TDX 2026: The Ecosystem Is Splitting and You're Choosing a Side

Josh Matthews hosts a live TDX 2026 breakdown with three guests who were in the room: Sally ElGhoul (brand new Golden Hoodie winner and founder of Code with Sally), Beach Horn (Salesforce architect and Salesforce Ben contributor), and co-host Scott Stafford.

What they cover:
- What TDX 2026 was really trying to land — and what Parker Harris's headless vision means for your career
- Agentforce Vibes 2.0 and AgentScript: why deterministic agents are the biggest developer shift in years
- Why demand for Salesforce architects is up 27% while supply is only up 4%
- The AI developer split — why skipping fundamentals is just as dangerous as ignoring AI
- Security, React on Core, and the surfaces nobody's watching closely enough
- How to get the most out of Dreamforce and Dreamin' events (and why you need to book your hotel today)
- Sally's Golden Hoodie moment: what it felt like, and why she still just wants you to come say hi

The Hiring Edge covers hiring strategy, career development, and the forces reshaping the Salesforce ecosystem. New episodes every two weeks.

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Transcript

Sally’s Golden Hoodie Origin Story

Josh Matthews 0:00

Welcome to the Hiring Edge. My name is Josh Matthews. I'm joined today by Beach Horn, Sally El Ghoul, and Scott Stafford. Everybody knows who Scott. He's my co-host. And Sally, Sally is the brand new Golden Hoodie member. Sally, give us uh congratulations. Yeah, bravo. That's not an easy achievement. Boy, do those things shine. So maybe you can just tell people who you are, what you do, and how how did you come about receiving the golden hoodie this year?

Sally ElGhoul 0:31

So thank you so much, Josh, for having me and for the great introduction. And thank you for the great wishes as well. So my name is Taliil Ghoul. I'm based currently in Toronto, Canada. Uh, I've been in the ecosystem for 16 years now, so very long time. And I've been always like a developer, moved to a senior developer. Now I'm a lead developer and working as well in uh sometimes as the architect as well for the team. Uh I'm the founder as well of Code with Sally, and uh I love giving back for the community. Like Salesforce, as I mentioned during the keynote, changed my life and family life. Like we moved from Egypt to UK and then Canada through Salesforce opportunities. So I believe in giving back, and that's why I started Code with Sally. Uh, it's an initiative with uh weekly live sessions where I teach people coding or anything new I learn. And uh yeah, I believe uh that uh was one of the reasons uh like how I'm giving back and interacting with the community and trying to help others learn across uh my journey and the path of learning.

Josh Matthews 1:40

What did it feel like? What did it feel like to hear your name and get called up?

Sally ElGhoul 1:48

Uh it was very, very um like I I was very nervous and uh at the same time very excited and honored. So it's mixed feelings, and I think till now I still feel like I'm processing that this happened and I got it because the Golden Hoodie was always like something uh big. We don't know exactly like how people get nominated or selected. So I was never like had a wish to have it. So it's it's a great honor, definitely. And uh I'm very happy and proud that I got the chance to talk and share my story and maybe like uh inspire others to give back to the community and help each other grow.

Meet Beach And Why TDX

Josh Matthews 2:34

Wonderful. Well, congratulations again, Sally. It's great to have you on the show. And Beach, tell us who are you? What do you do? Where do you live? What do you get up to? And why did you uh head out to TDX? I think this was your first time at TDX, correct?

Beech Horn 2:48

Yeah, first time at TDX. I'm still a bit of a sales force and Mirosoft noob. I've only been doing it for a couple of years, but I've been doing technology for about 30. So there's a lot of transferable skills and learnings and stuff to come across. Yeah. Um, kick back in London, work for a security company. We do locks, alarms, CCTV, all of that kind of jazz. And I'm a developer turned architect. So there's still a lot of learning about what it means to be an architect and how that's different from being a developer or an admin or a manager going on. But yeah, um, quite like walks, there's a lot of countryside near us. My other half loves riding. I'm a bit more scared of the horses, to be fair. And I really wanted to head out to TDX. I've been spending a lot of time with the product managers and kind of seeing how products are evolving and getting involved with insider groups and things and trying to push things on. A lot of content on Salesforce Ben, tutorials and articles and things. Sure. So I've been trying to push the product. So there's no better place to speak to product managers and speak to people who were trying to create new and fun things than to head out to TDX. Plus, I get to see Sally for the first time. And that was an amazing reveal. That's us watching you in the audience go from here to it was a lovely moment, and then the the terror unwound.

TDX Versus Dreamforce And Audience

Josh Matthews 4:09

Scott, as someone who's you know a regular attendee of Dreaming Events and Dream Force and TDX2, for those who've never been to TDX, what what does it how does it feel different say to a Dream Force? And of course, this year is in San Francisco. It isn't always, right? How did it feel different for the lay person attending a TDX versus a Dream Force?

Scott Stafford 4:37

It's a lot smaller. So that actually brings the opportunity to really build those authentic relationships. I mean, there is a fair amount of people there, but compared to Dream Force, well, you're just overwhelmed. I mean, there, you're not necessarily will you actually get to see everybody that you wanted to see at Dreamforce. I had an incredible time. I mean, you start out, right, you know, a little bit slower, get there the day before. I ran over to see Sally at her hotel. And then the big difference is there's a lot more emphasis on hands-on. I mean, you walk in and you'll see computers and and different assets there for you to actually get your hands on the keyboard or get to be part of, you know, whatever technology they have there. And I just really think that also that opportunity to have it just be two days, because a lot of times when it's three days at Dreamforce, you're wiped. You're wiped and wiped, but you can give it your all, right? And go full blast for two days. So it's pretty magical.

