AI Takeover - Will Your Salesforce Career Survive? - Salesforce Hiring Edge

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Josh LeQuire (00:00):
And now it's the Salesforce Career Show.

Josh Matthews (00:04):
Okay, it's showtime.
Welcome to the SalesforceCareer Show.
I'm here with my co-host, joshLaQuire.
We have some amazing gueststoday, including Vanessa Grant.
Yay, everybody loves Vanessa.
We'll give you a quick sneakpeek of her Say hi there,
vanessa.
All right, we also have ourfriend and longtime listener and

(00:26):
a huge help to the show overthese last three, four years, mr
Anthony Rodriguez.
What's up, dude?
Great to see you, buddy.
We'll be bringing them bothback in just a little bit, real
quick.
Hello, mr Josh LaQuire.
How are you today?

Doing well.
Mr Josh Matthews, how are you?

Doing great bud.
Now you're traveling right.

You're up in Philly.
I'm in Philadelphia at thefinest Tide House Hotel in the
King of Prussia, next to a veryfine mall that has a lot of the
finest shops.

That's what I've heard.
I think my son, ollie, got togo there recently on a little
trip.
Well, we've got a lot ofupdates to share today with our
live viewing audience.
And then an absolutelyincredible topic, which is
what's going on with AI and yourSalesforce career.
We're going to talk about thatin depth today.

(01:12):
Now, if you have been listeningto the show for a little bit,
or even four weeks ago, wereleased well, we had a live
show is what we had and then wereleased it about a week later a
podcast dedicated to justexploring what's going on with
admins, salesforce admins, andhow AI is impacting admins

(01:33):
around the globe and what thatwill do over the next few years.
So, if you're really interestedin a deep dive just on
Salesforce administrators,absolutely encourage you to go
ahead and check out that episode.
You can find it on ApplePodcasts, spotify and about 15
or 20 other platforms.
Before we launch into ourprimary topic, I want to just

(01:56):
kind of give a quick overview ofwhat we're going to do today.
After the AI topic is covered,we're going to talk a little bit
about this show, because thebig announcement and if you've
been paying attention, you'realready going to know what's
coming, which is that there's abig change to this show.
We already had one earlier thiswinter when this lovely young

(02:20):
lady, vanessa hi again, whenVanessa got really busy with her
own business and a bunch ofother cool stuff life
transformational things thatVanessa's got going on and so
she had to unfortunately for usdeprioritize the podcast.
But she's here today and that'swhat counts, and we have

(02:43):
literally like 2,000, almost2,000 pages of transcripts from
the podcast and Vanessa is onalmost every single one of those
, the vast, vast majority ofthose.
So we're really grateful thatyou're back today.
We're going to talk a little bitabout the Salesforce Career
Show, what it's meant to somepeople, and maybe hear from
Anthony about the impact thatthe show has had on his own

(03:06):
personal career, because we'rechanging the show.
It's not going to be a liveshow.
This is the last live episodeas we know it.
Okay, so if you are listeningright now and you're joining us
on the live program, welcome.
If it's your first time, like,that's pretty awesome.
We have I don't know what it islike a hundred hours of content

(03:28):
or something like that, eventhough we've been running it for
four years.
We've actually only been umrecording it for I think, uh,
like just over two, like almosttwo and a half years, something
like that, okay.
So there's going to be a ton ofcontent on there, and the
reason why we're changing theshow is because we've provided

(03:50):
you guys with what we believe isa vast amount of very helpful
information to help you launchyour career, improve your career
, how to hire, how to get hired,how to network, how, what to do
when you're attending adreamforce event or a Dreamin
event right, we've covered somany topics and there's a huge

(04:10):
library for you.
So we're going to pivot.
That's what we're doing, right,we're pivoting and we're
rebranding the show toSalesforce Hiring Edge.
Isn't that snappy?
I kind of like it SalesforceHiring Edge.
And this show is going to bemore frequent.
We're going to release thepodcast every single week.

(04:30):
The format will be a little bitshorter it's going to be 30
minutes.
It's going to be a little bithigher production value, because
we do get some degradation whenwe broadcast live and record
from broadcasting live.
So you're going to get moreepisodes 50, 52 a year,
something like that.
Okay, it's going to be morecompact.

(04:51):
We're also going to includeweekly news updates what's going
on in the Salesforce ecosystem.
And then we're going to reallyfocus our attention for a while
on this program, on how to hiretop Salesforce professionals and
how to hire top Salesforce SIpartners or consulting partners,
isvs, pdos the whole gamut.

(05:12):
And I think the balance betweenthe two Joshes, me and Mr
LaQuire and his bow ties isgoing to give us some nice
insight not only into how you,as leaders, can improve your
team, reduce your stress, thrivein the ecosystem, but if you're

(05:33):
one of those folks, like themajority of our weekly listeners
or monthly listeners, that hasattended this show maybe for
months, maybe for weeks for manyof you it's actually a number
of years I don't want you tothink that you're going to be
left in the dust.
These are going to be nicelittle commuter length programs

(05:53):
and when we talk about, it'simpossible to talk about hiring
right, it's impossible to talkabout hiring without our
audience learning somethingabout how to be a more viable
candidate, how to positionyourself in the market better.
We'll continue to talk aboutmotivation.
We'll continue to talk about AIinnovation.
In fact, we're going to have alittle segment each week called

(06:16):
the AI Edge, where we're goingto share the latest and greatest
.
We actually have Mr MikeMcCoola here today.
He's our resident AI, on top ofJohnny on the spot guy right
here.
So Mike's going to get with usin a little bit as we continue
to unfold and unravel thismystery of what the crystal ball
of what the future holds, Right, and so we're going to be

(06:38):
bringing Mike back here in justa little bit.
So with that, a couple moreannouncements and hopefully
that's exciting for you, right?
It's going to be more frequentcontent, hopefully extremely
relevant to you.
If you're a newcomer, if you'renew to the ecosystem, well, you
should be digesting as much asyou possibly can.
So why not continue to listento the Salesforce Career Show in

(07:00):
its new branded format,salesforce Hiring Edge?
Where are you going to find it?
You know what are you going todo.
Don't worry about that.
Okay, we're just taking thisshow and we're rebranding it.
So if you're already asubscriber if you are, thank you
so much.
If you're not a subscriber, Iwould go ahead and subscribe
right now.
The logo is going to look alittle bit different, but you'll
see my mug, you'll see Josh'smug on there, so it shouldn't be

(07:23):
too difficult to figure it out.
And, by the way, if you justtype in Salesforce, blah, blah,
blah probably pop up.
Okay, thank you, by the way,gabby, appreciate that.
And okay, let's dive into somequick additional updates.
All right, the Josh Forrestchannel is where you can find
the video content of everysingle Salesforce career show

(07:45):
that has had video added to it,which is not a ton.
Okay, it's not a ton, I think.
Vanessa, do you recall when, um, do you recall when we actually
started to to create videos forthe show?

Vanessa Grant (08:00):
Oh gosh, I would less than a year ago.

I would say it feels like it maybe a year maybe
a year ago Okay, I don't evenknow if it's that long.
But if you want them, you cango at all the thumbnails have
been redone.
We've added additionalnavigation.
It's a much nicer YouTubechannel to visit like subscribe,
comment, blah, blah, blah.
But actually the reality is whypeople ask people to do that?

(08:24):
It's because there's analgorithm, right.
You guys are tech people, youknow what that is right.
The algorithm allows theplatform to share the video with
more people.
That would benefit from thatcontent and this show has helped
hundreds, if not thousands, ofpeople over the years.
We just want to help more.

(08:44):
We don't advertise.
We don't get paid.
In fact, we pay to run the show.
We don't advertise or anythinglike that.
So be a good listener.
If you can Make sure thatyou're subscribing to Josh Force
, make sure you're subscribingtoday to the Salesforce Career
Show so that you don't miss asingle bit of content or a
single episode.

(09:04):
With that, I'm going to go aheadand share a couple other little
updates.
One is I have two Salesforceconsultant roles open right now.
One we would like to seesomeone who's very focused on
either non-profit cloud or somemodicum depth of experience in
NPSP.
These are senior roles.
So we're hoping for folks whoare pretty much shovel ready,
ready to jump in and get somesenior roles.
So we're hoping for folks whoare pretty much shovel ready,

(09:26):
ready to jump in and get somework done.
It's with a top tier client ofmine.
These people absolutely lovetheir employees.
They take such good care ofthem, including career path
planning, okay, certifications,bonuses, healthcare, all that A
lot of the normal stuff.
But I really believe that theseguys go above and beyond.
So how do you apply?
Well, you go to thesalesforcerecruitercom.

(09:48):
You'll see some blah, blah,blah nonprofit cloud job post.
Whether you're a nonprofitcloud or not, just apply to that
one.
I haven't opened it up, openedup a second one, I just got the
order Okay.
So go ahead and apply to that.
You can also navigate toSalesforce staffing on LinkedIn
and if you go there, you canclick on jobs and guess what?
Got a job there and you canclick and one click, apply and

(10:09):
do all that beautiful stuff.
And if you're awesome and if Ihave time and if the gods see to
it, then I'll be reaching outto you personally to have a
conversation.
If I don't reach out to you,don't fret.
It's a big market.
We get a lot of applications.
We just want the best of thebest.
Please don't apply if you'renot a citizen.
Please don't apply if you'renot a citizen or a green card is

(10:30):
actually what I should havesaid.
And if you don't have at leasttwo years of experience working
in a Salesforce SI practice,please also don't apply.
You can go to thesalesforcerecruitercom, click on
jobs and do a generalapplication.
We'd love to capture yourinformation and share with you
amazing opportunities as theycome up.
Okay, the last thing I wanted toshare, as far as a little

(10:52):
update goes, is actually aroundspeaking engagements.
So I'll be on the opening panelat um, southeast Dreamin, which
is going to be in Atlanta.
So I'm really looking forwardto that.
Thanks, guys, and I think nowis a great time.
Let's have a show of hands.
If you're going to be speakingat an event anytime soon, we can
go ahead and get that out.

(11:13):
Vanessa, you usually are.
What's going on?

I'll be speaking at Tahoe Dreamin next month.
I'll be speaking at London'sCalling in June.
I'll be speaking at London'sCalling in June and also next
month I'll be speaking at theService Blazer Community Group,
actually about Service Blazercareers.
I'll be on panel at thebeginning of May and I think

(11:37):
that covers it for right now.

Okay, wonderful, love hearing that.
Josh, are you doing anyspeaking tours?
Are you going to go beattending any conferences other
than Dreamforce coming upanytime soon?
Unfortunately, not.

I've got a lot of dad duties coming up at the end
of the year and I've got a lotof personal items to attend to
and business is going strong,which is good.
But unfortunately that consumesmy mind, share and time.
But I do plan on throwing myhat in the ring eventually,
especially as we're surfacing alot of these great topics on
this show about how to use AI inour jobs.
There's just a lot of goodfodder around that one?

