I’m currently 25 years old and have been working as a Salesforce developer for about 4.5 years. My daily work involves writing backend logic with Apex (Salesforce’s programming language) and building frontend components using their framework that combines HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I’m employed at one of the major consulting firms and while I’m being considered for a senior consultant position, I’m thinking about making a big change.
My real interest lies in becoming a software development engineer or full stack developer working with mainstream technologies. For the last several months, I’ve been dedicating my free time to learning Spring Boot for backend development, React for frontend work, and studying data structures and algorithms to strengthen my programming foundations.
The thing that worries me is whether it’s realistic to pivot my career after spending nearly five years in the Salesforce ecosystem. I’m wondering if potential employers will see my experience as relevant or if I’ll be starting from scratch. Have any of you made a similar transition from specialized platform development to general software engineering? I’d love to hear about your experience or if you know colleagues who successfully made this type of career shift.