Josh Matthews 5:37

And who do you think the primary folks are that should be going, right? Like, hey, if this is your job, you should go. And you can't say everybody, but go ahead.

Beech Horn 5:51

Normally you'd go for like, you know, your developers, your technical architects, that's the normal archetype. Yeah. But now there's a lot more declarative stuff happening. There's a lot more drag and drop the agentic layer experience or multi-platform and these kind of weird terms. But it basically what it means is drag and drop declarative. So just click and uh clicks rather than code development. There's a lot more of that happening, especially with AI. So even if you're an admin, but you're someone who creates things, or even if you're in marketing and you want to see how you can get more creative, how can you get more automated? I'd say TDX is opening the doors for those kind of avenues.

Josh Matthews 6:30

What do you guys think the world's gonna be like in 12 months with vibe? I I know it's it's like Josh, I don't know what it's gonna be in three months, right? Like AI doesn't feel the same as it did at Christmas, as far as I'm I can tell, you know. But in 12 months, I mean, the term developer, it's already changing. I think we learned that it's the low 90 percentile, uh, you know, over 90%, 92% of developers are utilizing AI to some degree. A lot of developers have switched over to using products like Cursor or Vibes and just to make certain aspects of development expedited. They can run multiple, they can develop in parallel at the same time. I I know some of the new features coming out with Vibes 2, which uh a friend of the show and a friend of mine, Mike McCullough, worked on over there at over there at Salesforce, very bright guy, one of the earliest adopters of Cursor, and eventually they brought him on over to Salesforce, which makes a ton of sense. Now, you know, it's easy. Like, what are we doing? Oh, I'm refactoring, or oh, I'm doing QA, or oh, I'm just doing like a bug review, or no, I'm actually building here, or I'm planning, right? The planner layer, which is sort of the architecture layer of vibes too. Like now that people like me, I'm smart guy for some things, I'm a total dumbass for other things, right? Like now, me, I can sit down and I can, I can build robust software, like good stuff, stuff people are gonna use, stuff people will pay for. That has really changed the landscape. What did you find at TDX? You know, how did they address that? I mean, going on, going off of what you just said, it's like, hey, it's now bring that, bring in the admins, bring in the people who are the builders and the configuration specialists and the consultants, bring them down here to this conference because guess what? It's just not for developers and architects because that skill set has been laid open. Not perfectly, not perfectly. And if if we know anything about what's happening in the job market right now, it's that demand for architects in Salesforce, it's up 27%. Supply is only up 4%, right? People need more orchestrators, more architects. That's what I'm finding. I think that's what the world's finding in general. So what do you think? Let's go, let's go with you, Beach.

Beech Horn 9:04

Yeah, they've given you a great set of tools to accelerate. The thing is, you can accelerate in the straightforward direction to where you want to be, or you can accelerate in the opposite direction away from where you need to be just as fast. So you've got these tools and they're just enablers. So it becomes how do you add value? How do you orchestrate things to kind of get these tools to work for you? You know, if you're using a hammer all of the time, you're not really going to drive those screws in properly. So you've got to think about using the right tools and really being sure about where you're going before you run fast.

Josh Matthews 9:42

Well, it makes sense. What about you, Sally? What do you think?

Sally ElGhoul 9:46

So I I think, and that's part of like uh I had a session where we were showing how the enterprise uh development and delivering an app will be changing in while we're using Vibes and the new MCP servers. Like I feel we'll become more spending less time writing everyday like fine codes and more like spending time of um requiring gathering, asking questions, uh, trying to cover edge cases in our requirements and spending time as well planning with the vibe tools or Asian Force Vibes, like what's the plan of the implementation and reviewing that? And then we'll become orchestrator, like implementing phases one by one. But again, I still feel we need the development skills because Asian Force Vibes, Cloud, Codex, all the vibe tools will generate artifacts for us. But like without the knowledge of developers and how we can uh verify if it's good or bad, or if it did a wrong empty pattern we don't like, we won't be able to catch those. It may be fine with a proof of concept or like a demo, but it won't be good for a live like production uh code. So we need the knowledge to review and make sure it meets the criteria we are looking for. So we'll spend more time in the pre-orchestration and implementing the phases using Vibe tool, and we'll be reviewing and making sure everything is good. And the other thing I feel we needed, we need the knowledge for because sometimes, like you get into a cycle of bugs or issues, and you can keep going back and forth with AI tool to change it or fix it for you. It can go messy if you go that route sometimes, and sometimes as well, it's burning credits or API requests for you unnecessary. So sometimes the knowledge as well can save you time to get things done faster or like cut it short, save on the budget you have and the credits you are burning using AI. So that's like the idea, but definitely, definitely, because I've been using Asian Force for developer before it became Asian Force Vibes, and I see now Asian Force Vibes 2.0 coming. Uh the progressive like uh enhancements the team is working on is massive, uh, but we have to get hands-on and get used to it because again, the more we'll be using those tools, the more creative we'll be with like use cases and how we can benefit from too as well.

Josh Matthews 12:17

100%. And I I want to touch on something that you just brought up, which is what these AI development tools are good at and where they really suffer. And certainly one of those areas, and I think this is why going headless can make a lot of sense for a lot of people, is the UX can be really tough. You try and change your font, you know, on an application, and it's gonna break two other things, and it's not gonna understand you unless you're really working with a strong Figma. And as a code or as a developer, you've probably got all of your assets and it's dialed in and you're uploading that information. But even then, the output, it just seems to struggle, or at least this is what I've noticed, and some friends of mine have noticed.

Speaker 2 13:08

Right.