Yeah, there, sure is.
With that, let's go ahead anddive right into it, shall we,
sure?
Okay, all right, vanessa.
Mike Anthony, please just raiseyour hand any time that you
would like to jump into thediscussion.
We're going to do that.
Visually, we found everythinggets so crowded when we've got

(12:32):
everybody on the panel and itlooks kind of funky, so we're
going to just be going solo onyou or bringing up one or two
folks at a given time.
The AI takeover, josh, what doyou think?
I mean, you've read the reports.
I've read the reports.

What do you find?
It's hard to tell what'sfear-mongering, what's marketing
and what's real.
I got to be honest with youbecause I can tell you in
personal experience and talkingwith minds like Mike McCulla and
some others that you have hereon the panel and folks out in
the wild there's someapplications where AI is ready
to go works well.

(13:10):
I want to summarize a meeting.
I want to generate a document.
It lets me play the role ofeditor and cuts out the hours
and hours of creation time.
I can tell you that in some waysprototyping and Mike will speak
a lot better to this than meyou can generate code with AI
and you can generate it todemonstrate concepts and iterate

(13:31):
through that.
I've used it personally inCursor with Salesforce and I've
been using it a lot, prettyheavily.
The thing about AI is itamplifies your capabilities for
what you already know.
It doesn't replace or fill ingaps for things you don't know
right.
I would say that if you'reusing it to write code, you have

(13:53):
to look at it very closely.
Especially if you're doing workfor a client.
You want it to be productionquality, deployment ready.
It's not going to work or runon its own.
So the talks about adminsbecoming developers, about
developers becoming businessanalysts I don't know that I buy
it so much.
I think it's going to helppeople expand their capability,

(14:13):
increase their productivity.
I don't think it's going toturn a frog into a prince.

That doesn't happen, too often, does it.

No, yeah.
I just don't see it like givingpeople skills they don't
already have or replacing it inthat manner.
So I think there's some truth,especially in three years, the
technology is going to continueto get better and better.
But I don't see it completelyreplacing a job or giving
somebody the capability to dosomebody else's job quite yet.
It's just going to help us dowhat we know better.
At the end of the day, it'sgoing to make you a better

(14:44):
project manager if you know howto manage projects.
It's going to make you a betteranalyst if you know how to do
business analysis.
It's going to make you a betterdeveloper to do things faster
if you already know how to do it.
It's not going to help you tobuild an application with no
knowledge of how to build anapplication in the first place.

Yeah, and Mike's actually working on a really
interesting product my Vibe guyover there so he's going to
share a little bit about thatsoon.
And, folks I want you tounderstand, stick around.
We're going to be giving youspecific statistics around what
might be happening to your job.
Are you a Salesforceadministrator, a project manager
, a BA?
Are you an architect or aSalesforce consultant?
Are you a specialist?
You know, we've got the numbersokay, and these weren't just

(15:27):
pulled out of thin air.
We did a deep dive, deepresearch on perplexity.
We've got over 56 resourcesthat pulled this together.
It could all be BS.
Who the hell knows right?
I mean the top analysts at ESPN, the top analysts on CNBC.
Like these folks are generallyaveraging about a 50 percent

(15:52):
chance of being right.
We've talked on the show abouthow wrong I get it right.
I was convinced Britney Spearswasn't going to make it.
Christina Aguilera, justinTimberlake, I mean.
Clearly, when it comes to popmusic, I definitely have it
wrong.
I got it wrong about how longthe economy was going to tank
from 2023.

(16:12):
I got that wrong too.
So I'm not, mr Like, theultimate prognosticator of the
future.
I can't do it.
So I really rely on some ofthese amazing tools that we've
got.
Let's do a quick take with you,vanessa.
Just a general overview.
What do you think is going tohappen with AI and how is it
going to impact careers?

(16:33):
And if you could be even morespecific about BAs, that would
be awesome.

Oh, all right.
So I think AI is alreadyimpacting certainly my
day-to-day.
So, coming from more of theconsultant BA side of things, I
could not be as fast as I am,and the expectations are that
I'm faster now as well, justbecause everybody's a little bit

(16:59):
faster with AI.
So, thinking creatively as faras how you can leverage AI to
write user stories faster, toget requirements faster, there's
no more note-taking formeetings anymore.
If there's somebody writingmanual notes, it's like, eh, if
somebody's not open to having AIjoin meetings, that's another

(17:19):
eh.
So there's a lot on the day today.
As far as a business analysis.
Uh, as far as business analysisis concerned, um, that AI is
just having a major impact.
I actually worked on a kickoffdeck.
Um, I did a kickoff this week,from my speaker notes to what
was on my slides, to how myslides were arranged, all um

(17:42):
consulted with with AI, ofcourse, ultimately it was mine,
but being able to have thatvalidation and also just
brainstorming somebody tobrainstorm with or somebody to
brainstorm with.
As far as the future goes,though, I really could see and I
don't know, maybe Josh, one ofthe Joshes will disagree with me

(18:02):
, I don't know.
I don't think you could do itnow, but I think maybe in the
future we might have folks withmaybe business and skills
actually doing the code butdoing it through prompting.
I think if we can get AI tosuch a point where the code

(18:23):
actually is good which I thinkit's going to get there at some
point then really the skills tohave will be those soft skills.
Can you do documentation thatwill go into AI?
Can you write the prompts?
Can you communicate what it isthat the business needs, which
is business analysis all day.
So I'm excited for the future,kind of.

All right, I love it.
Let's take that and go to MrMike.
Mr Mike McCoola, you're on thecutting edge of chat-based
development.
You've been a developer, youknow how to architect, you're an
all-around smart expert and oneof the people that I think is
on the bleeding edge of takingadvantage of the latest tools.

(19:05):
What's your take?

Mike Mikuna (19:07):
Yeah, thanks, josh, very generous of you with your
comments.
But sure, I've been doing thisstuff for like 13 years,
building code for myself anddoing software engineering, and
it was an eye-opener to me whenI first got introduced to a
large language model and thenanswering questions I had, and
then my journey to learning howto work with agents and then

(19:28):
building my own agents inSalesforce, outside of
Salesforce, and I just feel likethe biggest mistake I made when
I started to have success wasgiving all the credit to AI,
like, well, look what AI builtme and realizing it's all of the
systems of thinking that I havethat drive it to give it that
edge, to give it that result.
Um, and and and again in thedifferent context of like you

(19:53):
know, um, josh mentioned earlierthe rapid prototyping approach
versus the like enterprisesoftware and there's a huge
difference in how I work whenI'm prototyping something versus
delivering something that I canship, and in all cases, to get
to that shippable product, itrequires all of my experience
and a hands-on like point ofview to like make that happen.

(20:15):
And when I look at like wherethings are going, like I'm
seeing different strategies oflike, well, we have these large
language models.
Well, what if we have smaller,specialized ones and ways to
communicate between them, sothat you need less of my systems
of thinking to take this hugemodel and find these thoughts of
how to do things and make itexecuted that way, versus very

(20:36):
well-trained ones that canautomate some of the system
prompts I used to have to use?
So I'm very curious aboutthings like that, especially
with agent architectures, whereyou can embed the way that you
think about things with systemsand tools that the agent can use
to achieve those results.
It's interesting as we automate,I know there's people that are

(20:57):
worried.
Well, if you can just take allmy systems of thinking and put
it into a computer and it canjust do everything, what's my
job?
And I feel like there's stillthis part of me that just sees
that like okay, well, eventuallyeverything starts being the
same and people want to compete.
Well, then someone has to turnit up a notch to make it a
little bit different.
I mean, I have friends thathave worked at nvidia for 13

(21:17):
years and they they get paid tomake a 0.5 difference of impact
at their.
So could there be somethinglike that at some point if we
get that optimized, where even0.5% is enough of an edge that a
company values your input.
But that's my current take.

I'll stop there.
I want to seize on that pointfor a second, because there's a
difference between increasingproductivity and that.
Productivity is a metric, right, it's the number of cases
handled, it's the number ofsales generated, it's fill in
the blank, right.
I think it's going to increaseproductivity for all of us, but
I don't think it's going tofully replace anybody's role

(21:57):
until the technology fullyevolves.
Right, it's going to augment,it's going to expand.
I think what's going to happen,because we're human beings, is
we're going to continue toexpect us to do it Like we're
not really going to see jobsreplaced.
At the scale and the veracity,I think we're going to see a
reduction of jobs.
That's going to happen becauseproductivity will decrease.

Yeah, I totally disagree.
I think we're going to losejobs.
But I'll dig into that in alittle bit.

Yeah, yeah, I'll dig into that in a little bit,
but yeah, I mean what it's worth.
We're still human beings, right?
So we're probably going to geta little bit lazier at times to
say I'm going to let AI do moreof the stuff I used to do and
maybe not pay close enoughattention.
I think it's going to engendersome mistakes.
You're going to see some falsepositives coming from AI.
You're going to see peopleallowing AI to do their jobs
that they would have done in thepast and maybe not pay
attention.
That's kind of the dark side.

(22:42):
I think the positive side is usas humans are going to expect
our teammates to do more andwe're going to kind of
reestablish what thatequilibrium or what that norm is
for what our productivityshould be.
So I don't know.
I'm curious to see how thisplays out.
There's a lot of differentdynamics.
It's going to force us to bemore kind of broader generalists
.
We're going to learn faster.
We're going to develop faster.

What does that look like in two or three years?
I don't know.
I think I have some deltabetween the two Joshes of, like
my, my formed opinion.
I don't know, josh, how muchyou want us to focus on this,
but I could have a little bitmore to entertain on this
conversation.

Yeah, we're going to.
We've got a lot to cover, solet's let's deep dive
specifically on our opinions.
I just wanted to do a littlebit of a quick take and we've
got one more awesome guy.
It's Mr Anthony Rodriguez.
Hello, anthony, who are you?
What do you do, man?

Anthony Rodgriguez (23:34):
Yo yo yo.
I work as a developer on thegovernment contractor side and I
just want to put in my twocents about AI.
I do think it has a lot of greatapplications for making things
go faster, easier, but security,security, security, especially

(23:54):
on the government side.
Being able to take AI and allowit just on a government
contractor laptop would be ahuge no-no in a lot of sections.
And let's just say, two orthree years from now they have
the internal AI that's builtjust for that sector of
government and it's helpingthings go quicker and faster.

(24:15):
But as a developer, if youdon't understand the
architecture of your section ofwork, if you don't understand
how this data is relating tothat data and you let AI
understand how this data isrelating to that data and you
let AI help write code, you haveto know what you're doing and
you need humans that understandwhat's going on into your system
and what's going on into theAI's code writing.

(24:36):
And without that careful bridgeit's going to be a real hazard
to allow AI, especially on thegovernment side.
That's my two cents.

Take it as you will.
I think it's worth five centsminimum.
And Anthony's a great guy.
He gave me and Casey a lift atFlorida Dreamin' that's where we
met and he had a minivanbecause he's got a million kids
and fortunately, we all got tosqueeze in there, get out of the
rain.
It rains a lot in this state.
It's sunny but it rains a lot.
All got to squeeze in there,get out of the rain.
It rains a lot in this state,sunny but it rains a lot.

