The Rise of the Salesforce Admineloper

There comes a time in every Salesforce Admin’s career where they look at their workload and think: what now? What’s next? Managerial work might be the next chosen step, or an architect role, or perhaps consulting. Either way, a new skill set will need to be cultivated along the way. 

Many admins begin cultivating this new skill set way before they even progress up the ladder due to changing role responsibilities, small teams, client requirements, and more. An admin might need to learn Apex or build upon their existing knowledge, veering into the traditional developer playing field – and their job role might not change. Thus, the admineloper is born!

What Is an Admineloper?

An admineloper, as the name might suggest, is a term used to describe a ‘fusion role’ of the traditional admin and developer roles. When Salesforce was new to the market, roles like the admin and developer were fairly rigid; both doing their own separate work. Admins just kept orgs going and customized the platform, whilst developers traditionally just designed and implemented applications and features.

Fast forward to today, and these roles look very different. It is not unusual to see the two roles’ job responsibilities being shared, especially in smaller companies. This is for a number of reasons, one being that expectations surrounding Salesforce jobs have changed quite drastically. 

Employers now expect more from their professionals and actively look for people who can ‘wear many hats’ and demonstrate a wide range of skills. Even if a job description doesn’t outline this, it could still be true. You will be more likely to stand out if you can showcase your knowledge of extra skills. 

What Does an Admineloper Do?

Because “admineloper” isn’t a job title or anything, it can be difficult to summarize what they actually do as it will depend on the company they work for. 

However, it’s safe to assume that an admineloper will perform admin tasks. These include:

• Mapping business processes 
• User training 
• Managing user data 
• Fixing and maintaining security models 
• Customizing the Salesforce platform according to business requirements 

It’s also safe to assume that an admineloper will likely perform some developer tasks too. These include:

• Using code like Apex or JavaScript to customize applications 
• Fixing bugs and system errors 
• Writing code against APIs to solve problems in Salesforce

The deal with adminelopers is that admin duties will likely make up most of what they do day-to-day, but they might sometimes be expected to take on more developer-oriented tasks to help the company meet requirements. This can often play in the admineloper’s favor, as they can touch upon this experience once/if they decide to move up the career ladder.

What Does This Mean for ‘Traditional’ Salesforce Roles?

We now know that Salesforce roles are starting to look a little bit different. Expectations have changed for both existing staff and eager newcomers, which has shifted the way new Salesforce professionals approach the job market, and how more senior professionals navigate the rest of their careers.

Although on paper the Salesforce Admin and Developer roles might be different, in actuality, they are quite similar. Yes, traditionally admins use declarative tools whilst developers use code, but now that this little section in the middle of the Venn diagram exists, it’s opened up the doors to a whole new role.

Naturally, companies are making the most of this development and have started merging the requirements for both admin and developer roles. They don’t always do this explicitly either – ‘hidden requirements’ are now often cropping up in interviews or even later when the person has already begun their job.

Does this mean that training and preparing to get a Salesforce role is now more difficult? Possibly. With this kind of line blurring, it can be more difficult to understand just what companies want from you. However, if you plan to be in the Salesforce ecosystem long-term, learning a wide range of skills will benefit you in the long run anyway. Although training might take longer, it could be more beneficial in the end for both you and your company.

Summary

Salesforce Admin and Developer roles are two of the biggest roles in the whole ecosystem. They have their similarities and differences, and the third, hybrid admineloper role is just a unique mashup of them both.

With roles merging like this, it will be interesting to see whether we notice a trend of more role merging in the future, especially with the boom of AI.