Josh Matthews 13:13

They sure are, yeah. And I did see some stuff about claw design. It seemed like there's some really decent use cases for it. Um, you know, very good, very good use cases for it. So, but it's still in its infancy. And so there's a lot of the tech that we're that we're talking about right now. Let's do a little bit of a pivot. Scott, I'm gonna go to you. I want you to just talk about you kind of mentioned how it's a smaller conference, yeah. A little bit more opportunity to connect. I don't know a whole lot of people in the world who are born connectors the way you are. I mean, you're just Mr.

Speaker 2 13:52

Sunshine, I think that's what you call them. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Scott Stafford 14:01

I would say though, at this TDX, it started out. I mean, if everybody listened to the keynote, right? We brought back Sarah Franklin. It was magical. And what she's known for, bringing the bling, right? And that's kind of what I think we're doing in the world, right? As Sally pointed out, right, we can use and spend a lot of time actually designing the software that we're looking for. But then we also now have stuff to elevate it to the next level. So I'm seeing that we are bringing the being, right, to the conferences. You know, we're connecting, there's a lot of excitement in the air, but then we're also bringing the bing, right, to be able to refine the applications that we made. I saw some of the best software, right, come out of Salesforce that I've ever seen, right? They used vibe coding, they've used a lot of things to build that. And they're elevating yourself. So kind of think about that. That's what I kind of think about. Now that we have these tools, you can spend more time, right, when it's all done, iterating it and getting it to the next level, right? And it's magical. And we are really excited. I mean, you probably uh saw a lot of pictures of my good friend Daniel Peters, right? He was flexing his muscles, and basically that's where we are right now. Salesforce is giving you the muscle, right? It's the bing, it's the excitement, right? We have, you know, we have the toys, right? We have everything to do. And it's just kind of magical. I along with, you know, getting people to to appreciate that everybody probably wants to come look through the looking glass and go to TDX because you get a vision of you know where we're going, right? It's also just a lot of fun, right? You know, just to be part of the magic, right? It's happening so quick. Like Josh pressed me with, where will we be in one year?

Security Risks And Hiring For Growth

Josh Matthews 15:45

I don't know. Good answer. It's gonna be great. What do you think is the scariest thing going on right now? Beach, let's go to you.

Beech Horn 15:54

What's the scariest, scariest certainly AI in terms of security issues? So we've just had mythos get loose and things. So there's a lot where you can't really expect anyone to attack Salesforce itself, but we've got things like React on core, so a whole new web surface available for Salesforce. And React's had a really rocky road, especially before Christmas. Um so we've got all of these AI tools that are automatically finding vulnerabilities, and we've got all these new surfaces and ways of interacting with Salesforce happening at the same time. And if security last year taught us anything, that's a dangerous mix if you've not got your security stature down pat. So all I'd recommend is any architects, any admins out there. Security is probably going to be a growing task to learn, and you really want to get ahead of it earlier rather than later.

Josh Matthews 16:49

How can look, as an architect, Beach, I'm kind of curious, how would you advise a hiring manager to thoroughly verify someone's ability to build things that are actually, you know, protected. Protected, you know.

Beech Horn 17:07

From certifications and things, but that only get you so far. What I would suggest is more thinking of it in the long term. So you can get people that that know this and know that and get that certified. But you want to find people that are curious, that are keeping up to date, they've got a track history of attending events and learning. There are different things like SAPSA is probably the one that I think is nearest and dearest to my heart, because that teaches you to orientate anything you do for security towards business value, which means it's orientating anything you come up with security to getting funded and actually turning that back into money the company recognizes to enable them. So it's thinking about these long-term things and having a track history of being curious, being interested, and keeping up to date.

Josh Matthews 17:54

And what about for you, Sally? I mean, how much are you touching on security, cybersecurity, wall gardens, this sort of thing, um, when you're working with the people in your community and helping them to elevate their development game?

Sally ElGhoul 18:09

So from my end, like I wouldn't be that deep as Beach. Like I go to Beach for like knowledge and understanding more of the security and how I can over overcome it. But like from what I've learned, like to be careful with the context, like uh if you are getting skills or if you're getting or using anything from the internet, it's better to build it yourself or like rebuild using your AI tools, like the skills file, and be careful with it where you are getting the skills from or the files you are downloading to make sure like you're not getting anything um you don't want to have. And the other thing is definitely like uh if we are using vibe coding and generating code, like we go for like the standard checks and the standard, like if we are doing the code ourselves to make sure we are meeting the best practices we are looking for. Again, from my end, like keep learning from people who are deeper in the topic because it's changing and trying to be careful with what I can find online and uh as well to use my knowledge to my best ability to review the outputs.

Headless Salesforce And Conference Motif

Josh Matthews 19:19

Very smart, good advice. I'm kind of curious, what do you each feel Salesforce was trying to land this past week? Because it's a lot, right? Because there's there's sort of well, there's what's going on, right? I mean, if anyone who's been to Dreamforce knows this, there's like there's what's going on, then there's what they're trying to land, what they're trying to make sure everyone's taking away. You know, what do you think the big motif is here?

Beech Horn 19:54

I'd go along with the Parker Harris and the this headless concept, this idea that instead of having a big monolithic product, your big Salesforce everyone goes to and you have everything plugged in, that it's now becoming a bit more like a tapestry where you're going to take little bits from lots of different areas and weave it together to a product that makes sense for you, that's coming to you in terms of an environment. If you look at what's successful at the minute with AI, you've got open um claw that a lot of people love, which is the idea that you've got AI agents you interact with via WhatsApp, via iMessage, via email. And this headless environment, this headless way of doing things, is now bringing that same experience for Salesforce. So it's meeting the user where they are and allowing them to bring in more tools than just Salesforce into a combined tapestry of an experience. And I think that was at least Parker Harris's school of what's going on. Sure.