(25:10):
And so thank you for that.
And, anthony, how long do youthink you've been listening to
this?
Um, listening to this programof ours.

At least two years, because I got my first
big break and I had just startedlistening to the show and I
think it was like the first orsecond episode and it was
fantastic, and so it's it's beena big help for me.
You know, the first battle isalways in the mind, right?
If you're not feeling it, ifyou're not on the grind, how are
you going to get that resumeout, how are you going to apply,

(25:37):
how are you going to interview,how are you going to tackle
that new job?
And I just want to say that theSalesforce career show was a
big help in just helping me staydriven on point, pushing hard,
and I thank you guys and all ofthe different amazing speakers
that come on.
It's the best, a hundredpercent.

Thanks so much, anthony, and if you've ever
listened to any of our olderepisodes and you hear sound
effects, that's Mr Rodriguez.
Thanks for being on the show.
We'll bring you back in alittle bit here.
I'd like to talk, if I can, alittle bit about some of the
actual numbers that this reportthat was curated is producing,

(26:23):
and I've got some TLDR.
And, by the way, if youactually want to read the
article, you can find thearticle.
You can subscribe to mynewsletter on LinkedIn.
You can subscribe and we'llemail it to you.
You can also check out ourblogs on
thesalesforcerecruitercom.
You just click on resources andso we've got the full report
there and go ahead and check itout.

(26:44):
So, bottom line, what's going on?
Well, we know what AI is goingto do.
Right, it's automating andeliminating manual task work,
manual configuration work.
By 2028, the prediction is 40to 50% of manual configuration
work will be gone and I just Ilook at this like building a

(27:05):
website, right, nevermind usinglovable or some of these
lovabledev or some of theseother platforms where you can
chat, but just the ease ofjumping into.
Go, buy a URL, jump intoGoDaddy and in 15 minutes you
can have a website, just withdrag and drop and pop,
populating a couple of picturesand some text right, we used to

(27:28):
have to spend five grand justfor a one pager right, like just
for a one pager and this is in,like you know, $2,004.
It was expensive, it was notcheap at all to do it, and so
everything over time becomescommoditized, becomes easier to
do.
That's what we're seeing inSalesforce.
At the same time, there's anincrease of complexity, right?

(27:51):
Ai is very complex.
And to Anthony's point, yeah,like you can't trust it, thank
you, public enemy Can't trust it.
So you know it hallucinates.
You got to kind of be wiseabout it.
But of course there's going tobe a massive amount of the
manual configuration work that'sgoing away.

(28:14):
Salesforce administrators arereally going to go from
configurators to strategicorchestrators involved in
validating AI generated fieldstructures for bias, risks,
right, implementing metadata,quality controls, monitoring
autonomous decisions, like inservice, cloud deployments,
things like that.

(28:34):
And like what's that actuallygoing to mean for Salesforce
admins?
It's something like a 30% dip.
If you haven't adopted AI, youknow soon 30% of those jobs will
go away.
You'll be replaced, right?
Like there's that saying you'renot going to like AI, ai is not

(28:57):
going to replace you.
Someone who knows AI is goingto replace you.
I think it's really reallyimportant to understand that
every single revolution that hascome through, whether it's
agricultural revolution, theindustrial revolution, the
internet, high-speed internet,computers in your pocket, and on

(29:17):
and on and on.
There's this adaptation that'srequired.
There are some positions thatare very much at high risk and I
went and double checked onManus today.
I just joined Manus, which isanother AI product.
Claims to do everything We'llfind out, we'll see but

(29:37):
basically project delivery isgoing to be about 45% faster and
one of the most stable jobs outthere is actually going to be
solution architects andtechnical architects.
They're actually predictingquite an increase in demand for
this type of work.
What do you guys think?

100%.
The job of the solutionarchitect on the Salesforce
platform is to be a generalist,not necessarily to be a deep
niche specialist, and I think AIworks extremely well.
If you understand concepts ofsystems, landscapes and
integrations, if you understandconcepts of service processes,

(30:19):
sales processes, marketingprocesses, and you understand
that we have a platform ofcapabilities, ai is going to
increase your capability toresearch solution alternatives,
get to a prototype faster, testconcepts and validate those with
your clients.
It used to take me 40 to 120hours to produce discovery
documentation.
I'm talking about ERDs, dataflow diagrams, integration

(30:41):
models for contracts, a set ofuser-shortening requirements I
can do now within an hour or two.
So what that means is I can getto solving problems quicker and
I can solve more problemsfaster, cheaper, better.
So that's where the architectsreally come into play.
Now, another challenge is youkind of amplify the need for
people who do have specialtyknowledge, because, while LLMs

(31:04):
and AI today can help you withthe broad spectrum of things, in
a lot of cases they're notniche specialists unless you
train them or give them thematerial to become a niche
specialist.
So I think there's still goingto be a need for advanced
development skills, for advancedanalysis skills.
I think what's going to happenis you're going to see a lot of
these jobs that we used to have,with people coming one or two

(31:26):
years experience or out ofcollege.
Those are going to be a lotfewer far between.
You're going to see kind ofthat mid-career or late-career
type expertise elevated becausethey can leverage AI to do
things that used to be hired outto people with zero to one
years of experience.
I think that's what you'regoing to see in terms of how job
compositions and companiesshift, at least looking at that

(31:46):
variable of experience.

Yeah, I mean that all makes sense to me.
Let's give some people somereally quality info that they
can walk away with today, ifyou're listening and you're a
solution architect Trust layerimplementation mandates, so data
masking pipelines for AI modeltraining, real-time bias
detection in recommendationengines and cross-cloud

(32:10):
explainability frameworks.
And then composite AI solutioncrafting God, it sounds so corny
saying this stuff.
Honest to God, it just soundsso like gobbledygook to me.
Composite AI solution craftingOkay, whatever, but basically
blending Salesforce LLMs withexternal models like ChatGPT or

(32:30):
GPT-4, designing failoversystems between predictive and
generative AI, optimizing costaccuracy, trade-offs across AI
vendors.
I mean, I don't know about you,but as a small business owner, I
get pounded with emails andyou've all heard me complain
about the common ones.
Right, there it is for greencheck boxes.

(32:51):
I know who wrote that email.
Gpt did because they can't helpitself.
It's addicted to green checkboxes.
You see green check boxes onanything, buyer beware, it's on
my it's, I use it's, I use it.
It's on my.
My guy who does my like seo,like write ups on my uh, josh
force videos.
It's always like green checkbox, like okay, whatever, right.

(33:13):
So you know we're payingattention to all this stuff and
I'm getting tons and tons andtons of ai vendors.
Quick question, quick question,quick question, quick question.
It's like stop, people, stop.
And what I found is theseproducts and services that
people are are excited about andthey're building.
You can build it yourself, man,like you can build half this
shit yourself, you know?

(33:35):
I mean I'm gonna bring mikeback up on the stage here.
Mike, like, am I wrong insaying this?

like first hold on, first repeat it like what, what
, exactly?
What's your opinion?

well, look, I'm on the, I'm on the small
business side, right.
Like we can get you moremeetings, we can do this.
Our ai predictive, blah, blah,blah.
We'll target these folks andthose folks and and this kind of
thing.
Or like, hey, we can reviewyour resumes faster, and I know
that that this isn't likeSalesforce hands-on keyboard
stuff we're talking about.

(34:08):
We're talking about generalbusiness here.
Well, guess who uses Salesforce?
General business, right?
So it's all part of it, andit's either going to be built
into Salesforce where they canuse it, or they're going to
layer it on through an ISV, orthey're going to use an external
product, right, that's alreadybeen configured and built for

(34:31):
them to use, or they're going togo build it themselves.
That's kind of what I'm talkingabout.

Yeah, and just you know, I get those same kind of
messages sent to me like, hey, Ican bring you more leads for
your business and such and such.
And I'm just like right now,relationships are more important
than just a bunch of leads andmore than anything because those
people are doing that foreverybody right now and I've
heard collectively from myclients and other folks they're

(34:56):
sick of all the spam.
They're more interested inpeople that they know that they
can trust.
And I think that's a huge thingthat people don't play into
enough during this big AI wave.
They're like how fast can I getall these things?
Versus how good can I get allthese things, even with using AI
to build the whole vibe codingscene, the prototyping,
overselling, but under promisingor like under delivering right,

(35:18):
like it's over promising.

So, mike, I think you're right, man, because AI is
going to get us out of thedoldrums of generating documents
and notes and stuff and moreinto conversations.
I mean, that's what it comesdown to, right, like, my selling
point to my clients I've got aclient I'm here in Philadelphia
working with right now is let meget you out of banging around
spreadsheets and filling outdocuments and doing all the

(35:41):
bullshit, the minutia, and letme get you more into talking to
your clients and havingmeaningful conversations.
That's the bullshit, theminutiae.
And let me get you more intotalking to your clients and
having meaningful conversations.
That's the value.
Right, like take, take us outof the doldrums of you know the
days of.
You know five siloed systemsthat can't talk to each other.
Get a solution up next week andgo talk to your clients.
Hit the streets.

There you go.
I like it All.
Right, guys, I'm going to justrant for a bit.
It's not a full rant, I'm justgoing to.
You know, gabby was like hey,I'm really curious what, uh,
let's see, what did she say?
I would love to hear, uh moreabout what roles you think will
be in demand.
So, yeah, let's go ahead anddive into that right now.
Let's just give, give ourlisteners what they probably

(36:26):
came for and then we'll shootthe breeze on opinions and what
we think is going to happen heredown the road.
So here we go.
Okay, this is our TLDR part ofthe show.
So Salesforce project managerssorry to say, but you guys are
the ones that are at risk thehighest.
Okay, if you've been a projectmanager your whole life, hang
onto your hat and get AI fluent.

(36:48):
Even if you are AI fluent, youstill risk about an 18%
redundancy over the next twoyears over the next two years.
Right, this isn't just likerunning a sauna and you're in a
bunch of other stuff.
Like it's going to take overyour stuff.
It's going to send reminders,it's going to manage things,

(37:09):
it's going to hit pauses onprojects when the information
isn't there.
Everyone's going to suffer,kind of like tariffs.
So you know, it's just how itgoes, right?
So 65%, 65% job failure rate ifyou are not AI fluent.
So wake up.
Wake up, smack yourself in theface, dunk your head under some

(37:33):
cold water, go buy that car washfranchise that you've been
looking at and maybe re-skill.
Right.
There are other roles in theecosystem that will grow, but
nothing's going to growAbsolutely zero growth for
people that are AI ignorant.
And I am shocked, guys.

