Amit Chaudhary is a principal technical architect at InfoServices. In 2016, Amit had just moved to the United States and was working from home, so he created a group for developers to connect to make friends in his new city. This grew into a program and community that he now calls Apex Hours. 

In this episode, we discuss Apex Hours and how it has become a community-driven program. Salesforce experts create content every week for other developers to learn from. They believe that everyone has something to learn from each other and are growing in their technical skills together.

Listen in to learn more from Amit on Apex Hours and how they are impacting the developer community.

Show Highlights:

• What Amit does as the principal Salesforce architect.
• How Apex Hours organically came into existence.
• What led Amit to provide Sales Cloud-focused material through Apex Hours.
• Amit’s tips for people who are interviewing in the Salesforce ecosystem.
• What the Salesforce inspector Chrome extension is.
• What exciting content and events are upcoming from Apex Hours.

Links:

• Twitter account: twitter.com/amit_sfdc
• Linkedin account: linkedin.com/in/amitchaudhary21/
• Apex Hours website: apexhours.com/

Episode Transcript

Amit Chaudhary:
Okay, so to be very frank, I started my career long time back from the Java, and then moving to the Salesforce.

Josh Birk:
That is Amit Chaudhary, a principal technical architect at Info Services. I’m Josh Birk, your host of the Salesforce Developer Podcast. And here on the podcast, you’ll hear stories and insights from developers, for developers. Today, we sit down and talk with Amit about Apex Hours, a program and community that he built kind of on accident, actually. We are going to start, however, as we often do, pick it up right after that I call “with his early years”.

Amit Chaudhary:
So it was a fun story how I trained to the Salesforce, to be very frank. So I was a SCJP and a SCWC certified developer in 2010, and I was working on a small project into the Salesforce. And that time, I got an opportunity to work into Salesforce, but I was not aware what Salesforce is all about. And it was a strange thing, I gave interview, I thought, “Okay, after working second time be there, I might be moving to the Java project again.” But once I started working into the Salesforce, I simply love it, and I never ever thought about I will be going to the Java again.

Josh Birk:
Love it. What led you to the Salesforce side of things? Why you don’t want go back?

Amit Chaudhary:
So I used to work into the Java, there was a Hibernate, Spring, there are lots of other framework. But when I started into the Salesforce, there was only Visualforce page, and Apex classes. And that was very much easy. But when I compare to the Java, Java was more complicated, you need to drive lots of framework. To getting the data from the database to the UI, I need to make a JDBC connection and lots of other thing. But when I come to the Salesforce, I need to just write one query and everything coming on the UI.
That was really easy for me, and over the time, I understand, “Okay, this is a cloud platform and this is the future.”

Josh Birk:
I love it. Back in my workshop days, I used to have people, I had one person who was like, “I’m going to have to leave your workshop because my boss needs me to create a custom page that’s got five fields on it.” And I’m like, “Just stick around for the next half hour and I’ll show you how to do that.” They just had this assumption that it must be as difficult as everything that they’ve been working towards. Now, we train and train to make that easy for you. Now, side trivia question, what’s your earliest memory with a computer?

Amit Chaudhary:
Latest memory with my computer?

Josh Birk:
Yeah.

Amit Chaudhary:
So I remember, when I started learning computer, I still remember the big screens, big monitors. And I come into… So you might know, I’m from the India. You hardly see the computer anywhere. And if you see the computer somewhere, they used to put into the one room that was full of carpet, and you cannot go with the shoes, you need to put your shoes out and then go inside. And people don’t allow you to touch your computer. That was a luxury thing, you have it. And to be very frank, I did not touch the computer till I completed my high school.

Josh Birk:
Wow. It’s the whole, like, “No, kid, you’re not going to ruin this thing.”

Amit Chaudhary:
Exactly. And I still remember those days when we used to use floppy and then move to pen drive and then CD, then CD writers. And now the things are changing like anything.

Josh Birk:
My first data storage was a cassette tape, so I hear you, I hear you. How would you describe your current job?

