
Ask HN: What do you think about SAP? - ffggvv
It&#x27;s worth a career in SAP?
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jamesmp98
I think it really depends. Recently, niche fields like SAP have seemed
attractive to me. They are not too hard to pick up, generally high paying, and
may even make it easier getting a job. However, I began to think.

I would say yes if you have experience developing enterprise applications. And
by experience, I mean you've spent the last 5 years doing it for a living. SAP
is primarily used by large enterprises, so people hiring for SAP positions
probably will not hire self-taught a SAP developer with no on-the-job SAP
experience or without experience working with enterprise software.

I, for example, would be screwed. I am 100% self-taught developer (i.e. no
degree) with no experience in SAP or developing enterprise applications. While
I could pick those things up with relative ease, I'd have nothing to show that
I can work with those technologies (and please don't say side-projects)

To sum it up. Have you been involved with enterprise-ish stuff? If so, I'd say
try it, if not, I'd stay away from it.

~~~
dozzie
> [...] people hiring for SAP positions probably will not hire self-taught a
> SAP developer with no on-the-job SAP experience or without experience
> working with enterprise software.

They will hire even a fresh graduate with no experience whatsoever, but I
think you misunderstand the landscape around the SAP ERP.

From what I hear, a company that has SAP deployed is not allowed by the
contract to develop their own extensions and modules. Instead, they are to
hire external consultancy that has SAP's approval. So it's SAP consultancy
shops that would or would not hire a _programmer_ to write for SAP ERP. (I may
be wrong here, because ERP systems are very far from my field. I just happened
to work in the vicinity of an ERP system a decade ago.)

Having that said, two of my friends were hired by such a company. They had no
programming experience, they had just finished part-time CS studies (which in
my country are tought of as of worse quality than full-time studies), and for
both of them the studies were retraining from some other, unrelated field
(architecture and HR, respectively). Of course they were tasked with grunt
work, exactly as one would expect, but they got into the field of writing for
SAP ERP, so it certainly is possible.

~~~
jamesmp98
Wow that's an odd contract. I was assuming the OP was referring to SAP HANA.
My mistake :P