(37:54):
I'm shocked.
I talked to this guy.
Died in the world, died in theworld.
Solution slash tech architect,tech architect.
And basically it's like uh, no,no AI, no submittal.
If you're not working on thisstuff, I'm not going to submit
you to one of my pristine,beautiful, lovely, amazing jobs

(38:15):
with one of my amazing clients.
It's not going to happen, right, and it shouldn't happen.
It's been on for two years,let's go, let's go.
Okay, in February, you guysmight remember that I made a
commitment to spend 20 hoursgetting better at AI in the
month of February.
Well, mike McCool knows forsure that I spent way more than

(38:39):
20 hours because I got addicted,just like he did.
This shit was better than HarryPotter on Xbox, like I was,
like I couldn't get enough ofthat.
I mean, I'm drinking coffee at9 PM because I just want to work
all night long and I don't wantto let it go and I just want it
done.
I want to do it, I want to getit done, okay.
So AI, ignorant redundancy risksPMs you're at risk the most out

(39:04):
of all positions and I'm sorrybecause you guys are some of the
nicest people, some of the mostorganized, some of the smartest
, right, got great interpersonalskills.
I worry about you guys.
That doesn't mean listen tothis episode and then go change
your whole career.
Just get good at AI.
That's going to buffer thingsand the way I envision it is

(39:27):
okay.
So now you're working on,instead of a single million
dollar project or $2 millionproject, now you're working on
four or five of them.
Right, because you can do it,because you can do it, because
AI is taking a lot of the work.
I don't know, josh, I don'tknow.

Josh, I don't know , man, I think this is going to
force people to skill up.
You've got project managers outthere that don't do anything
but sit in meetings, come upwith spreadsheets and annoy the
shit out of people to say areyou done yet?
Are you done yet?
You've got project managers whoreally understand how emotions
of a project need to run and getthe team motivated and on task.

(40:03):
So I think we're going to seethe same thing in every role is
every role is going to berequired to skill up, and ai is
going to force you to skill upbut also help you learn uh, in a
good way yeah, how much are youlearning?

like every time, I run some dope perplexity
search and then I start drillingdown, drilling down, drilling
down or gosh even my content.
Right, like my God, I neverthought to write it that way.
Now I don't even need to prompthalf the time and I'm just like
I'm cranking it out because Iknow what points I need to hit.
I know the organization, I knowthe patterns.
It's an absolutely incredibletool for just getting better at

(40:38):
communicating, whatever it is,whether you're talking or
creating content or writing anemail, a difficult one.
We all have to write difficultemails to people, right?
So it's pretty amazing stuff.
Let's keep rolling here and Ilove the dissent.
By the way, Josh, Again, thisis for AI ignorant redundancy

(41:00):
risks, Even if you are not AIignorant.
It's an 18% drop.
I don't know if anyonelistening to this show was ever
around when we had 18%unemployment in the United
States across the board.
It's been a really long timesince that's happened Really
long time.
But if you're a PM in techworking in Salesforce, that's

(41:22):
what these are saying.
Again, it could all be bullshit.
I don't even know.
We'll figure it out All right.
Technical architects 40% ofcurrent architecture is obsolete
by 2027.
That's what it's saying.
40% Salesforce admins wealready covered that.
Consultants AI-drivenimplementations cutting project
timelines by 45%.
Mr LaQuire is an absolute,exceptional example of that

(41:46):
happening right now, real world,today.
You don't have to wait till2027 for that to be a
possibility.
You can do that right now.
Developers 35% of Apex and LWCcoding automated by 2026.
I don't know if you guys havechecked your calendar, but
that's like not that far away,right?

(42:06):
We're already in the fourthmonth, so that's eight months
away.
All right, 35% of Apex and LWCcoding automated by 2026,
reducing demand for basic devwork.
Let's talk about AI skillsSalesforce admins, AI governance
, certified professionals youguys want to make some money.
What do you think?
22% Where'd it go?

(42:29):
Oh, these old eyes of mine.
Oh yeah, AI governancecertified professionals are
likely to earn 22% more thannon-certified peers ad nauseum.
Haven't we, Vanessa, about thevalue of a cert?
But I think maybe we can justsay all right, it's not the cert

(42:54):
, it's the knowledge, it's theability to be able to do this.
A certification is acertification, you know.
So we've got that going on.
Let's jump into a couple morethings here, guys, because I
love this meaty portion of ourconversation and thank you, Mr
Harris, for contributing so much.
Do you guys see these thingspopping up on the live feed?
These are comments from ouraudience members.
Would you like to comment?
All you have to do is commentand we'll see it and if it's

(43:17):
cool, we'll probably put it up.
So keep that going, Okay.
Ai skills keep that going, okay.
Ai skills um, developers, aiintegration specialists are
likely to command 30 to 40percent higher salary premiums.
30 to 40 percent now we don'tknow what that benchmark is, do

(43:37):
we Like?
We just don't.
The benchmark could go down asAI makes coding and development
easier and it becomes morecompetitive and the salaries can
dip.
So we've got to look at thisthrough the lens of things that
happen when there are morepeople with an ability than
there is demand.

(43:59):
But if you are a developer andyou're good at AI integration
again looking at a premium 30%to 40% salary premium increase
Business analysts, top-drivenAI-driven BAs will earn now they
gave us a different number$125K plus salaries by 2027.

(44:20):
Let's get Vanessa up here forjust a moment.
Vanessa, talk to us, if you can, a little bit about what your
take is on this.
Is $125,000 a low salary for aBA in 2025?
Because it's saying in 2027.
It sounds low to me.

No, I mean you'll still find BAs.
I think the range probably.
So let me just preface thiswith I'm actually going to be
writing an article forSalesforce Ben on business
analyst salaries with Salesforcebend numbers in a bit.

(45:01):
But my take right now, based onjust anecdotal experience
working with BAs, I would sayyou're probably looking at
starting salaries of 80, withupper level salaries probably at
like 160 right now.
So, 125 sounds okay.
I'm sure somebody, maybe, maybesomebody's making that in 2027.
I'm sure.

Okay, that's helpful to know.
Thank you so much.
Glad we've got you here today.
Certified ethical AI experts.
78% of Salesforce positionswill require AI ethics
certification for compliance.
So this might be one of thosethings where, for compliance,
the cert is actually critical.

(45:42):
I don't know, maybe, maybe not,we'll find critical.
I don't know, maybe, maybe not,we'll find out.
I don't even know if there'ssome governing body around this
yet right, where they're likeOSHA or something like that,
where they're coming through andmaking sure that everything's
working and operational and notgetting screwed up.
High demand AI skills forSalesforce professionals All

(46:02):
right.
For admins, pms, developers, aiautomation and oversight.
For developers and architects,ai model training and debugging.
For admins, architects andconsultants, ai governance and
compliance.
And for BAs and consultants,predictive and behavioral
analytics.
And for developers andarchitects, multi-cloud AI

(46:25):
orchestration and this is areally big one, guys, this is a
really big one.
We're going to continue to seedifferent words pop up in these
types of shows and these typesof conversations, but
orchestration is one of them.
Another one that I noticedrecently was curation curating
articles, right.

(46:45):
Sometimes I sit down and I justbang out a blog, right, and I
wrote it.
I just sat down, I wrote itfrom scratch.
I might've run it through AI tomake sure that it doesn't have
a bunch of grammatical errorsand things like that, but it's
just me yapping away on mykeyboard Sometimes, as in this
AI takeover of Salesforce jobsblog that I wrote.

(47:06):
Well, I curated that.
It took me longer than it wouldprobably have taken me to just
write the thing, to be honest,but I curated it.
This isn't my data, this isjust research.
And then a computer compiled it, an algorithm compiled, while
an llm compiled.
Right, so you're going to startseeing orchestrate, curate

(47:28):
things that end in the soundeight, okay, um, yeah, zero
laughs on that one.
Thanks, guys.

Dad jokes jesus where's anthony with the sound
effect?

yeah, right, where's Anthony with the sound
effect?

Yeah, right, I'd like to throw something in there
.
I mean, you're talking aboutgovernance and ethics.
Anthony actually brought upsomething interesting earlier,
talking about AI and the use ofgovernance or government and
security.
Right, I think this is aninteresting topic, right, there
are companies insurancecompanies, banking companies,
healthcare companies, bankingcompanies, healthcare companies

(48:05):
that would probably love to useAI, but I'm pretty certain are
hamstrung, you know, for PHI,hipaa, pci, you name it, all the
three and four letter acronymsout there can't use it, I guess.
Anthony, I'm kind of curious.
I'm going to call you out alittle bit here.
Man, what do you hear in yourline of work about this?
I mean, you're, the governmentis probably not wanting their

(48:27):
data to go into ai.
Like, is there talk about thegovernment coming and being a
player here?
Is it still just, you know,independent bodies researching,
I mean, what's the word on thestreet?

well, I don't know how much time you
have, but I'll try to give youthe cliff notes right.
A couple of things to consider.
Number one who owns the XYZ AIright?
And the other thing is I don'tknow if you know this, but the
government often likes thelowest bidder right.

Because they want to save money.

Yeah, surprise, surprise, right.
But the other thing, too is,I've had a chance to speak with
a lot of cybersecurity securityprofessionals and the need to
protect the system against ai isis vastly different than
protecting it against a humanhacker, right, because ai can do
a lot of things that that ahuman hacker cannot do, and so

(49:17):
once they can safely and it'snever like 100 safe right, but
once they can reach a level thatthey feel it's worth it, then
it's a question of which.
Ai companies uh, we all, andalso, like I said, it's a lot uh
, most government systems useantiquated um, you know
architecture to run theirsystems, right?

(49:38):
Uh, some use code that'sliterally 50 plus years old,
right, like.

I don't know if you Social security records.

Yeah, right, like social security, they use
COBOL, which is an incrediblyold code.
Cobol, I think, might've beenbefore object-oriented code even
existed, right?
So can AI bridge the gap intoold school code?
I think 100%, that's probably asmall lift.
Can we make AI used in oursystem some way that's safe?

(50:09):
That's a tough question.
Right, the government doesn'twant to pay for going from the
ground up building its owncustom AI.
I think that's a cool idea, butwho's going to pay for that?
Right, we already have oldsystems that are old, and so
that's a lot of tough questions.
As developers, it's anothervaluable tool you have to have

(50:31):
in the toolbox.
You don't need to be a PythonAI master developer.
You don't need that.
In fact, you don't even needhalf of that as a developer If
you just understand some basicsright.
Can I plug AI into my VSC,right?

(50:57):
Can I double check my code?
Can I run this?
Does this make sense?
Hang on, let me read the lineby line.
Okay, that won't work, but wait, bridge that gap.
Heck, I can bridge that gap.
I just saved myself a good twohours, and that's where you see
a real great value with AI.
But that's just one small view,one window with government work
and developers, so I don't wantto try to speak for all the
different types of developersout there.