Josh Matthews 20:51

Yeah, I mean, it may it make sense. I'm on my open claw all day long through Slack. You know, I'm not logging into some dashboard, you know, and I'm not having to configure pick lists to get it to do things that I want it to do. It's just doing it and connected. What about you, Sally? Do you echo what Beach believed was the sort of main arc of the conference last week?

Sally ElGhoul 21:14

That that definitely was a big part for it, but as a developer, likely developer mindset, I'd be more like the MCP servers that they are making it available and like uh showcasing that the Asian Force Vibe 2.0 will become better and enhanced. And at the same time, you can use those MCP servers if you want in like uh Cloud or OpenAI codecs, like other tools, if you are more comfortable working in other uh vibe coding tools. And the other piece for it it was the Asian script because we have been building and uh implementing a lot of agents using the old builder, and we were missing the part of the deterministic versus like probabilistic uh distinguish in. The agents we are building. So I believe that's a big change and it's a big like push towards uh thinking how to make the agents more efficient and more secure in that regard as well, when you need the deterministic piece of validations or security.

Josh Matthews 22:16

Can you dumb that down for some of us?

Sally ElGhoul 22:19

Uh so honestly.

Josh Matthews 22:21

No, like I I get it. I don't think everybody's gonna fully understand what you mean about agent scripts and like where was that before and why do you need it? And how it's how it's integrated. Yeah.

Sally ElGhoul 22:34

So before we had the old builder where like mainly to manage your agent or give instructions, we were using just plain English. And that like was relying on the LLM mainly like to make the decisions where what to do or what actions to do. So if for example you have a an agent that needs to verify a customer first before revealing like order details, like we found that based on experiment and people working on it, the old builder and the agents we built with, that sometimes 99 or 80%, 90% it was happening, and sometimes no, and that was a huge risk. So Salesforce came with the Asian Force Agent Script, which is a new language and new builder for building agents where you can have more deterministic uh input, like if statements make sure not to or to give the order unless the user is verified, using if statements and the variables in place. And you can have two ways to do it, like whether you do the script and language yourself and write it, or they offered as well a canvas more like people who are used to the flows and the GUI, or like uh for the flows to have a better way or easier way to write uh the new uh deterministic if statements and make sure that we have control over the agents in those areas where we needed to be 100% sure not to do something uh first uh and uh verify the customer.

Josh Matthews 24:10

Because LL LLMs mess this up all the time. It's like you must do this, but wait, it's not in brackets, it's not in caps, and now I'm going to ignore you. And by the way, in about a hundred lines, I'm gonna forget everything that you just told me. So you're you're talking about like really putting the guardrails in and making it like you must absolutely do this. This is not something that Sonnet 4.6 needs to think about. You're gonna just do this. Is that kind of what you mean?

Sally ElGhoul 24:34

Yes, yes. And this won't be done through the LLMs. Uh, like it would be through the reasoning, Atlas reasoning engine of Salesforce doing this uplift for you and make sure that it's deterministic and 100% we are sure it's happening. So I feel that's a big change as well. Uh as a developer who has been working with the agents as well.

Josh Matthews 24:57

What are you most scared of in the next six months? Like, what do you think? I'm gonna go to Beach on this one, and then we'll hit Scott and come back to you, Sally. There's a lot, there are a lot of tech layoffs happening. It's very real. It's not like people didn't know this wasn't coming. It's coming, it's here. And it's probably going to accelerate as some of these AI investments that companies are making start to actually work out and make sense and pay off.

Scott Stafford 25:32

Yeah.

Josh Matthews 25:32

So what I'm I'll I'll start and just tell you what I'm most scared of. I'm scared that people don't know that they need to get their shit together now. That's the thing that scares me the most. That there are really smart, good people out there that simply are pushing back against AI and thinking somehow they're gonna make it. You know, and unless they're I mean, unless they're out there, I don't know, helping to repair tractors on a farm or something. Like, I don't know what they're gonna do with their life, right? What do you guys think? Let's go to U Beach first.

Beech Horn 26:10

I'm even worried about the people repairing stuff, the robotics field, which is like the fourth wave of AI. We're we're in the third. That's the fourth wave before we get to the fifth. Even those manual jobs, I'd be worried about saying, go get a manual trade, you're gonna be okay on here.

Josh Matthews 26:27

But I think that's still like two year, I feel like that's still a two-year-old.

Beech Horn 26:31

In the six-month area.

Josh Matthews 26:33

Yeah, yeah.

Beech Horn 26:34

There's a lot of jobs where you're not adding value, where you're not communicating with the business, where you're not able to articulate. If you can't articulate your job to train someone else, you can't articulate your job to automate it with AI. So there's a lot of people that feel that they're in these jobs where they're never promoted. The reason they're never promoted is no one can ever understand what they actually do. Those kind of jobs are kind of at risk because AI can start to figure out what they're able to do. So it's a matter of don't make yourself invaluable, make yourself replaceable, which seems counterintuitive, but it means you're able to communicate, you're able to move, and you're able to change. And there's uh a wonderful book called Who Moved My Cheese? And the top line from that is I've been out for some time. Yeah, exactly. What would you do if you weren't afraid? There's in uh Punjabi myth, it's the idea of in order to move, you need to be uprooted from where you are and replanted somewhere else. And it's that uprooting can feel hurtful, but you need to do it in order to be able to move.

Josh Matthews 27:36

100%. Thanks for sharing that, Beach. What do you think, Scott? What's the scariest thing about changes?

