I'm a backend developer from Spain with background in Java world like many others Salesforce developers, so first of all sorry for my poor english.
I've been developing for a big consulting firm a custom salesforce portal. It's been an experience on my professional career that I don't want to retry, definetly the CRM closed world is not for me, but even less Salesforce.
I think that Salesforce is a technology that it's hyped and with a wide amount of marketing that won't will be sucessful at long terms. Salesforce is a very limitated platform (which would not be very bad if it would be done well) in a bad way, which not let implement complex solutions easily.
It's a platform that forces you to be integrated with Salesforce partners for certain integrations.
If you're a talented dev with strong technical skills that does not think only in the salary, a dev that want to be using cutting edge technologies and creating solutions well engineered, defenitely my friend Salesforce is not for you as it has not been for me.
What I'm saying is not because I'm freaking out, of course you can read references more elaborated than my post, criticing why Salesforce is not what a passionate technology dev well skilled wants for his career.
We can speak also about the crazy certification path that you've got to follow if you want to be succesful into Salesforce world and which you'll have to take a reexam each of them any some months per year (yeah, the total amount of your certs). You'll have to pay for this certs also, but some companies as mine probably will pay this for you.