Great insight, anthony, and a great question,
josh.
For real, we have a little bitof information on that, by the
way, and it's under theconsultants section right, which
we haven't really dived intotoo deeply.
But top consultants willspecialize in industry-specific
AI platforms.
So, for instance, healthcareHIPAA-compliant patient journey

(51:41):
automation or financial serviceswith AI-driven SEC FINRA audit
trails Tails, too Could be tails, probably trails Manufacturing
IoT and AI predictivemaintenance integrations, things
like that.
I think if you want really goodinformation and good discussion
about this, I would check outour friend Fred, fred Kadina uh,

(52:04):
his podcast banking ondisruption Uh, I'm a guest on
there about once a month and andso is our friend Eric, and Fred
gets way into, like, especiallyEric Eric's in banking.
Fred's from finance Uh, he dida lot of work at silver line
before he launched Line, beforehe had some other career moves

(52:24):
and now, like Josh, has his ownSI practice.
But this is his space.
We were hoping that he could beon the show tonight.
Unfortunately he couldn't makeit.
But check out Banking onDisruption podcast, because
there are hours and hours andhours of this kind of a
discussion going on right now.
Banks want to, particularly thecommunity banks, right, because

(52:47):
they can't.
You know it's so hard for themto compete against the big ones
it really is.
But it's also a little biteasier to manage some of the
controls because of their sizeand they can afford to be a
little bit looser not withcompliance, of course, but they
can take some risks.
You know, by the time B of a,you know, gets around to

(53:09):
approving something.
You know, whatever PacificNorthwest community bank will
have been doing it for 18 months, you know, and a lot of times
when that's really successfuland I've seen it in my career,
back in my Robert half days whenI was doing a lot of work when
that's really successful.
And I've seen it in my career,back in my Robert Half days when
I was doing a lot of work withSurdogy.
I think I had 30 people workingover at Surdogy which got bought

(53:30):
by a very large bank, but itwas basically software.
They built software forcommunity banks, no-transcript

(54:03):
Good stuff.
I'll tell you too.
The autonomous implementation,scaling when it comes to
consultants, that's a big thing.
Design, multi-agentcollaboration frameworks,
implementing self-healingconfiguration ecosystems which
I've never even heard of before.
Have you guys heard ofself-healing configuration?

I don't know.
I might ask Mike if he'sfamiliar.
I got to tell you somethingabout implementation work, right
?
Clients a lot of times don'teven know what they want until
you show them something.
And that's just because we'rehuman beings, right?
I can put a process diagram infront of you.
I can talk about cases.
I can talk about MarketingCloud and tell you all the

(54:44):
wonderful things they can do,and it sounds cool.
But this idea thatimplementations could be
automated and that we could havea system yes, I do think
there's benefits for agents thatcan assist you with writing
code, can write test cases,automate test cases and help
each other out and give youbetter feedback to get to that

(55:05):
point, but you still have tohave a human in the loop, like
there's never going to be acompletely autonomous set of
agents running an implementation.
I mean, mike, correct me if I'mwrong, I love your take on this
.

So you know, a few months ago I had experimented
with this stuff right when I wasworking with some Apex code.
And you know, in Cursor theyhave an AI agent that has access
to tools, right, and it's doingmore than just like an LLM
that's calling a tool.
It's actually thinking aboutwhat your request is.
You know inputting, you know Iset up rules right, and it

(55:40):
didn't know what Salesforce wasnecessarily, and but my rules
helped it understand like, hey,when you change code, you have
to deploy it.
Hey, there's this idea of testclasses that also have to be
deployed.
And then, once I set up rulesthat I could call, like these
scripts to run, then it coulddeploy the code.
It could, in terminal, see thatthere was errors, fix itself

(56:01):
aka self-healing and then figureout the related code that was
causing that error and, based onthe rules and my systems of
thinking, gave it a plan tofollow.
And now it has its agency to goand follow that plan with the
tools and my systems of thinkingthat it was provided.
Now, if you can imagine, that'susing an agent that was built

(56:23):
for more general, widespreadcoding.
There's folks out there thatare, I'm sure, building their
own custom agents from scratchthat have all these tools and
systems of thinking at a morefine-tuned level and maybe even
building fine-tuned models thatare calling these tools to even
do more with less of my input.
I haven't seen it yet, Ihaven't seen it done well yet,
but there's little tidbits I seepop up here and there and I'm

(56:46):
like how much longer right youknow?
Question mark.

I like how you described that cycle.
Let me kind of play that backbecause there were a lot of
folks on the call.
You kind of hit on the DevOpsautomation process.
Which folks?
If you haven't learned the SFCLlive?
If you haven't learned theSFCLI, if you haven't learned
DevOps, do it.
Please, for the love of God,get out and change that.
And I know some of you folkscan't because you're working in

(57:11):
difficult environments andthat's not feasible.
But what Mike has described isonly feasible through command
line interface automation,through DevOps automation.
Because what he said is I gavemy agent a set of rules to
follow for how to solve aproblem.
That agent implemented something.
It wrote an Apex class and whatit also did is it may have

(57:32):
written the unit test and it mayhave run those tests.
It may have found failures.
It may have fixed the code.
It may have run a deployment.
It may have found if thatdeployment failed.
It may have found if we didn'thave enough code coverage or a
test failed, fix that and re-ranit and kind of went through
that loop.
That's actually an excellentexample of one of these
applications of AI.
But know that you couldn'tbuild that unless you understood

(57:54):
how the Salesforce CLI worksand how DevOps works and how CI
automation works.

And just one more level to that.
I told it that it needed a wayto deploy it.
So it wrote its own deploymentscript that would call the CLI,
so that it understood, and notjust deploy it based on the
changes that were staged.
So in my Git history it built away to look at the files that
were actually staged and thendeploys only those stage changes

(58:20):
.
And I was like, wow, that'spretty cool, it's using all the
fundamentals of DevOps.
But I knew to ask it thosequestions because I've built
entire DevOps pipelines right,so now I've built my sense of
thinking into that agent.

You guys are some of my favorite nerds on the
planet.
Just so you know.
It's real.
You guys are not hard.
I love it, thank you.
Thank you so much.
You too, josh.
I love it.
Thank you, thank you so much.
Nerd alert, thank you for thatinsight.
We should have a show to an hour, but it's our last one.
We're just going to let it rolland we'll be done when we're
done, so stick around.
We're still going to be talkingabout some more of this stuff.

(58:54):
I'm kind of thinking about thePM conversation that we had
earlier, right, thinking aboutthe PM conversation that we had
earlier, right?
So you know, half the companiesor half of employees in the
United States work at bigcompanies and the other half of
employees in the United Stateswork at small companies.
That's just how it goes.

(59:15):
When it comes to these smallercompanies like one of my clients
, for instance, GalvinTechnologies a lot of those
senior consultants they'reproject managing their own stuff
.
Right, because they can now,because they have the tools for
it.
Maybe maybe they're using jira,maybe they're using asana,
maybe they're using someintegrate home built system on

(59:35):
salesforce, whatever it happensto be.
But I think when we think aboutlike and I know I'm kind of
going backwards here a littlebit on the topic, but why is
there going to be a dip?
And it's because of the toolsbeing able to accomplish, Maybe
they can accomplish 80% or 70%,I don't even know, I'm not going

(59:57):
to guess, but they canaccomplish a lot of what a
dedicated PM would be doing.
Maybe not for a million dollarproject, maybe not when there's
30 matrixed employees on it,right.
But if you're cranking out, ifyou're managing three projects
at a given time with one, two,three or four people on those
projects to get the work done,then do you need a dyed in the

(01:00:20):
wool?
Dedicated came up through theranks, started as a BA, grew
into a PM, got their PMP on andon and on.
Do you need that skill set?
I'm kind of curious what youthink, Josh thinking about that
kind of thing.

Josh LeQuire (01:00:33):
I think the key question to ask is what is the
right skill set?
What is a good PM?
Right?
I think I've mentioned beforewe all know the checkboxer, the
person who comes in with theirlist.
Did you get it done yet?
Did you get it done yet?
That doesn't add value toanybody, it just annoys
everybody.
The good PM understands how todrive a team.

(01:00:55):
That means how do I make a planthat works?
I know I have people whoperform business analysis tasks.
I know I have people whodevelop.
I know I have people to testwho perform business analysis
tasks.
I know I have people whodevelop.
I know I have people to test.
How do I set up a process whereI can feed these individuals
work?
So think about development as aconstantly, as a pipeline of
work and we're kind of workingon one piece or one batch at a

(01:01:17):
time, right, you have people whobuild the front end of the
pipeline.
They're kind of creating allthe orders, right, building the
user story backlog, building therequirements, like getting
everything ready for thedevelopers.
So you have the developers tocome in and build, test, build,
test and then you have thechange managers on the tail end
of that pipeline who work withthe business.
So a good project manager isgoing to know how to set up a
process for these people toalways have work to do at

(01:01:39):
different points in the process.
A good project manager is goingto know oh crap, we don't have
enough stories for the nextsprint, our development pipeline
is going to stop, our testingpipeline is going to stop
because we're missing stories.
So that good project manager isgoing to have the sense and
know-how to look a sprint or twosprints ahead and say we need
more pipelines.
So business analysts, get out,talk to the business, figure out

(01:02:00):
this next chunk of work we'vegot to work on.
I'm not seeing the stories.
I didn't need them done lastweek.
They're giving people specificguidance about what is most
important, what is urgent,prioritizing work and how to
keep that pipeline flowing.
Because, as a project manager,your number one metric is
throughput.
When we look at this chain,this value chain of how the
analyst feeds, the developerfeeds, the QA feeds, the change

(01:02:24):
manager feeds the deployment,any point that that chain breaks
, the whole chain dies.
So you have to understand thatit's like having a hose right.
If you have a kink in the hoseright here, you get blocked on
this end.
If you're not feeding enoughwater through the hose, nothing
comes out.
On this end, your job is tobuild the pipe, manage the pipe.
A good project manager isextremely value.

(01:02:44):
Sets the pace.
It's the pace setter for theproject.
It's the rabbit in front of thegreyhound driving how fast the
greyhound is from the trackright, oh, I love that.
That's great.
Yeah, that skill is insanelyvaluable.
And a PM does that through aTrello board, a Jira board, a
GitHub project board.

(01:03:05):
That PM does that by defining aprocess for an engagement.
We all know Scrum.
We all know Kanban right.
How do we tailor it to the workthat we're doing?
How do we know that Joe's gotto go out and talk to the
business to feed us stories?
We've all got to sit in agrooming session to figure out
what the business has asked usto do and how we've solutioned
that.
We've got to have a planningsession for a sprint that says

(01:03:26):
we're going to do these 12 or 20or 25 stories.
We've got to be looking atthese things on the board.
We've got to figure out wherewe're blocked and need to solve
that problem.
We've got to figure out who'sexpecting.
You know who.
We scheduled a week or two weeksfrom now to do testing so that
we can show up with something totest, and then we got to figure
out that deployment at the endof that and making sure we hit

(01:03:48):
that.
So a good project manager doesthose things right and I think
that's where you can't justthrow.
I mean, to an extent, having aboard is better than not having
a board, but the board alone isnot going to solve that problem.
You got to have somebody who'slooking across the project and
knowing where we can facilitatethroughput.
That's the goal of a good PM.

Josh Matthews (01:04:07):
Yeah, wonderful words, man.
I've been placing PMs since2000,.
I think it's been a long time,and they are I mean no offense
to everybody else out there IfI'm not like like leaders are my
favorite people to talk to, andif it's not a leader, it's PMs.

