior.



Evelyn: Oh, yeah. No. And that\\u2019s one of the things that I really like about the Salesforce community is there\\u2019s actually, like, a huge movement towards gender equity and parity. So, one of the organizations that I\\u2019m involved with is RAD Women Code, which is a nonprofit that Angela Mahoney and a couple of other women started that it seeks to upskill women and other marginalized genders from Salesforce admins, which are your declarative users within Salesforce that set up the security settings, they set up the database relationships, they make metadata changes within Salesforce, and take that relational database knowledge and then upskill them into Salesforce developers.



And right now, there is a two-part course that you can sign up for. If you have I believe it\\u2019s a year or two of Salesforce admin experience and you are a woman or other marginalized gender, you can sign up and take part one, which is a very intro to computer programming, you go over the basics of object-oriented programming, a little bit of Java, a little bit of SOQL, which is the Salesforce Object Query Language. And then you build projects, which is really awesome, which is, like, the most effective way to learn is actually building stuff. And then the second part of the course is, like, a more advanced, like, let\\u2019s get into our bash classes, which is like an automation that you can run every night. Let\\u2019s do advanced object-oriented programming topics like abstraction and polymorphism. And being able to teach that is really fun.



We\\u2019re also planning on adding a third course, which is going to be the front-end development in Salesforce, which is your HTML, your JavaScript. Salesforce uses vanilla JavaScript, which I love, personally. I know I\\u2019m alone in that. I know that\\u2019s the big meme on Facebook in the programming groups is \\u2018JavaScript bad,\\u2019 but I have fun with it. There\\u2019s a lot you can do with just native JavaScript in Salesforce. Like, you can grab the geolocation of a device and print it onto a Salesforce object record using just vanilla JavaScript. And it\\u2019s been really helpful. I\\u2019ve done that a few times on various projects.



But yeah, we\\u2019re planning on adding a third course. We are currently getting ready to launch the pilot program on that for RAD Women Code. So, if you are listening to this, and you are a Salesforce admin who is a marginalized gender, definitely hit me up on LinkedIn and I will send you some information because it\\u2019s a really good program and I love being able to help out with it.



Corey: We\\u2019ll definitely include links to that in the [show notes 00:18:59]. I mean, this does tie into the next question I have, which is, how do you go about giving a cohesive talk or even talking at all about Salesforce, given the tremendous variety in terms of technical skills people bring to bear with it, the backgrounds that they have going into it? It feels, on some level, like, it\\u2019s only a half-step removed from, \\u201cSo, you\\u2019re into computers? Here\\u2019s a conference for that.\\u201d Which I understand, let\\u2019s be clear here, that I am speaking from the position of the AWS ecosystem, which is throwing stones in a very fragile glass house.



Evelyn: Yeah, so again, I said this already. When I say I\\u2019m a Salesforce developer, people say, \\u201cOh, you work at Salesforce. That is so cool.\\u201d And I have to say, \\u201cNo, no. No working at Salesforce. I work on Salesforce in the proprietary system.\\u201d But there\\u2019s always stuff to be learned. There\\u2019s obviously, like, two releases a year where they send updates to the Salesforce software that companies are running on and working on computers is kind of how I sum it up, but yeah, I don\\u2019t know [laugh].



Corey: No, I think that\\u2019s a fair place to come at from. It\\u2019s, I think that we all have a bit of a bias in that we tend to assume that other people, in the absence of data to the contrary, have similar backgrounds and experiences to our own. And that means in many cases, we paper over things that are not necessarily true. We find ourselves biasing for people whose paths resemble our own, which is not inherently a bad thing until it becomes exclusionary. But it does tend to occlude the fact that there are many paths to this broader industry.



Evelyn: Yeah. So, there is a term in the Salesforce ecosystem, we like to call people accidental admins, where they learn Salesforce on a job and like it so much that they become a Salesforce admin. And a lot of times these folks will then become developers and then architects, even, which is kind of how I got into it as well. I started at a phone company as a Salesforce end-user, worked my way up as a database admin, database coordinator doing e911 databases, and then transitioned into software engineering from there. So, there\\u2019s a lot of folks who find themselves within the Salesforce ecosystem, and yeah, there are people with, like, bonafide top-ten computer science school degrees, and you know, we\\u2019ve got a fair bit of that, but one thing that I really like about the Salesforce ecosystem is because everyone\\u2019s so friendly and helpful and because there\\u2019s so many resources to upskill folks, it\\u2019s really easy to get involved in the ecosystem.