Scott Stafford 27:44

What I see that being really scary is people's past experiences, their past beliefs of where technology is going is gonna hold them back. To actually imagine a world, try and figure out what the world's looking for. People want to be on their tech, right, in remote areas. They want this. They're actually asking, right, for a headless, right? And so many people, I think, are slowing down. They're like, well, agent force, agent force, it's not gonna happen. And it did happen, right? And the agents are here. So don't, you know, learn from that lesson and make sure you don't hold yourself back. Try and envision a world that's actually coming. We're literally gonna be talking to our computers, right? There's gonna be holograms. This future world, right, is coming one day. So I really worry that a lot of people are slowing down, trying to say, well, coding's not gonna be like that. Uh the one of the things I really, really appreciate about Sally is she is known, right, as a coding expert, right? You know, it's code with Sally, but she's always telling people embrace the new tools, right? Get in there, find out how they use them, and then get to the next level. So that's what I'm worried about that people will actually be great, you know, assets, but actually because they don't dive in, right, they won't take advantage of the future.

Josh Matthews 28:59

Totally agree. Sally, let's get your thoughts on this.

Sally ElGhoul 29:02

Yeah, so I I guess mine is mainly two areas. Like one of them is that we need to keep up and things are changing super fast. So we have to be in the mindset every day we have to learn something new and teach someone else while we are learning. Uh, because it's a lot. If I will learn on my own, I can't finish everything. So if I know something, I share it. You know something, you share it, and we all benefit. The second part is I feel, yes, there is people who are afraid of the technology and they don't want to embrace the change. That worries me because I see a lot of brilliant people and I don't want them to be left out. But on the other side as well, I see a lot of newcomers coming in. And what worries me is that they leave the basics, they don't learn how to do things and they jump in AI, and that's risky too, because we'll have people who use the AI very in a very like impressive way, but they cannot tell if it did a good job or not. And that can be risky and can lead to issues, security or performance or anti-patterns uh included. So I feel those two categories of people are scary, like because we need the knowledge and we need to know how to use the AI. So we have to be balanced between the two and we have to keep learning because it's changing super fast. It's a lot.

Career Fear And Staying Relevant

Josh Matthews 30:27

So fast, so fast. I'm kind of curious, Sally, what's the mistake you're already seeing customers making with AI agents on Salesforce? Are you seeing them make mistakes regularly?

Sally ElGhoul 30:39

I feel uh what I saw is either not being open-minded that let's go and start and try it, or sometimes the clients jump in in a the biggest use case that they wish ever to implement. And it's a learning curve for the developers and for them like to know how to express what they want. And sometimes that makes the output not as like as for example, they shut down the whole project. So my advice is always like start small, and I like to I love employee agents. I feel it like uh when we are working with uh agent force agents, like it's a sweet spot because it's not customer-facing, it's less risky. Uh, like developers and employees can take time to learn how to implement it and experiment internally, and they will build the confidence and the know-how, how to think because it's a different mindset of thinking on achieving the changes. So once we experiment with the employee agent, we will have the knowledge as developers or team. The business will get the benefit and they will fall in love with it, and then we can expand beyond that. So I believe start small and extend.

Josh Matthews 31:54

Look, I gotta just put a big fat exclamation point on top of what you just said here, because it is so critical. And I've seen it where people just they're they're like, I know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go eat that elephant right now on something that I don't even really fully understand. And I've I've seen it happen in tech over the last 25 years, 30 years almost, that like it's just like don't do that. Like, just don't do that. And even for myself, when I first started with some some AI with using perplexity computer and then moved to open claw, and it was like, okay, I'm I'm not jumping, I'm not just sticking all this stuff into like my QuickBooks and my Salesforce right away. Let's just try some basic marketing stuff. Let's see how that goes. I wanted to start a launch a new business, which is probably gonna come out in a couple, couple months, but it's like, well, let's see if I can just use AI to open up a quick little t-shirt shop in a weekend, right? And I did it. And it's like, okay, I just want to see how this is working and how it's it's just a test case. I'm not gonna make a dime on the thing, but it was just a test case and it was fun, fun little experiment. So, yeah, start small, right?

Speaker 2 33:01

You don't uh it's true. It's true.

Josh Matthews 33:31

Yesterday I did this thing, I I just thought, oh, this will be fun. Um on this one project I'm working on. I've got 74 tasks, right, that I need to get done. And I had a list and it just triaged. I was like, uh, can we make this into a Kanban? Yeah, sure, let me do that. Here you go. And I was like, okay, can we make it so that if I click on it on some like little lightning bolt, it populates our thread and you take the first action on it? It's like, yeah, sure, done. It was it was three minutes of work and two minutes of rendering and it was done. And it was like, oh my God, there's so much power that there's practically no excuses for low productivity anymore. Right. And I think one other thing before we kind of move on, Scott, I know you've got some stuff to share. I think people should be terrified of how efficient they can be. And if they don't feel hyper-efficient, they should be terrified about how efficient others can be. And I'm telling you this because I know it for a fact. Hiring managers don't yet know this. The people listening to my show might, but in gen pop out there in the real world, most hiring managers don't know what's actually possible. What having a Sally or having a beach or having a Scott or having a Josh on their team could mean when they actually have like, okay, look, here's your $50,000 of credits a year, like use them wisely, off you go. You know, like let's go build some stuff. When it happens, when they catch up, we're going to see this split, I think. The haves and the have nots, the broke and the successful, there's not going to be an eeking by anymore. There's going to be you're making it or you're not, you're relevant or you're not. And this sort of gray middle zone is going to be very fuzzy. And those are just going to be the people who are trying to get up. You know, but if they're not working towards that like competency to break into that top 30% of producers out there in the world, they're going to find that they're in the bottom with everybody else. And so they go and get beach to your point earlier. They're like, well, I know what I'll do. I'll go um start a pressure washing business. And now they're competing with some guy who's got a Tesla driving, self-driving truck, and two robots in the backseat who are going out and doing it. And he's sitting back, and all he had to do was spend 150 grand on some robots and soap. You know, like it's crazy.