Amit Chaudhary:
Definitely. So currently I’m working as a principal Salesforce architect in one of the biggest enterprise organization. They’re working with the big team, handling the enterprise client, implementing that complex system for them using CPQ, CLM, and lots of velocity development. And we have a huge team of more than 100 people. So that is what right now I’m doing. So as part of my job as a principal architect, I’m leading a team of architect and helping the developer for writing that framework, implementing the best practices and all these things. That is my key area.

Josh Birk:
Nice. So getting to the topic at hand, how did you come up with the idea for Apex Hours?

Amit Chaudhary:
So let me tell you. It was never be a plan to have something like this. And to be very frank, I started my journey almost in 2010. And that time, there was no Trailhead. There was no public document was there. There was only one guide was there that time, that was a recruitment app. If somebody’s there from that time, almost 10 to 12 years of experience, they know the recruitment app. So I learned from that. And after that, I was working a project. It was hard to get learned. I started my journey from developer form. And I started putting some portion over there, and then someone helped me. And then I thought, “Okay, let’s give it back to the community.” And I started contributing the answer.
And over the year, within a two year, I put at almost 1,200 plus best answer. And I still remember, today, I have almost 28,000 points on the developer forum. And then over the time, that helped me to learn a lot. And then I moved to the United States. And when I come, I landed into Michigan. And that time, to be very frank, I was not having any friend in local, my area. And I used to work from home that time as well. And I was working from home, and I was not going to office, I was not having any friend in local. I was struggling a lot and I was facing lots of homesickness.
So that time, there was lots of snow, and I was not having the driving lessons. So if I need to go anywhere, it’s really hard. So that time, I decided, why don’t I create a developer group into my local area? So I raised a request to the Salesforce, and they approved it, and I started forming the new developer user group over there. And I still remember for my first meetup, I was not having any place. I don’t having fund to book any meeting room or somewhere where I can take the people. I putted a meeting, first meeting in the suburb. And I still remember that day, it was snowing. And I almost did four to five miles of walk in the snow, with the long boot and all.
And that was very Hollywood for me but I did it, and I leased there. And luckily, five to six people show up there. They were really nice. I meet them, I talk them, “What do you want to do, how we can do it?” The motive behind the user group, to be very frank, that time, making friend. And some people were there, and they were really helpful. And standing, one of the girls show up that day, she was from another university. And she said, “Can you teach me Apex?”
I said, “Definitely, I can teach you.” So she say, “I have couple of more friend who love to, we learn.” I said, “Definitely, we can do it.” And that time, one of the guy also, was there, he say, “I can arrange a meeting in my office.” I made friend, and next meeting we did into their office, and we’ve got couple of guys show up, and over the time, almost 12 and 15 student were there. And I started teaching them Apex. So that time, I was teaching Apex. That time, just because of snow and all, people started, “Can we do virtual?”
So, to be very frank, I used Zoom meeting. We did meeting. And uploaded the video on Google Drive. And the over the time, people requested, “Can you share the recording and all?” So having all this thing, Google Drive gave you 15 TB only. And I thought, “What to do?” Then over the time, I’d say, “Okay, whatever the session we are doing, why don’t we put on YouTube?” So that time, I was teaching Apex to all the kids. So I thought it’s the best idea to put the name as Apex Hour. So we are spending lots of hour in spending Apex, so I just give name Apex Hour.
That is how that then it started. And a good thing, right? That all I did at the community, we educated the community, select community driven even, it’s free of course, by the Salesforce developer group. It’s my calling to the job, I was giving back to them. And the good thing is that all 15 people were there, out of the 15, seven to eight people go to the job in Salesforce ecosystem. That keep me motivated. And they reach out to me, I still remember one student reach out to me, and he gave me one chocolate bars. That actually make me happy. I thought, “I should do it more.”

Josh Birk:
Nice. I love it.

Amit Chaudhary:
So that is how the journey started, in 2016. But to be very frank, I did not put it in content in 2016, I started putting the content on YouTube from 2017. So that is how whole journey all about.

Josh Birk:
I love, the snow in Michigan caused you to have a snowball effect that got you to where you are now. It’s like a metaphor on top of a metaphor.

