Let’s be honest for a moment. Behind all those LinkedIn posts about “exciting Salesforce transformations” and “seamless integrations,” we developers have some secrets. Time to spill the tea. ☕

1. We All Have That One Apex Class

You know the one. It started as a simple helper method. Now it’s 800 lines long, handles seven different business processes, and nobody dares touch it because it somehow works. We call it “The Kraken.”

public class UtilityClass {
    // This was supposed to be simple...
    // TODO: Refactor this someday
    // TODO from 2019: Still needs refactoring
    // TODO from 2023: Maybe next sprint
}

2. Our Debug Logs Are Basically Therapy Sessions

System.debug('Why is this not working???');
System.debug('PLEASE WORK');
System.debug('I have tried everything');
System.debug('Wait... that actually worked?');

We’ve all been there. The debug log becomes our personal diary of coding frustration and unexpected victories.

3. Formula Fields Are Like Sudoku Puzzles

Someone asks for a “simple formula” and three hours later you’re deep in nested IF statements wondering if there’s a character limit on sanity.

IF(
  AND(
    ISPICKVAL(Status__c, "Active"),
    NOT(ISBLANK(Date_Field__c)),
    OR(
      Amount__c > 1000,
      Priority__c = "High"
    )
  ),
  "Show This",
  IF(
    // ... and it continues for 15 more lines
  )
)

“It’s just a simple business rule,” they said. Sure it is. 😅

4. We Have a Love-Hate Relationship with Workflow Rules

They’re deprecated, but they still work. They’re simple, but limited. They’re everywhere in legacy orgs, and migrating them to Process Builder (also deprecated) or Flow feels like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

5. The SOQL Query That Broke Our Heart

We spent two hours crafting the perfect query with multiple joins, aggregate functions, and clever filtering. It runs beautifully in Developer Console.

Then we put it in a trigger.

101 records enter the chat

Governor limits have entered the chat. 💀

6. Documentation is Our Imaginary Friend

“I’ll document this properly after it goes live.”

Narrator: They never documented it properly.

Six months later, you’re staring at your own code like it was written by a mysterious stranger who clearly had different priorities in life.

7. The Mysterious Magic of Flow Builder

Flow Builder is powerful. Flow Builder is visual. Flow Builder also sometimes feels like you’re building a Rube Goldberg machine to turn on a light switch.

“Just create a simple screen flow,” they said. Two days later you have decision elements, loops, subflows, and you’re questioning your life choices.

8. Test Classes: The Necessary Evil

@isTest
private class TestTheThing {
    @isTest
    private static void testWhenEverythingWorks() {
        Test.startTest();
        // Insert perfect test data
        // Call the method
        // Assert it worked
        Test.stopTest();
        
        // 85% code coverage achieved 🎉
        // Business logic confidence: 12%
    }
}

We write tests to satisfy the deployment gods, not because we’re confident they catch real issues. Don’t @ me.

9. The Deployment Day Dance

✅ Unit tests pass locally
✅ Validation runs clean
✅ Double-checked the changeset
✅ Said a little prayer

Clicks Deploy

Immediately checks Slack for angry messages

Those five minutes between “Deploy Started” and “Deploy Completed” age us faster than anything else in tech.

10. We’re All Just Googling Creatively

“Senior Salesforce Developer with 5+ years experience” really means “Expert at finding the right Stack Overflow answer and adapting it to current requirements.”

We don’t memorize syntax. We memorize search terms.

The Truth About Our Superpowers

Here’s what makes us actually good at this job:

• Pattern Recognition: We’ve seen this problem before (or something close enough)
• Creative Problem Solving: When the platform says “no,” we find seventeen different ways to say “yes”
• Infinite Patience: We debug one line at a time and somehow don’t quit
• Translation Skills: We speak both “business requirement” and “technical limitation” fluently

Why We Do This Anyway

Despite all the quirks, broken deployments, and mysterious platform behaviors, we keep coming back. Why?

Because there’s something magical about building solutions that real people use every day. When a sales rep tells you the automation you built saved them two hours a week, or when a customer service agent says your custom component made their job easier—that’s when all the debugging frustration melts away.

The Real Talk

Salesforce development isn’t always pretty. The platform has opinions about how things should work, and sometimes those opinions conflict with reality. But that’s what makes us valuable. We’re the translators between “what the business needs” and “what the platform can do.”

We build bridges over technical limitations and find creative solutions to impossible requirements. We turn business processes into user-friendly experiences, even when the platform fights us every step of the way.

And at the end of the day, we’re part of a community that genuinely helps each other. Try posting a Salesforce question on Twitter or the Trailblazer Community—you’ll get helpful answers faster than you can debug your own code.

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Fellow Salesforce developers: What’s your most relatable confession? Drop it in the comments. Let’s normalize the fact that we’re all just figuring it out as we go, one debug statement at a time.