(01:04:28):
And I don't mean like ingeneral, like oh, you're not a
leader, so now I don't like totalk to you, because there's
some of the biggest a-holes inthe world too, and everybody
knows that.
Right, so fair enough.
But just in general, like, okay, who do you like?
We've got five job orders, youknow.
One is for COOs, one is for PMs, one is for consultants, one is

(01:04:49):
for admins, you know, and onand on and on.
Who do you want to talk to?
It's like a COO, please, andthe next PM, please.
Right, this is kind of how itgoes.
So I hope, hope that the peoplethat have dedicated their life
to those roles don't feel theimpact and they won't feel the
impact nearly as much if theyget on it today.

(01:05:11):
It's insanity.
People, I'm going to keepbanging on about this.
It's freaking nuts.
The people that I talk to thatare like, oh, I'm kind of an old
guy, I'm not really gettinginto that and it reminds me of
something and I'm going to havea little dedication here in a
moment but it reminds me of whenmy friend, my friend Tom Graber
, who I worked with Tom, was onour on our program in January at

(01:05:35):
the end of January, when wewere having an episode on
basically, like all the thingsthat you should do before you
quit a job.
If you haven't listened to thatepisode, I would listen to it.
I listened to it preemptivelybecause we all want to quit.
Look, I want to quit my jobevery three months for the last

(01:05:55):
seven years.
It's just part of life.
Guys Like you're going to havea day where you're like how am I
doing?
Right?
So there's nothing wrong withthat, but I would definitely
check out that episode.
I was sitting down next to him.
We were working in a high-risedowntown Portland at Robert Half
Technology.
We were both division directorsat the time and I ran web dev
and software development.

(01:06:16):
He ran IT infrastructure stuff,the IT infrastructure team, and
he sat down.
He's so funny, he's like,literally, he's the funniest guy
.
He was the funniest guy I haveever known in my entire life and
he sits down and goes okay,josh, all right.
So, look, I've got one word foryou.
Okay, the cloud.

(01:06:36):
All right, I know that's twowords.
But and then I'd never heard ofcloud anything in my life, even
though I'd already used it.
Right, because most of you know, I started using Salesforce in
1999, the year it came out.
So Tom's sitting there, he'stelling me all about the cloud
and I was like like totallyfascinated.
It's been two years since peoplestarted saying you know LLM GPT

(01:07:02):
, you know LLM GPT like it's.
If you're not on it now,there's something wrong with
your decision-making.
Like you've got to get on thisright.
Imagine if you'd gotten ontothe cloud stuff back when Tom
Graber first told me about it.
Well, this is the same thing,guys.
It's a really big deal.

(01:07:23):
It's a really, really, reallybig deal.
It's life-changing, it'seconomy-changing.
It's going to impact us ineverything that we do other than
maybe taking a nature walkright.
And even then, who knows?
Tom sadly passed away inFebruary and we just got news of

(01:07:44):
it a couple weeks ago.
His wife passed shortly after,julie, a lovely, lovely lady.
Tom was my friend for, I want tosay, 18 years, 19 years.
We worked together.
He was one of the bestrecruiters.
He was one of the mosttech-savvy recruiters.
He was one of the most techsavvy recruiters you could.
He used to be an IT manager, uhIT director you could ever hope

(01:08:06):
to meet.
He had zero fear about beinghimself, which is a lesson that
I think I and many, many of manyof uh us who got to spend time
with Tom it rubs off on you.
You can see that you can reallybe yourself.

(01:08:26):
You can be funny, you can begoofy, you can be vulnerable,
you can put yourself out thereand the sky's not going to come
crashing down.
Today I interviewed a wonderfulyoung woman.
She's an MVP for a job and wehad a wonderful discussion and

(01:08:48):
she said to me and this is Ipromise I'm not trying to toot
my own horn, but she said youknow this conversation, this is
like the best interviewconversation I've had in like a
really long time.
I felt like I could really bemyself and I just want to say
like always be yourself, alwaysbe yourself.
If there's going to be onelesson from Tom Graber, it's
that you get to do that and thecost is, if you're not yourself,

(01:09:14):
you want to spend energy, youwant to spend time, you want to
create drama.
Don't be yourself right.
Be yourself.
Be yourself in interviews, beyourself at work, be yourself
and authentic online, beyourself with your family.

(01:09:36):
And if you feel like you can'tdig deep, you might have to cut
some people out of your life,the people that are creating an
environment for you where youdon't feel like you can be
yourself.
Guess what?
There's 8 billion of us.
There are people out there thatwill love you for who you are,

(01:09:57):
that will support you for whoyou are, that will give you
career opportunities and handups, that will support your
decisions, that will call you onyour bullshit, that will help
you succeed in this absolutelyincredible world that we're
living in right now, thisincredible time that we're
living in.
So I just we don't have to havea moment of silence or anything

(01:10:20):
like that for Tom, but I Ididn't want our next episode
since finding the news to go bywithout highlighting how many
hundreds, hundreds, probablythousands of people this guy
impacted.
He worked at Google, he workedat Tesla, he worked at Walmart
digital, he worked at Nike.

(01:10:40):
His influence has spannedliterally thousands and
thousands of candidates justlike mine, but boy was he a
unique guy and he's going to bemissed.
So thanks for all the lessons,tom, and we'll see you when I

(01:11:03):
get around to it.
Okay, all right, guys, let's doa little bit of a wrap up here.
It's been a lovely show.
Let's start with Mr Anthony.
Any final words, my friend,that you'd like to share about
what you think people should bedoing right now to advance
themselves and protect theircareers from the AI future that
we're already in.

Anthony Rodgriguez (01:11:23):
Yeah, absolutely, in fact, let me take
my blue light blocker shadesoff so that you can hear me
clearly.
It doesn't matter if you're aPM, a junior ad man, a technical
architect, it doesn't matter.
Listen to me, the best AI, ithas limits.
If you're working on amulti-tenant cloud

(01:11:44):
state-of-the-art thing or someancient legacy system, there's
always limits, but you and I, wehave no limit.
You don't let go of the joy oflearning and being excited and
wondering.
Your ai journey can begin on afree app and asking to tell you

(01:12:04):
new dad jokes, and then you cangrow from there.
Okay, like there's.
And yes, I, I do look up newdad jokes and keep my children
regularly annoyed.

It's, it's good stuff, it's good you have no, no
capacity.

You don't have to worry about
concurrencies.
You don't have a limit on yourprocessor in your head.
You can grow.
You do this.
You already have vast andamazing skills.
Pms and BAs they are masterpeople, they understand people
and they do it.
Most of my meetings are virtualright and some of them don't
even have the camera.

(01:12:40):
They hear all of the differentpeople and they sense what's
going on.
They look at the problemsbehind what the client is saying
and they orchestrate things togo even faster for us.
They can learn this AI.
You don't got to be anarchitect of AI.
You can get some basics and goa ways.
You can get a few more basicsand probably go a long way.

(01:13:00):
Just keep going, you can do it.
That's my thoughts.
Leave it at that.

Thanks so much, Anthony.
Those are great and very wisewords and passionate words and I
remember when you were justlike you, just you were doing
pep up tech, I think Right, andyou're just breaking into the
ecosystem and yeah, dude, you'resmart as fuck.
Man, Like I love yourperspective, like for real.
Awesome Sorry.

Now, but yeah, like you're smart, it's
awesome.

Sorry, surround myself with smart people.
But yeah, you're smart as fuck,dude, and it's great to know
you, and thanks for being on theshow.
We all really appreciate youand we'll continue to appreciate
you in the new iteration.
Let's jump in and talk to ourfriend Vanessa here.
Vanessa, some final thoughts,some final words as we bid the

(01:13:49):
live programming goodbye andmove on to a new era of the
podcast.
Let's start with final words onAI and what can people do right
now.

Vanessa Grant (01:14:04):
I think you either need to learn how to
master AI so all the differentresources that are available or
be better at your job.
Be part of that top 80%.
So be a master of bestpractices, be a master of
understanding the Salesforcecatalog, be a master of
understanding what it means tobe well architected, be a master

(01:14:26):
of DevOps, or what dysfunctionlooks like on a team.
I think those are all skillsthat will continue to be
relevant.
If it's a matter of writingcopy or doing more of those kind
of repetitive tasks, maybe it'stime to skill up.
Maybe you should work on thosecertifications at that point so

(01:14:46):
you can be a little bit morewell-rounded as far as what it
takes to deliver and maintainhigh-quality Salesforce
implementations.

No one's earned a dime jumping on this show.
Yeah, for a little while.
Right, it works.
It's a really amazing formula.
So before we go and move on toMr Mike McCoola, makuna McCoola,
I can't help myself, vanessaany final words on the program

(01:15:22):
Sunsetting the Live Show.
What will be lost?
What will be gained?

show what will be lost, what will be gained.
Um, I think the I still missthe clubhouse experience that
whole.
AMA experience and, and I don'tknow, with all the different
changes in the technology overthe years, as soon as kind of
clubhouse died, um, and thenTwitter happened and then we've
tried LinkedIn Live and I reallymissed the engagement with
folks.
But I will also say it's adifferent time now than it was

(01:15:58):
when we first started the show,when there were a lot of career
transitioners because it waspost-COVID and Salesforce jobs
were abundant and so it reallywas like having that edge would
get you that job really quickly,and now it's a little bit
harder and so a lot of thequestions that we were getting
in the last year were veryrepetitive.
So I think it'll replace someof that repetition and leave

(01:16:23):
some room for some fresh contentand some fresh ideas, and I'm
really excited for the tighterformat and seeing what you guys
come up with.

Well, thanks, vanessa.
Well, you've been a gem thisentire, you know, over the years
.
We appreciate you.
We're going to have you on theshow, by the way, too.
That's going to happen forreals.

I love you guys.