Amit Chaudhary:
Exactly, because I still remember, at that time, no one used to do virtual meetings. No one used to do virtual sessions. Everyone loved to meeting to the big meeting group, having some good food and having some snacks. But I started just because of snow, and now it’s become trend.

Josh Birk:
Love it. I love it. Let’s talk about where you are now, how many episodes have you put out?

Amit Chaudhary:
So it’s almost 400 plus session we put it together. And the good thing is over the time, it’s a community-driven program, for the community, by the community. Now, I speak in a space where we are inviting all the Salesforce expert across the global, come and share your expertise and help the ohana. So that actually helped everyone. So around, we have almost 400 plus session, including, we had almost 150 plus speakers who come. And to be very frank, our speaker come from everywhere into the world.

Josh Birk:
That’s awesome. That is awesome. And also, power to Zoom, right? I get to do this show because I can do it from my study.

Amit Chaudhary:
Yeah, exactly. So that is also good. So I am doing that from a long time. And to be very frank, I did lots of session helping the community, giving back. And to be very frank, lots of people come. They teach the topic. And I never had a single session when I did not learn something. So it’s good for me. I learn something. And people come, they talk. Even then I see, there were some people from the one-year experience come. And he also have some point which you don’t know. So you always learn something from others.

Josh Birk:
How often do you publish?

Amit Chaudhary:
What we do, we should view the session of the Saturday. So we are turned almost every Saturday, but then over the time, we started some recorded session because we work with the other people who are in the different timezone. They share the sessions, share with us, and we put a recording as well. So now, two session in a week. And also, we did lots of training session which contain end-to-end training. So we did started admin training, then developer training, service cloud, marketing cloud, FSL, and now we are doing the lighting web component. And good thing, that almost, 10 and 12, plus end-to-end training. We put it on our channel and put it for community, and that is free of cost. And good thing is that more than 4,000 plus people get certified from that. We train almost 25,000 plus students.

Josh Birk:
Wow. Dude, congratulations.

Amit Chaudhary:
So currently, we are doing lighting web component training, more than 2,000 student register for it.

Josh Birk:
I thought, and I got to say, I had a question down the road about when did you think, “We should broaden this.” Because it’s Apex Hour, developer-centric, et cetera, et cetera, but you have a lot of material out there that’s admin-focused or it was cloud-focused, sales cloud-focused. Was it just curiosity or pent-up demand, what led you down that path?

Amit Chaudhary:
So let me think. We gave in that name as Apex Hour. As I told you, we never think about doing the YouTube work or something like that, to be very frank. That was never intentioned. Intention was to helping the community and putting some content together. And we did lots of Apex sessions and all this thing, technical sessions, peep technical sessions. And after that, we got lots of requests, “Can you do some admin training?” “Can you help with this?” Because there are lots of student across the world, and some student are there who cannot spend money. I know there are lots of courses are available on different platform, they can buy it, but no one wants providing the free training.
So they reach out to me. I say, “Definitely, we will do something for you.” And we created a free content. And when create a content, it’s not only me. There are lots of other people show with me because they know we are helping the people, free of cost. And we are helping the community back. And we are giving the community back. I remember, four or five speakers come up, and we created a great course, and helped them to provide the anchor in training, and also provided the mentorship top them. And lots of people joined, and that make it their career. And after that, they reach out, “Can you do Apex again?” We did Apex again.
And then we got request for service cloud. We did service cloud. Well, in this case, Field Service Lightning. We did Field Service Lightning. So to be very frank, if somebody come up with us, they want to learn this, people reach out to me, “Can you do one-to-one training?” We say, “We don’t provide it.” Then they say, “Can you arrange this for us?” We reach out to our community members, if somebody’s expert in that area, they come up. And to be very frank, we have a really great Salesforce community who are always ready for the volunteer work.
And when they see us, what we are doing, because our intention is never making money, we are helping the community for free of cost. Intention is helping them to get the job, and get them ready. So people come up and they also contribute.

