Four of them successfully ran a SFDC consulting business for several years with many good clients and lots of junior and senior developers and architects (I joined briefly after leaving SF Bay Area but decided I should go back to building products). The business ran into family-business-squabble problems between two of the principals and dissolved ... however they all stayed in the SFDC game and have done very well, making significantly more (even considering they're contracting) on long-term stable contracts than their software experience would net them at established SF Bay Area companies ... and they all live in much lower cost-of-living areas. I don't think the SFDC game will go away any time soon, either.
There are probably some interesting SFDC development niches, but I would have struggled to maintain interest.