Beech Horn 35:57

It's six grand now for a biped robot being used by BMW in their factories. The price is ridiculously low. Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Matthews 36:07

Yeah. It's crazy. Hey, by the way, we've got uh a number of people watching this program. Welcome. Thank you for joining us. You are watching the Hiring Edge. It's live here on LinkedIn. We are joined by Sally El Ghoul, one of the most recent Golden Hoodie award winners. Um, just kind of last week at TDX out in San Francisco. We've got Beach with us, we've got Scott with us. We thank you for being here. We hope that you're going to subscribe to this channel and show up every couple weeks. If you missed the first part, don't worry about it. On LinkedIn, you can just rewind and you can watch the whole darn thing. You can also, by next Tuesday or Wednesday, you can listen to this. If you're not as visual a person, you can listen to this. Just go to thehiringedge.ai or just type in the hiring edge anywhere uh you like to listen to podcasts, Spotify, Apple, and about 20 other places. Okay, with that in mind, Scott, what haven't we covered about TDX that's really important for us and our audience to understand?

Scott Stafford 37:05

Yeah, I want to tag back onto something that Sally said before I touch on that. She said, you know, we build it small, right? Don't just start with a huge elephant, but build it and then build it so that they'll fall in love with it. Right. I I was just thinking when she said that, that is so powerful. That's the bing, right? That's what Sarah Franklin's all about, right? Let's, we have the tools. Don't you want to awe people with what is actually possible, right? So start small, then iterate through it. And actually, when you showcase what you made with AI, show them something that is beyond anything, right? Thing you could have ever done without those tools. Because we have new tools and we can now do amazing things. So I was just gonna uh piggy on that. I also want to encourage a different aspect of TDX, right? We've we've talked a lot about how things are moving so quickly. You posed one question that was a little bit scary. Where are we gonna be in a year from now? And the reason why you should get to Dreamforce, which is less than six months, and TDX now is actually just to get the opportunity to see where the world's going. Look through the looking glass. It's all about them showing the world, right, that they want to build, but it doesn't exist yet unless we all buy in and get excited about it. So as I left there, I go, wow, that's an incredible world. Isn't that what we're looking for? Right. I really don't want to have to always be on my computer or just to not be able to build in-grounded conversation. I'm in Slack and I love it, right? And so that's just something I want to encourage everybody. Maybe it's time to start going to a few more conferences because things are moving fast. You can't literally wait one year to see the next beaker of where we're going. You you might need to check in every three months.

How To Track Fast Moving Change

Josh Matthews 38:50

So let's do this. I'm I'm really curious. What are you guys tracking and following to get a sense of how things are changing? I imagine some of it's just gonna be hands-on. It's like, oh, I didn't know I could do that, right? Um, but is there a, you know, is there a blog? Is there um a community? Is it Ohana Slack? Is it just getting in there and working on it? Like, what is it?

Beech Horn 39:11

There's about 12 different sources. You've got to be speaking to people on Slacks, their product managers, their fellow architects, you've got to be keeping on top of the blogs, you've got to be keeping on top of uh general YouTube chatter that's happening. There's different specialist consultancies, and also watch out for what isn't mentioned. So a big one, for instance, is where's Omni Studio? When's the fact that it didn't join the ALX, the AXL, this agent experience layer? Is that the next candidate to be fallen off looking at the trajectory of things? Yeah. Field service had a big dream force with hybrid workforce, drones, robots being added. There's no talk of that when it gets the computer vision stuff at TDX this year. So it's like just trying to find the weave of where things are and where they're heading. But yeah, you've got to be wide. There's so much, and it's grabbing what makes sense to you. And don't be afraid to join international virtual communities. So there's a lot of like Australia's just had a big session. There's a big session in India. Yeah. There's if you're interested in these areas, you can join them.

Josh Matthews 40:18

And you know, you can you can build a little agent that's just capturing everything. I mean, that's what I do. I wake up and I see the results of 20 different uh periodicals that I'm tracking, right? The important stuff that's just important to me, and I can click on it and go into it. You can build that with like a very low-cost perplexity computer kind of model, or if you're in open claw, you can build that for yourself. But it's sort of like reading the summary of a book. It's not the same as it integrating into your, you know, bloodstream the knowledge, right? So it really does make sense to not just read headlines. It makes sense to get in there and then be like, oh, I'm gonna try this. I know that for me, when Mike McCula first inspired me about 14 months to do some deep AI dive, I I committed on the show two Februaries ago. Okay, I'm gonna spend 20 hours trying to get better at this, you know. And by the end of the month, I'd put like 70 hours in because I just I was like addicted, you know, and and couldn't get enough of it. But the idea that like you just get in there and live it and breathe it and work it, you'll find that you're not gonna want to sit in a silo and wake up in six months and notice that the world has changed. You're gonna want to always see what's going on. So I think it's a natural progression for that 30% that are gonna make it. They're doing what you're doing, Beach. Beach.

Beech Horn 41:44

Yeah, Mike McCooler joining Salesforce, I wrote reached out to him straight away because that was a big sign. That was when I first started looking at Agent Force Vibe. Seriously, that sent a signal.