Josh Birk:
Got it. It’s really awesome stuff. And speaking of the breadth of content that you’ve got, you also have sample interview questions and things like that. Off the top of your head, do you have specific tips for people who are interviewing in the Salesforce ecosystem?

Amit Chaudhary:
Yeah, definitely. It’s depend of what type you are, how you are starting. I put out lots of content, people reach out to me, “Hey, I want to get ready for Salesforce developer. What should I do and how to get ready for interview?” Similarly, I always say, “First thing, if you are going for interview, get ready with the content, what topic you are going with.” If I’m going for developer interview, I need to learn about Apex, I need to learn about Aura, I need to learn about LWC. I’m not saying you need to be in deep for everything, but actually it’s whatever the topic you’re going.
Whatever the job description you are getting, you should be prepared for it. And once you’re going, be honest. Interviewer will definitely ask a question, which topic you’d know much better, accordingly, you respond to it. And before going at, I will say, read it from the pillar, there are lots of other content creators out there in the market, prepare from them, and then, once you’ve done it, do some hands-on exercise. Because reading the things and giving the answer will be never work out.
Because interviewer will definitely ask the real-time questions. If you have hands-on experience, that really will help. And now, the beauty is the Trailhead is there. They can definitely go there and use that project and Superbatches to have some hands-on experience. And after that, I will be, say, make some community connections, so they will be also help them to connect with the interviewer. And once you are there, you’re all good. And definitely, you can Google it out, sample question on internet for everything. So you can just have an idea what kind of question people ask, so you should be good for interview.

Josh Birk:
Yeah, no I agree with all of that. And one of the things I’ve told, especially developers, is a developer edition is an amazing tool if you’re going to go in for an interview. Because it’s the easiest way to solve the chicken and egg problem, like, “How can I prove to you I’m a good coder if I haven’t gotten a job in coding yet?” It’s like, “Well, do some coding.” Do some coding, be able to show some examples of what you’re doing, and be able to talk about nice stuff. So lets talk about couple recent episodes you had. Just recently on an episode on the Salesforce Inspector Chrome extension, what exactly is that?

Amit Chaudhary:
To be very frank, we did a couple of sessions recently. So if you see, we did on Chrome extension. So there are lots of question asked by people, “Which is the best extension you like? Should I use it?” So we talked about that Chrome extension, how it can help the developer, how they can help their developer productivity date to date. And also, the recent topic we posted is HTTP callout in flow without code. To be very frank, that also helped me to keep myself updated. So that is the latest topic, which come into the Spring 23. So I know I need to help my community member, so sometime we go back, do some hands-on, and having some content out.
So being an architect, and having a big team is not allowing you to do the coding. But sometimes, just because of these kind of writing the content in the vlog, which allow me to go into Salesforce org and doing some hands-on, that’s keep me updated. I love to put the content out of the channel.

Josh Birk:
I find the HTTP callout without code kind of fascinating, because it used to be the classic. Well, when do you need Apex? And it’s like, “Well, if you need to an HTTP callout, that’s when you need Apex.” No longer true. When is that used and what was the solution there, by the way?

Amit Chaudhary:
So into the Spring 23, Salesforce come up with a new action adamant into the flow that’s called HTTP callout. So previously, if you need to do callout from flow, you need to go with external services or the Apex class to make a callout, but now they have an element, you can configure name credentials and use that to callout attribute past everything, and that will be make a callout for you, and make HTTP response back to you. And you can do whatever you want to do into the flow. So now, you don’t need to do any code.
So at currently, this is in a beta, and might not available in all the developer, I just tried to play it into the ReliaSoft.

Josh Birk:
Nice. Now, you also did an episode on DataWeave in Apex, first of all, for everybody out there, let’s level set what is DataWeave.

Amit Chaudhary:
So to be very frank, that session was post by someone else, and I was not there. DataWeave is a part of the Mulesoft and that something is not part of my expertise, right? That is a beauty, right? Daniel did the session on this. I still need to go in work and do it, and that may be a new learning for me.

Josh Birk:
You got Daniel to do the session? Oh, that’s so cool. That is so cool. It’s a really needed implementation, they took the DataWeave engine effectively from Mulesoft.