Yeah, and I'm, I'm with you.
Like the clubhouse days, boy,wasn't that fun.
I mean we'd jump on there, we'dhave 100, 120 people.
We just like, boom, they're on,and then they're like, what
about this?
And how do I do that?
And the clubhouse days, and itnever was really quite the same,

(01:17:11):
although we've appreciated theengagement, we saw our live
viewership go down when welaunched the podcast.
We saw that go way, way up.
I'm glad that these arerecorded and people can listen
on their favorite platformwhenever they feel like it, and
also on the videos on JoshForrest's channel on YouTube,
which is great.
I have been thinking I'lldisclose a couple things that

(01:17:32):
people might see coming from thedesk of Josh Matthews here in
the next six to eight months.
One of them would actually besome sort of a career coaching
platform.
I'm looking at developing a GPTfor careers.
It'd probably be free, whereyou can just get on there, ask a

(01:17:53):
question and it would be likeI'm giving you some advice.
Now don't take that a hundredpercent of the bank because, as
everyone has said, ai canhallucinate.
It can give you bad information, so careful.
But I am looking at developinga GPT.
I am in the process right nowof writing a book.
I don't even remember the title.
I think it's the people parthow to hire and get hired

(01:18:17):
without losing your mind.
So I'm thinking that's probablyfour to six months.
I'd like to release it byChristmas who wouldn't like that
as a stocking stuffer?
So, and there'll be an audiobook as well.
But I think that there's anopportunity out there for people
who really want more than justa quick hit answer like we would

(01:18:39):
get or give on Clubhouse, eventhough you know better than
anyone that I could just likeget a small question, not shut
up for 25 minutes straight,right about it.
So, but I think that thereshould be a platform, a little
Slack channel, some sort ofmembership, one or two live

(01:19:01):
sessions a week and someindividual one-on-one with
people, because the need forthis specific career advice it's
not going to go away.
But if you really need a littlebit more one-on-one help on
your resume, on your careerdirection, on your interviewing
skill sets or even just howyou're framed in your video,
right, I mean, I had to giveabout an hour of advice in two

(01:19:25):
one-hour meetings just today,right, because it was not up to
snuff and these people one ofthem 25 certifications and very
grateful, very grateful for thefeedback.
But people are missing the barand if someone just said you
know what, for the next monthI'm going to listen to one
episode of the show every singleday, I'm just going to pick the

(01:19:45):
top 20, 30 shows from thepodcast and listen to them.
I promise you their careertrajectory would skyrocket.
Their chance of getting a jobquickly, getting those bills
paid if they're not workingright now, right, making the job
that they have work and notquitting and being a kangaroo
and hopping from job to job andruining their life in their

(01:20:09):
forties because of what they didin their thirties or in their
twenties with job hopping.
I mean they would.
They would skyrocket.
So, by all means, dig deep intothe archives of the Salesforce
career show.
Almost none of it is dated.
There's going to be a couple AIepisodes that are going to be a
little bit dated and somemarket updates and hey, what

(01:20:30):
happened at Dreamforce 21,?
Right, Aside from those, it'spretty much evergreen material
and I'd encourage people to goahead and just, hey, you don't
have to pick 30, pick five.
Start there, right?
Listen at one and a half speed,like I do.
I listen to everything one anda half speed, you'll consume
this content and then the numberone thing that you have to do
is actually take some sort ofaction on it.

(01:20:50):
Don't just listen and thinkthat through osmosis you're
going to get better.
You have to do the things thatAnthony did.
You have to do the things thatI've done or that Vanessa has
done.
It's like you learn something.
Now apply it.
Josh LaQuire is one of the bestat this.
Mike McCool is one of the bestat this.
He learned something.
He's like okay, I learned thatNow I'm going to go do it Right.

(01:21:12):
Just go get it done.
All right, let's go ahead andask Mr Mike McCool for some
final words on predictionsaround AI and what you're doing
right now, what others can do,and I would actually ask if you
don't mind highlighting a littlebit about your vibe check um

(01:21:33):
software so that's not out yet,but uh it it is.

Mike Mikuna (01:21:37):
the idea, right, is that there is a lot of vibe
coders that are creatingsecurity, uh, with the things
that they're building, becausethey just are rapidly
prototyping and they will needengineers to help ship it.
So that's a coming soon typething, but is that enough of a

(01:21:58):
tidbit about that?

That's enough of a tidbit about that, Okay cool.

So then, my final thoughts on all this is just
that you probably heard me saymy systems are thinking because
I I told you like early on I wasgiving AI all the credit, and I
realized that's kind ofmisleading folks into thinking
AI can do way more than it canengineering mindset or someone

(01:22:27):
who really understands softwareor that product or that thing
they're shipping.
Otherwise, they're prototyping,and prototyping is going to
lead to and it already isleading to lots of technical
debt at a scale and order ofmagnitude that we've never seen
before.

So I think, there's going to be there's.

You know, history repeats itself.
There's a lot of what happenedin the dot-com boom and crash,
like people jumping onto theinternet and then people
overselling what they canactually deliver and then big
flops.
And then there's gonna be somepeople who are actually figuring
out how to architect and dothis the right way and they're
gonna come out ahead.
So first and foremost is reallyget good at how do you have a

(01:23:02):
specialty and how do you likeput that into an AI that you're
using to optimize yourproductivity.
The second thing is really howwell can you train other people?
If you're really good attraining people, you'll be
really good at working with AI,whether you're a PM or whatever
role you're in I know there's abig talk here about PMs are
going to be lost.
If you're a really good PM,you'll probably be one of the

(01:23:24):
most valuable people on a teamthat's using AI, because they'll
be constantly fine-tuning andlooking for ways to optimize it
to make that workflow better.
You might be building a productthat helps optimize everyone
else's time being moreproduct-driven.
This AI time is more rewardingto people that are being
creative and entrepreneurialthan just, like I, do a task in

(01:23:46):
and out, like it's just reallyimportant to consider, like
creativity and making time forthat, what like your own
curiosity, so you know,experimenting, playing around
like we're in a bigentrepreneurial revolution, um
and I think you said it rightthere play it, play right, it's
time to play with it.

You're not going to bring down, you know, armycom
by playing with gpt orperplexity or whatever you're
using, claude, whatever you'reusing at home in front of your
tv with your laptop screwingaround like safe.
It's safe to go around rightnow.

Yeah, just stay off the clock yeah, I know I just
kind of went down a fire hose ofthoughts, but like it's.
It's just, I'm very passionateabout this stuff and like I know
it seems scary because my lastbit here is just that if you ask
someone in the 1800s what theirjob would look like now, they
probably wouldn't picture any ofthe jobs that we have right now
.
So we're kind of like thatright now as things are rapidly

(01:24:45):
changing.
But this is our time to definethose jobs and like be part of
that process.
It's just, we have to do thisstrategically.
Don't just jump into the like Ishipped to production because I
had something built like reallyquick, like that's cool for
prototyping, but don't be thatperson right now.

So, anyways, that's my final thought dude,
that's a great soundbite rightthere, bravo.
Thank you, mike.
Mike, no problem.
Mr LaQuire, I'll ask you firstabout AI and then I'll ask you
another question, but let's hearfrom you some final thoughts on
what people should be doing,how they should be approaching

(01:25:20):
AI right now.

Well, salesforce AI said it could predict my
future success.
I asked what it saw and itshowed me a 404 error.
There's a dad joke for youthere, anthony, so I just want
to throw that out there.
I did generate some dad jokeshere for fun.
I heard a lot of great thoughtstoday.
I want to kind of synthesize afew of those, and I saw
something in the comments thatpopped up earlier that really, I

(01:25:46):
think, is another interestingaspect that we could talk about
at a later date.
Mike, you said it rewards thecreatives 100% true, you know.
I think, josh, this is why youhave that euphoria kick, you
know, at midnight and havetrouble going to sleep.
Right, you give it good props,it shows you results, you do it
again, it shows you more andit's kind of and it can be very

(01:26:14):
rewarding.
Mike, you mentioned a secondago and I think this is the
point worth emphasizing Ifyou're a good manager, project
manager, manager of people,you're good at giving
instructions, you're going to begreat at using AI to do your
job.
I will share in my company andVanessa, I saw you posting about
this earlier we are using it towrite user stories, we are
using it to build processdiagrams.

(01:26:34):
Using it to build ERDs dataflows.
Using it to build contracts forREST APIs, requests, responses
and what those look like.
Using it to build trainingdocuments and I can tell you
that nobody has ever told me inthe past they love doing
documentation.
So everybody's glad to see thiscoming in and filling the gap,

(01:26:57):
which helps me feel better as aprofessional services provider
because I can show my clientswhat we're doing.
I can show progress.
Oh, we've automated statusreporting.
I love that part too.
I can't begin to tell you like10, 12 hours a week off.
Our PMs solid right there,that's true Delivers tremendous
value to our clients.
They can see what we're doing.
They're getting value.
So I do think there is a placefor AI to take on the doldrums

(01:27:23):
and the things that used to betime-consuming.
I don't know necessarily that Isee it replacing jobs entirely,
yet I think this will happenover time as it improves and as
companies learn how to adopt AI.
When you learn how to adopt AIand how to use it correctly in
your workflow, that's when Ithink jobs you know,
particularly lower skill jobsthat AI can do the function of,

(01:27:46):
will be replaced.
Somebody said something in thecomments earlier.
I want to call this out.
There was a comment from BunnyMcCauley who said it sounds like
PA is becoming a great scrummaster is invaluable to PM roles
.
I see a blending of roleshappening with AI because it can
take on a lot of thesedocumentation capabilities,
ability you know.
For example, with a clientrecently I had him, you know,

(01:28:08):
say hey, project plan my besttomorrow morning and I knew how
to prompt AI to generate aproject plan.
Now I consider myself more oflike an architect or I would say
classic PM type role, but morekind of heavy in the architect
and BA type side.
I do development but I don't doit nearly as well as 90% of the

(01:28:31):
people I've worked with andwork with today.
I think for me it's been greatfor me to dip my toe into places
that I'd normally hand off toanother developer, I'd hand off
to another architect, I'd handoff to somebody else and get
answers more quickly.
So I do see SAs becoming betterPMs.
I do see DAs becoming betterSAs.

(01:28:53):
I do see SAs becoming betterdevelopers.
I do see developers becomingbetter architects.
I think we're going to seepeople kind of emerging and
because these tools rewardcreativity, they rapidly
increase the pace of learning.
We're going to see roles blendand people's skill set broaden.

(01:29:14):
There are a lot of reallybright people, I think everybody
on this call and certainlyeverybody listening, who, if you
have that growth mentality,that hunger to learn, there's no
limit to what you can do.
That's what I love about this.
I think it's just a giant blueocean of opportunity.

It absolutely is.
Awesome soundbites on that onetoo, mr LaQuire.
Very, very well said.
So thank you for all of thatinsight.
There's going to be a lot moreof it coming up with the new
format.
So tell us, what are youexcited about?
I know we're doing our firstcouple recordings in two days
from now and if you've actuallymade it this long into the

(01:29:56):
program, we'll just remind youthe Salesforce Career Show is
being rebranded to SalesforceHiring Edge.
If you're already subscribed,it's going to be right there.
If you're looking for it, justtype in Salesforce hiring or
Salesforce hiring edge and it'llbe easily found.
But what are you most excitedabout with the new format that

(01:30:16):
we're going to be adopting?