Best Ways To Use Conferences

Josh Matthews 41:55

Yeah, big time. Big time. He actually, I don't think he'll mind me saying this. I got him a job offer at a great company. He turned it down because he got the job at Salesforce. And honestly, I couldn't be happier for him. He is so in his wheelhouse right now. And instead of being like an early adopter and a user, he's actually building it. And that's an incredible position to be in. He's it's always exciting to talk to him. What a great attitude and what a real inspiration, always on the bleeding edge of what's happening in vibe coding. Yeah. What haven't we covered that we really should cover? I mean, we've been talking kind of in general terms about AI, what people should be doing. Let's get back, let's just reel ourselves back to TDX for just a moment. Was there an aha scott? Was there something that showed up for you when you were there that you're like, oh my God. Just this thing here made the whole conference and trip worthwhile.

Scott Stafford 42:51

I think really understanding the whole headless concept. That really, you know, I was already using um the Slack bot, you know, as part of the get fit movement. And I was wowed. I thought, hey, this is really great. We were all kind of geeking out, really asking it more and more questions as the movement went along. And then just kind of thinking, like, wow, this could be anywhere, right? It doesn't have to just be in Slack, right? I mean, soon, right, we can even have these things on our glasses where we, you know, you could touch a button and ask it a question. And I'm just, it was just like a moment to think of the future. I mean, it was already there. I mean, you already kind of thought, well, we're gonna get there one day. But when I saw that and I saw them present it, I go, wow, it's here now. Yeah. That's that was my awe moment. I was just like, wow. And I was a little bit scared and a little bit excited all at the same time.

Josh Matthews 43:44

Yeah, it's happening fast. What about you, Sally?

Sally ElGhoul 43:47

So from my end, like I would love in general to give an advice for anyone who's going to DX or Dreamforce. I love the hands on sessions uh because it's a good way like to sit down, try something. something and work on it. Besides like the the Asian force vibes like area to play with it or the quests uh there is the hands-on sessions and those usually like they go fast and they are filled like uh once they say like the agenda builder is up I usually go and try to book my seats in those sessions and I believe those are priceless because it's usually one hour or maybe longer heads down trying something new and learning from the experts so I would love people to take advantage of those if they are going to TDX or Dreamforce. And the other part I love so much is going to the booth to the product teams and talk to them because they are like they explain to you simpler words and one-on-one basis like what's in new in the like the product and what are the new features and they can give you demos and then you can discuss with them and ask your questions. So it helps with the learning so much. Those are the most like great experience that I usually have when I go to the events and also if anyone is heading to them consider going to the boot camps as well because I love the three days heads down learning in a topic that I choose. This is something like if someone can afford like the expense for it and they are going and they're willing to do it that's a great opportunity you're there go early heads down three days learn something get the certificates it always feels like amazing to to to achieve that while there too.

Josh Matthews 45:35

Sally do you want to just take a moment and just drop in a message here right now that employers should send their folks to TDX?

Sally ElGhoul 45:46

100% yeah 100% and I I I didn't go to Dreamforce and TDX a long time ago like this one was my third TDX but I would say like the experience and knowledge I've been gaining by going to TDX and Dreamforce is like priceless and it's worth it because with the bootcamps I have the three days heads down like I learn and I ask questions and I come back always with new things that I need to change at work or for my team and it always was a great impact. And the same for TDX and Dreamforce this is how I knew like about when it was co-pilot or prompt template like it's all new stuff that I can learn on my own but it will take me longer being in the events and asking questions and how for example I was able to build agents and deliver like and making an impact for my employer.

Beech Horn 46:39

And also the bootcamp uh is priceless again like it's it's so let's do let's do something fun then that's great Sally Beach someone offers you let's just imagine fantasy land there's a there's a job it doesn't have to be fantasy land and someone keeps sliding something around let's try not to do that because it's kind of making some noise but let's imagine Beach someone offers you a job one job is 200 grand 200 000 pounds a year okay the other job is 1920 pounds but you're gonna get to go to a boot camp and dream force you know 192 gay one absolutely because yeah that that might be one year two years but then you're on there's two different trajectories for your life at that point one is you're growing exponentially the other one is you're plateauing and if you're staying still you're actually decreasing nowadays yeah yeah I just I don't see this enough you know it's like even even these little dreaming events it's like I'll see some of my clients and it's like oh so and so's gonna go to that dreaming event like that's great like 600 bucks you know it's nothing it's 200 to get in it's four you know maybe 300 for the hotel or 400 for the hotel and and a three hour drive right like it's nothing you know and I'm always surprised not just from the client side but really from the SI partner side at how how small these events actually are and yet we've got what how many users? How many people are actually in the ecosystem I mean tens and tens and tens hundreds of thousands what's up beach say that again so even the people that are going to it though are normally the ones that you'll want to learn from so the fact that there's a a subset going is actually a really good sign. You get a lot more signal to noise and even applying to speak so if you're an SI, why aren't you speaking? Why aren't you an expert in your field? Why aren't you honing your skills to get on that stage?

Josh Matthews 48:49

Yeah exactly exactly okay Beach anything that they left out or that we've left out from this show that you think it's absolutely a hundred percent critical important or insightful for people to walk away from this episode with I would say for from the TDX point of view content on data 360 I see no one talking about this.

Beech Horn 49:11

That means you can bring in story block you can bring your content management system you're damn into React on core and into your marketing messages and that's a real indication of where things are going. And the other one is Informatica Informatica showed up on force so if you're having problems with data 360 with unification with getting a golden record for getting one view of your customer across all of your systems and or one view of a product across all of your systems that really showed up and yeah they had all the product managers but it wasn't getting much traction so I'd say those two areas content on data 360 and Informatica certainly the MDM don't rule them out. They're just not getting much buzz right now.

Josh Matthews 49:55

It's I mean paying attention and you said it a moment ago to what's not being said is a really interesting take. I like that I really like that about you. By the way for our live audience if you've got a question feel free to just go ahead and post it right here on our stream. We're happy to take a look at it. Scott, let's have you keep the show going I'm gonna take a peek at the comments.