Amit Chaudhary:
Exactly.

Josh Birk:
And wrapped it, and then just dropped it in the Apex. Dan was telling me about it, he’s just like, “It’s the code.” We’re not emulating it, we’re just hosting it, and we just used it. Really interesting data transformation stuff. How do you handle things the life cycle of content? Do you have a schedule where you kind of go back through the catalog and make sure you’re not talking really obsolete topics? As a content creator myself, I know that part of the problem is the more you create, the more you have to maintain. How do you handle something like that?

Amit Chaudhary:
It’s a something, good to have problem. But to be very frank, how we handle it… So let me tell you. Previously, I used to do all the session. And that actually make my life into trouble because I was doing every session every Saturday. So it’s almost 52 session in a year. Being here, you have a family responsibilities and everything, right? If I will do five day working and one day helping on these things, then hardly, I have a one day for myself. So what we started, we started some session live, and some session recorded. So once we have the recording, we make a calendar, and put the date over there, and then start at the publishing date. So that is how we maintain. And on top of it, some sessions are recorded, that part we publish on sometime on Wednesday, or sometime on Saturday.

Josh Birk:
Got it. Got it. Now, I’ve been accused many times of asking people who’s their favorite child, do you have some particularly favorite episodes?

Amit Chaudhary:
For me, all of my speakers are favorite for me. And all of my sessions are favorite me. I cannot go with the favoritism. To be very frank, all of them are my favorite, and to be very frank, we respect each and everyone. And everyone have the same values. There’s no favoritism, and we are nothing without our speakers, and without our community. If you go into our website, our tagline say Apex Hour is a program of community, for the community, and lead by the community. You will never ever see my name over there so I’m nothing. It’s all about our community.

Josh Birk:
Nice. Do you have any upcoming content or events that you want to give a shout out to?

Amit Chaudhary:
Yeah, definitely. Currently, we are doing lightning web component series. There are almost 10 sessions are going to be there, which will teach you each and everything which you need be learn, as a big note to learn about lightning web component. Stay tuned and stay connected. And there was two more great session is going to be come on enterprise integration, as well as Salesforce integration. So that will be really awesome, really will learn about how the different enterprise integration pattern work in the industry. That might be not specific to the Salesforce, but it will be really great to learn about enterprise patterns.

Josh Birk:
That’s fascinating to me, because it has turned into such a complicated ray of options. And a somebody who got his start using Javascrypt callout to the SOAP API of all things, you’ve got real-time events, you’ve got pub/sub models, it’s a complicated network out there. So that will be a good one.

Amit Chaudhary:
Exactly. Because people say we are using middleware. But they don’t know why middleware is introduced. And it’s up for people to see, what Salesforce is doing, Salesforce developer are only doing the REST API callout. They don’t know anything else apart from that from the platform. So that session is specifically to know about the different thing, what is happening behind the screen. So that will be great session.

Josh Birk:
And that’s our show. Now before we go, they did ask after Amit’s favorite non-technical hobby and it is one sport I don’t think I’ll ever understand.

Amit Chaudhary:
Okay. So I play cricket.

Josh Birk:
Nice.

Amit Chaudhary:
Very less people know about me, I play a professional cricket in Atlanta. So I play into they league, I’m a registered professional player in Georgia Cricket Leagues. So I play over there, and that is what my good hobby, I spend one day for the cricket. I go either playing ACL or GCL, currently we are playing in a GCL, and we qualified for our league match, and we have a quarterfinal on this Saturday. And I’m pretty much excited about that.

Josh Birk:
That’s very cool, congrats. We might have to have a follow-up episode where you explain cricket to me.

Amit Chaudhary:
Yeah, definitely. You know the baseball, right?

Josh Birk:
I know the baseball, yeah.

Amit Chaudhary:
Single bat.

Josh Birk:
Got it.
I want to thank Amit for the great conversation and information and as always, I want to thank you for listening. Now if you want to learn more about this show, head on over to developer.salesforce.com/podcast where you can hear old episodes, see the show notes and have links to your favorite podcast service. Thanks again everybody, and I’ll talk to you next week.