All right.
So I know this is theSalesforce career show and your
audience and a lot of peoplehere have come here to get good
career advice.
I want to kind of reemphasize apoint you made earlier.
The hiring edge will continuethis and kind of broaden it to a
wider spectrum.
I think now we're talking aboutour clients.
And do you hire a consultant ordo you hire a full-time

(01:30:40):
employee?
And guess what?
You still have to be reallyknowledgeable about how to
navigate your career to be acandidate in those types of
roles, and you're getting tohear more of the hiring
perspective.
So I think that's going toround out a lot of what you've
learned so far on the show andbroaden your horizons even
further.
I'm really excited, josh, foryou and I to have a very
friendly, healthy, constructivedebate about whether consultants

(01:31:03):
can do a job better or afull-time hire, because I think
there are pros and cons to bothsides of the argument.
Josh and I are honestlycompetitors if you really think
about it.
When we go approach our clients, our clients are often thinking
do I hire this role in-house ordo I hire a professional
services firm to help out?
And I'll tell you, both havetheir advantages, both have

(01:31:23):
their disadvantages.
So I'm really excited, josh,for us to unpack these topics
with your lens as the recruiter,my lens as the consultant, and
good battle.
I think there's a lot ofhealthy debate we're going to
have about the pros and cons ofthis world and the topics are
endless, right.
So I'm really looking forwardto seeing that and I think what
I really like that's emergedworking with you recently and

(01:31:45):
being invited here, and thankyou for the invitation.
This is a huge honor.
Stepping into big shoes behindyou and Vanessa is intimidating,
but it's been a lot of fun.
There are so many broad with theadvent of AI.
I'm going to demystify thebullshit marketing the fear
mongering, like the stuff you'rehearing in the news and talk

(01:32:06):
about what's real right.
Marketing the fear mongeringlike the stuff you're hearing in
the news and talk about what'sreal right.
Ai is actually very much hereto stay and here to grow, but I
don't think you need to worrytoo much about and lose too much
sleep that it's going to.
You know, eat your babies and,you know, take all the jobs on
the planet.
We got to figure out what thereality of AI is as a consultant

(01:32:27):
, as a hire, and how to applythis, and I think Josh has
brought up some really goodtopics today.
Yeah, the reality is you got tokind of hop on the train and go
, and there are a lot of rewardsto that.
It's not just do it out of fear, do it out of your desire to
grow.
I do want to tackle that topicbecause consultants using AI,
hires using AI whether you'relooking to hire a consultant,

(01:32:50):
whether you're looking to hire afull-time hire, there's a huge
role for AI in that mix.
So that topic itself is goingto continue to play along.
It's timely, it's relevant,it's hugely important to our
work Understanding how wenavigate this new world and how
we continue to become moreresilient, how we become
stronger, how we, as folks whoare buying services, hiring

(01:33:11):
people, we as folks who aredelivering services and selling
those things, how can we evolveour thinking, our mindset, our
capabilities in this rapidlychanging world and continue to
thrive?
A lot of headwinds.
Today, you don't have to pickup the newspaper or listen to
the radio or watch the TV.
We're heading into some veryuncertain times.

(01:33:32):
So my goal with you, josh, isto figure out how can we be more
resilient, how can we bestronger, how can we take
advantage in times that may seemlike there's going to be a loss
of opportunity, but generateopportunity in times of economic
uncertainty?

know, generate opportunity in times of economic
uncertainty.
Yeah, yeah, well said, andthere is economic uncertainty.
If anyone cared about knowingwhat my opinion about it is,
I'll just tell you right now I'mnot overly worried, right?
People are worried abouttariffs right now.
Well, guess what?
We should have been worriedabout them for the last 10, 15,
20 years and no one was notenough, right.
And so just don't worry aboutit, right?

(01:34:11):
At least I think with thisadministration and I'm not
trying to get too political hereit's like they still have
elections next year.
Trust me, even some moves todaywere made and the stock market
bumped up 7% or something likethat today through some recent
moves.
You're not gonna to be left inthe dust.
I don't think right.

(01:34:31):
There's going to be someuncertainty, but hopefully
there's going to be a resurgenceof activity here in the United
States.
We are listened to in 70 or socountries around the world, and
so how that affects you, I can'ttell you.
I can't tell how.
I can't tell you how anything'sgoing to affect anybody, to be
honest.
But yeah, just remember, thenews is designed to get you to

(01:34:54):
stay watching the news.
The news is designed to get youto click on their advertisers.
People like bad news andeverybody knows that.
But, yeah, still, you can lookat the numbers and there's
uncertainty.
But guess what Job numbers wereawesome last month, like they
were great.
They were really, really good.
Okay, there are jobs.
I'm busier now than I was atany given time during 2024.

(01:35:16):
Right, and I think that sayssomething.
And it's not because I'mmarketing more, I'm not, it's
the clients are coming to us andsaying we're getting busy.
So, even though it's andremember too, we had a massive
landslide.
I mean, we just fell off thecliff in 22, like hardcore early
22, all the way through 24 andor was it 20?

(01:35:40):
Yeah, sorry, beginning of 23,.
My bad, we fell off the cliff.
Demand for professionals in theSalesforce ecosystem completely
fell down right on its face assoon as Salesforce let go 10,000
people or announced 10,000people right around Christmas
time of 2022, I mean, it wasdevastating.

(01:36:01):
We lost half a million techworkers in the United States in
the last two years Half amillion.
Well, where are all those jobs?
Well, a lot of them areoffshore.
Now, right, some of them notall, not even a massive amount
are AI.
Right, because certain thingsare getting easier, but there's
always going to be a place fortop performers, right.

(01:36:22):
There's always going to be aplace, and you just have to
figure out what does that meanfor what your chosen career is?
You know, if you're going to bean admin, be the best admin,
right.
That doesn't mean the most certs, it doesn't.
It means probably the bestcommunicator and someone who's

(01:36:45):
actually like delivers on whatthey commit to communicator.
And someone who's actually likedelivers on what they commit to
right and asks for help whenthey need it and doesn't get
bogged down in perfectionism,right when it's unnecessary.
Someone who's not burning hoursdoing the wrong thing.
Knows when to ask for help.
Knows when to go to AI for help.
Knows when to get a peer review.
Knows when to communicate theclient or internal stakeholders

(01:37:06):
or external stakeholders what'sgoing on.
Communicate to the client orinternal stakeholders or
external stakeholders what'sgoing on.
Knows when to push back.
Knows when to capitulate andlet go of things.
Figure that out.
If everybody just spent 10 hoursin the next 60 days working on
their emotional intelligence, Ipromise you you're going to get
better and you know what itfucking hurts.

(01:37:27):
It's so hard.
It's so hard everybody.
It's so hard to be vulnerable.
It's so hard to take feedbackand criticism and not let it
grind you down.
It's so difficult to speak upfor yourselves.
This is, this is the hard stuff.
Learning AI is easy.
They make it fun.
Hey, perplexity, I want tolearn about all the different

(01:37:47):
LLMs and when I should use themright.
Try to make it fun.
Right, you can go to Grok andbe like, talk to me like you're
one of my homies and it'll tellyou.
You know, hit audio and let itplay for you.
Right?
It's not that hard, guys.
The hard stuff is turning thatinner eye to see your own path,
where you've gone, where you'vemade errors, where you've made

(01:38:09):
mistakes, what haven't you owned?
That Guess what Everyone inyour life is ready for you to
own.
Right, what haven't you donefor your fellow man or woman and
friends that they have done foryou?
And where have been thosemissed opportunities?
What about your boss?
You know that survey that wedid about toxic environments.

(01:38:30):
I was like toxic, toxic, toxic,toxic.
It's like, sorry, I get it, Iget it, but I'm telling you
toxic environments aren't alwaystop down, often they're bottom
up.
One of my clients recently lostan employee and nicest guy in
the world toxic.
Who would have known.

(01:38:51):
Okay, who would have knowneverybody?
Just like, take, take a goodlook at yourself and then you
can say to yourself I forgiveyou, I'm sorry, you're all right
, you're good, let's get better.
You know what I mean.
You can do that.
Be your own best friend for alittle while.

(01:39:13):
Right, because if you can dothat, then you can withstand the
input from the other people inyour life, whether it's your
boss, your coworker, yourproject manager, your mentor,
your mentee, the CEO, right,some crappy comments on social
media that you didn't like, thatdidn't sit well.
Right, let it all go.

(01:39:35):
Just get in love with yourself,but don't get in love with your
ego, right?
You have to love the authenticyou.
It's so important.
If you don't, it's really hardto ask anyone else to and I know
I'm really going off on kind ofa moderately emotional tangent
here, but we're talking about ai, and ai isn't human, but you

(01:39:56):
are, and that humanity mustshine through.
If you are robotic in yourcommunications with people, you
will never achieve top 10percent.
Uh, in your right, it's justnot, it's not going to happen.
You might have mental healthissues.
You might have I can't evenremember what the term like

(01:40:18):
divergent thinking right.
You might have ADD, you mighthave a touch of Asperger's or
something like that.
That's okay.
But you get to embrace it andfind out what are your strengths
and just get that bike pump andpump them up really, really big
.
If you pump them up really big,no one's going to see all the
other deficiencies and you cango and pick one or two to work

(01:40:40):
on.
One or two, right?
Don't try to change yourselfcompletely.
Just be your authentic self, beyour own best friend and
embrace this AI stuff, because Ithink you'll find, at the end
of the day, that, especiallywith the LLMs, it's learned from
us.
This wasn't dropped on planetearth by a bunch of fricking

(01:41:03):
aliens people.
This has learned how tocommunicate with us by
witnessing and being exposed tohow we communicate with each
other and hopefully, so far, Ihaven't seen anything to the
contrary.
It's really focused on the goodcommunications.
Okay, so you can actually getinvolved in it.

(01:41:25):
You can learn from it andbecome an even better human
being.
I think deeply that AI isalready helping me be a better
human being, so you can lean onit more than just agent force
and AI governance.
You can lean on it and learnfrom it, because what you have
access to is a collectivemindset of some of the best,

(01:41:46):
smartest, most brilliant peoplein the entire world that it
pulls a lot of its informationand knowledge from.
So get involved with AI.
You'll become a better humanbeing if you do.
And let's leave it at that,shall we?
And we'll be back in two weeks.
Well, not live.
I almost said live, not live.
With the first of many, manyepisodes of Salesforce Hiring

(01:42:08):
Edge.
I'd like to bring everyone backon stage.
Maybe we can do a quick littlepicture here, but thank you to
everybody who's been on the showtoday, starting with Vanessa
Grant.
You're such a special person.
Appreciate you so much.
Good luck guys.
Yeah, mike McCool, my friend,josh McQuire, thanks for being

(01:42:31):
on the show.
Thanks to all of our listeners.
Please subscribe.
We don't want you to miss asingle episode.
We don't want you to miss onwhat could be life-changing and
career-changing information foryou, because it's already out
there and there's just morecoming down the way.
It's going to be a nice, smoothpipeline of knowledge and we

(01:42:54):
can't wait to share it.
Thanks everybody.
Thanks for all the livequestions, thanks for all of the
dedication to showing up at5.30, 4.30, or 2.30 every other
Wednesday, depending on where inthe US you live, or any of the
other uh 21 time zones, probably25 for some weird reason, any
of the other time zones, nomatter what country you're in.
We appreciate you and I meanthat sincerely, like we have all

(01:43:16):
appreciated you.
We're going to continue toappreciate you.
You've got a question that youneed answered on the new app, on
the new show.
You can currently just go tosalesforcecareershowcom and you
can drop in your question andwe'll do our very best to get
those answers.
You can DM me or DM JoshLaQuire on LinkedIn.
Okay, ask you.
Hey, here's something I loveanswered and we'll save it for

(01:43:37):
the show and we'll get you theanswers that you need so that
you guys can continue to thriveand succeed in Salesforce
ecosystem for many, many yearsto come.
Thank you everybody.
That's the show.
Bye for now.

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AI Takeover - Will Your Salesforce Career Survive?

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