Like Trailhead, the training platform for Salesforce is entirely free. You can sign up for an account, you can learn anything on Salesforce from end-user stuff to Salesforce architecture and anything in between. So, that\\u2019s how most people study for their certifications. And I love Trailhead. It\\u2019s a very fun little modules.



It gamifies learning and you get little, I call them Girl Scout badges because they resemble, you know, you have your Girl Scout vest and your Girl Scout sash, and you get the little badges. So, when you complete a project, you get a badge\\u2014or if you work on a big project, a super badge\\u2014that you can then put on your resume and say, \\u201cHey, I built this 12-hour project in Salesforce Trailhead.\\u201d And some of them are required for certifications. So, you can say, \\u201cI did this. I got this certification, and I can actually showcase my skills and what I\\u2019ve been working on.\\u201d



So, it really makes a good entrance to the ecosystem. Because there\\u2019s a lot of people who want to break into tech that don\\u2019t necessarily have that background that are able to do so and really, really shine. And I tell people, like, let\\u2019s see, it\\u2019s 2023. Eight years ago, I was a barista. I was doing undergraduate research and working in a coffee shop. And that\\u2019s really helped me in my career.



And a lot of people don\\u2019t think about this, but the soft skills that you learn in, like, a food service job or a retail job are really helpful for communicating with those internal and external stakeholders, technical and non-technical stakeholders. And if you\\u2019ve ever been yelled at by a Karen on a Sunday morning, in a university town on graduation weekend, you can handle any project manager. So, that\\u2019s one thing that, like, because there\\u2019s so many resources in the ecosystem, there\\u2019s so many people with so many varied backgrounds in the ecosystem, it\\u2019s a really welcoming place. And there\\u2019s not, like\\u2026 I don\\u2019t know, there\\u2019s not a lot of, like, degree shaming or school shaming or background shaming that I feel happens in some other tech spaces. You know, I see your face you\\u2019re making there. I know you know what I\\u2019m talking about. But\\u2014[laugh].



Corey: I have an eighth-grade education on paper. My 20s were very interesting. Now, it\\u2019s a fun story, but it was very tricky to get past a lot of that bias early on in my career. You\\u2019re not wrong.



Evelyn: Absolutely. And like I said, eight years ago, I was a barista. I went to school for chemical engineering. I have an engineering background, I have most of a chemical engineering degree. I just hated it so much.



But getting into Salesforce honestly changed my life because I worked my way up from a call center as an end-user on Salesforce. Being able to say I have worked as a consultant. I have worked as a staff software engineer, I have worked at an ISV partner, which if you don\\u2019t know what that is, Salesforce has an app store, kind of like the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store, but purely apps on Salesforce, and it\\u2019s called the Salesforce App Exchange. So, if you have Salesforce, you can extend your functionality by adding an app from the App Exchange to if you want to use Salesforce as an ERP, for example, you can add the Certinia app from the App Exchange. And I\\u2019ve worked on AppExchange apps before, and now I\\u2019m like, making a big kid salary and, like, it\\u2019s really, really kind of cool because ten years ago, I didn\\u2019t think my life was going to be like this, and I owe it to\\u2014I\\u2019m going to give my old boss Scott Bell a shout out on this because he hired me, and I\\u2019m happy about it, so thank you, Scott for taking a chance and letting me learn Salesforce. Because now I\\u2019m on Screaming in the Cloud, which is really cool, so\\u2014talking about Salesforce, which is dorky, but it\\u2019s really fun.




Corey: If it works, what\\u2019s wrong with it?



Evelyn: Exactly.



Corey: There\\u2019s a lot to be said for helping people find a path forward. One of the things that I\\u2019ve always been taken aback by has been just how much small gestures can mean to people. I mean, I\\u2019ve had people thanked me for things I\\u2019ve done for them in their career that I don\\u2019t even remember because it was, \\u201cYou introduced me to someone once,\\u201d or, \\u201cYou sat down with me at a conference and talked for 20 minutes about something that then changed the course of my career.\\u201d And honestly, I feel like a jerk when I don\\u2019t remember some of these things, but it\\u2019s a yeah, you asked me my opinion, I\\u2019m thrilled to give it to you, but the choices beyond that are yours. It still sticks out, though, that the things I do can have that level of impact for people.