Scott Stafford 50:16

Yeah I think we talked a lot about to why you should go to TDX. But one thing moving forward it's six months away right before you can actually get to dream for so I want to encourage people to even if your company is not going to pay for one of the dreaming events there's a lot of them I'm actually going to be going to dreaming and data next. And I want to encourage people that little bit of an investment if there's one around you and you can just drive there right get a ticket it will give you a head start of where we're going right if you weren't in the room I think we we were all there um on this show other than Josh and we got like a sense of where the world's going. So I encourage you don't wait six months we might not have six months things are going to move very quick. And just get to one of those and just those conversations you know getting that perspective right of where things are going talking to people and then get your hands on right they gave it they're giving us the toys right get in there and play with it. Josh has been telling us that the whole time right start to use AI right uh for different use cases just have fun with it and explore right and from there you know you learn.

Community Connections And Final Plugs

Sally ElGhoul 51:28

So how about you Sally what what kind of advice would you give for people that didn't make it to TDX or that did I mean what would you tell them to do next uh I think to always like look for the community events as well there is a lot of it uh happening uh online and um also you can arrange your sessions you can help people to to like learn uh along the way uh we have as well coming like the war tour for New York we have Toronto World Tour and we have true north dreaming like in like area where like it's close to me. So all of those events are happening soon and people can decide to join and they will be good opportunity to learn. So the World Tours are a good option as well to to join uh and the communities online and definitely if you can or think about going to any bigger event like if you can book ahead of time that will help people as well like make uh some savings here and there and make it more affordable for them definitely yeah if you're at all thinking if I'm sorry I'm gonna jump in real quick Scott if you are at all thinking about going to Dreamforce and you haven't yet booked a hotel or an Airbnb that's something you're gonna want to do right now today it is so freaking expensive the the week of Dreamforce like ridiculous amounts you know they jack the prices three, four X.

Josh Matthews 52:57

So make sure that you're getting um getting a room recognize you're just going to sleep when you're there. You're probably not going to be hanging out a lot. You're gonna be so busy. I always book a dive because I don't care like I really don't like I don't care. So I just book a dive that's kind of close by because I know the only thing I'm gonna do is maybe get six hours of sleep and then I'm back out at Moscone, right? So get your uh get your rooming set up your room set up now, today and then worry about getting the tickets later worry about getting your flights later that'll all come together but it's the it's the hotel and it's the accommodations that can be a real struggle. Yeah.

Scott Stafford 53:36

I actually was going to normalize something too we we have a golden hoodie a brand new golden hoodie and there's so many times I go to conferences and and people are like oh they're like up there and we can't go and say hi to them. So Sally, right? Would you not welcome a hug or a conversation from anybody? I mean let's just kind of normalize it. We're all just people right and how does it feel to be a golden hoodie and you know talk a little bit about how we should just reach out to you guys, right? That's what you guys are there for.

Sally ElGhoul 54:04

Yeah definitely like before or after I'm the same person I always welcome people to come and talk to me and try to talk to people myself. So uh like the golden hoodie is a great uh like honor for me but it doesn't change who I am so I'm a still human person. Anyone who needs help who wants to join Code with Sally sessions they can have questions they can or if they see me they are more than welcome to come and talk to me for sure.

Josh Matthews 54:41

All right Sally El Ghoul human person beach horn i got I got it right this time right I did I got it right it's such a cool name I love your name Scott Stafford I've been Josh Matthews this has been a wonderful little session uh please join us we'll be back in two weeks uh same bat time same bat channel 12 o'clock east coast time here on LinkedIn live again if you missed any part of this just watch it on LinkedIn if you want to listen to it in your car or on your uh headphones or on your podcast you can do that it's the hiring edge and it's on pretty much every platform that you can find. Where can folks connect with you guys? So Beach, where can they connect with you?

Beech Horn 55:22

LinkedIn's probably the easiest way. My DMs are open and I'd love to speak to you.

Sally ElGhoul 55:27

Wonderful and Sally uh linked in the same and also Kudui Sally has the a trailblazer community group if anyone joined they will have links for Slack and WhatsApp communities they can reach out to me there too.

Scott Stafford 55:40

Wonderful and Scott LinkedIn or you could join the Rise with Voice community I'm doing lots of boot camps. It's a really great opportunity if you join you know you get to be one-on-one we have a lot of great discourse and then also any event that you guys see me at do not be shy. You know just tap me on the shoulders and you'll find out that I love, I really do love people and I love to get to know everybody.

Josh Matthews 56:05

He sure does I'm gonna do a little self-plug on a couple openings that we've got right now one is a senior project manager for small to midsize SI practice that focuses focuses on medtech and health cloud um also have a senior uh NPC be a configuration pro, someone who can really work on their own with a client like own it. Own the client own the config own the requirements gathering you're you'll be supported by amazing architects and by a lovely team. This is a kind of place where people go and they don't leave so it's a it's a beautiful summit partner agent force partner a lot of growth opportunity a lot of care that they provide to the employees that join their team and then you get to work in nonprofits you get to help help people and and do things for the greater good there are a number of other positions available you can find that find those by going to the salesforce recruiter dot com forward slash job as in job so again it's the salesforce recruiter dot com forward slash job thank you to all my guests to my terrific co-host Scott really appreciate you congratulations again Sally golden hoodie is no small feat really really happy for you very proud uh proud of you and all of your accomplishments and that's code withsally com is that where they go correct correct and link it and page and uh community group same thing. Okay fantastic all right guys we'll see you in a couple weeks bye for now