Evelyn: Yeah, absolutely. And that\\u2019s one of the things about the Salesforce community is there are so many opportunities to make those potentially life-changing moments for people. You can give back by being a Trailblazer Mentor, you can sign up for Trailblazer Mentorship from any level of your career, from being a basic fresh, green admin to signing up for architecture lessons. And the highest level of certification in Salesforce is the Certified Technical Architect. There\\u2019s, like, 300 of them in the world and there are nonprofits that are entirely dedicated to helping marginalized genders and women and black and indigenous people of color to make these milestones and go for the Certified Technical Architect certification.



And there\\u2019s lots of opportunities to give back and create those moments for people. And I spoke at Forcelandia last year, and one of the things that I did\\u2014it was the Women in Tech breakfast, and we went over my LinkedIn\\u2014which is apparently very good, so if you don\\u2019t know what to do on LinkedIn, you can look at mine, it\\u2019s fine\\u2014we went through LinkedIn and your search engine optimization in LinkedIn and how you can do this, and you know, how to get recruiters to look at your LinkedIn profile. And I went through my salary history of, like, this is how much I was making ten years ago, this is how much I\\u2019m making now, and this is how much I made at every job on the way. And we went through and did that. And I had, like, ten women come up to me afterwards and say, \\u201cI have never heard someone say outright their salary numbers before. And I don\\u2019t know what to ask for when I\\u2019m in negotiations.\\u201d



Corey: It\\u2019s such a massive imbalance because all the companies know what other people are making because they get a holistic view. They know what they\\u2019re paying across the board. I think a lot of the pay transparency movement has been phenomenal. I\\u2019ve been in situations before myself, where my boss walks up to me out of nowhere, and gives me a unsolicited $10,000 raise. It\\u2019s, \\u201cWow, thanks.\\u201d Followed immediately by, \\u201cWait a minute.\\u201d



Evelyn: Mm-hm.



Corey: People generally don\\u2019t do that out of the goodness of their hearts. How underpaid, am I? And every time it was, yeah, here\\u2019s the $10,000 raise so you don\\u2019t go get 30 somewhere else.



Evelyn: Yeah. And that\\u2019s one of the things that, like, going into job negotiations, women and people of marginalized genders will apply for jobs that they\\u2019re a hundred percent qualified for, which means that they\\u2019re not growing in their positions. So, if you\\u2019re not kind of reaching when you\\u2019re applying for positions, you\\u2019re not going to get the salary you need, you\\u2019re not going to get that career growth you need, whereas, not to play this card, but like, white men will go in and be, like, \\u201cI\\u2019ve got 60% of the qualifications. I\\u2019m going to ask for this much money.\\u201d And then they get it.



And it\\u2019s like, why don\\u2019t I do that? It\\u2019s, you know, societal whatever is pressuring me not to. And being able to talk transparently about that stuff is, like, so important. And these women just, like, went into salary negotiations a couple weeks later, and I had one of them message me and say, like, \\u201cYeah, I asked for the number you said at this conference and I got it.\\u201d And I was like, \\u201cYes! congratulations.\\u201d Because that is life-changing, especially, like, because so many of us come from non-technical backgrounds in Salesforce, you don\\u2019t know how much money you can make in tech until you get it, and it\\u2019s absolutely life-changing.



Corey: Yeah, it\\u2019s wild to me, but that\\u2019s the way it works. I really want to thank you for taking the time to speak with me. If people want to learn more, where\\u2019s the best place for them to find you?



Evelyn: So, I am reachable at anothersalesforceblog.com, and evelyn.fyi, E-V-E-L-Y-N dot F-Y-I, which actually just links back to another Salesforce blog, which is fine. But I\\u2019m really [laugh] reachable on LinkedIn and really active there, so if you need any Salesforce mentorship, I do that. And I love doing it because so many people have helped me in my career that it\\u2019s really, like, anything I can do to give back. And that\\u2019s really kind of the attitude of the Salesforce ecosystem, so definitely feel free to reach out.



Corey: And we will, of course, put links to that in the [show notes 00:30:27]. Thank you so much for taking the time to, I guess, explain how an entire swath of the ecosystem views the world.



Evelyn: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me, Corey.



Corey: Evelyn Grizzle, Senior Salesforce Developer. I\\u2019m Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you\\u2019ve enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you\\u2019ve hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an angry, insulting comment that I will one day aggregate somewhere, undoubtedly within Salesforce.


Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.

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