
Ask HN: How do you get into a niche field like SAP development? - jamesmp98
How do you break into a career in a niche field like SAP development. From what I see, I can learn about SAP all I want, but without professional experience, it wouldn&#x27;t seem like you can get a job working with it?
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HenryTheHorse
I work in that very field, so I hope this input will be useful to you:

There's no one thing called "SAP" anymore. It's many platforms, ranging from
the old ERP (with its ABAP programming language) to CRM to HR to E-commerce.
With the exception of its proprietary tools (like ABAP), you can certainly
leverage your Java/JS skills.

If you have access to SAP training (though it's neither cheap nor easily
accessible), get some training on the dev tools and find beginner-level
openings in companies or consulting firms. (Reality check: the latter will be
harder - you are competing with a truly _global_ developer-base for SAP.)

If you don't have access to training, then drop the proprietary ABAP route and
stick to Java. You can apply those skills in SAP's more open stacks for
e-commerce, mobile etc.

The public sector (Federal/State governments, public utilities, military etc)
are also big SAP users and are often hard-pressed to find US citizens
(assuming you are a US citizen). That may be another avenue to explore.

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czbond
What level in your career are you at? If you're recently out of school, the
easiest way I know of is to get hired into one of the big 4 consulting firms.
(eg: PwC, Accenture, etc). Associates are hired with little experience -
related experience is fine. If you're more senior, possibly take an "around
the edges" approach - or specialize in the underlying integration technology
(eg: java, etc...whatever it is). Creating a plugin or similarly deep diving
if you can get into their developer / customer program. If you're wanting to
go into it because of salaries - I understand that. Realize what you're
getting into. The salaries may be higher - but the work may be un-relentingly
boring. You might also look into competitors in the space that are more
SaaS'y, and less Enterprise footprint-y.

~~~
1337biz
Just to nitpick: Accenture is not part of the Big4 (PWC/Deloitte/E&Y/KPMG).

~~~
eganist
To nitpick further (but this isn't in common parlance), Accenture was a part
of Arthur Andersen, which itself was a part of the Big Five until Enron
happened.

But you're entirely right in that Accenture isn't considered a part of the Big
Four accounting firms precisely because its skillset is advisory rather than
accounting.

~~~
joeriel
To nitpick even further, Accenture was not a part of Arthur Andersen. It was
known as Andersen Consulting, and when they split from Arthur Andersen, they
adopted Accenture as a name.

~~~
eganist
That split took place in 1989. Prior to that, it was a part of Arthur Andersen
itself, at least if Wikipedia is to be believed.

But this is a meaningless exchange at this point. haha

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VT_Drew
>How do you break into a career in a niche field like SAP development.

OH GOD WHY? Have you used SAP? SAP is the most expensive pile of shit I have
ever seen. No company in their right mind would deploy such a system at this
point in time.

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manicdee
The rates for SAP consultants are double to triple what I am getting.

For me, I would prefer to be paid three times what I am getting now to
maintain someone's piece of crap legacy software, given that what I do now is
maintain someone's piece of crap legacy software.

The difference in salary, put into perspective: on my current rates I need to
save for three years to buy a Model 3. On double the salary, I can buy a Model
S every other year.

Forget orange, disposable income is the new black.

~~~
kamikaz1k
The difference is those consultants have already been in the field accruing
experience for several years. If you enter now, you'll unable to command those
compensation packages. Or even if you manage to, it will not last long. There
are 100s of thousands of consultants from offshored operations that will
gladly undercut you.

~~~
flukus
Considering the level of "skill" I've seen in these consultants (not enough to
consider a decent sample size) I wonder how long it would take to get to
expert level proficiency?

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jlj
Starting in an analyst, support, or end-user role is a good way to get
exposure. Or try working with a small boutique consulting firm as an
alternative to the big guys, you may get more variety of experience.

Understanding the business processes supported by the application will set you
apart from other developers. It is common to find developers without business
process or functional experience, and visa versa. If you have some of both
types of experience it will set you apart.

Source: I started as an accountant and ERP end-user, moved to a functional
analyst role, and am currently working as a data engineer.

~~~
snuxoll
This is pretty good advice, this is how I ended up getting into Salesforce
stuff. Started at a company that used Salesforce heavily on the help desk
(which used it as a ticketing system), after 4-5 months I managed to get into
a Jr. Salesforce Developer role.

I no longer work there, nor do I work full-time on Salesforce projects, but I
do maintain our small Salesforce org at my current employer as an additional
responsibility and if I ever decide to move back into it full-time I'll have
the experience to do so (I can't really see it, Salesforce is a great tool but
not something I enjoyed having 100% of my time consumed by, I'm much happier
in my current DevOps role).

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tyingq
Others have covered that the usual path is to first have a job that sends you
to SAP training. That could be an entry level job at a consultancy, or a job
at a Fortune 500 that uses SAP...where the initial job isn't specifically SAP,
but you find a way to get onto the project.

It would be difficult to do that any other way, as the setup costs to have
your own SAP environment to learn on are prohibitively high.

That said, there are other niches where the environment and tools are
available to you at a reasonable cost. You can, for example, sign up for a
Salesforce.com developer account. Perhaps not SAP niche level salaries to be
had, but Salesforce experience is in demand.

Just one example though...generally, search for niches with a reasonable way
to get access to the platform if you want to gain some experience on your own.
Other ideas might be single-sign-on/kerberos/saml/oauth, devops (puppet, chef,
docker, etc) or specific e-commerce shopping cart software (magento, for
example). Keep in mind though, light experience will likely only help landing
an entry level spot.

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MisterBastahrd
You work for a company that uses / consults for SAP, and they either give you
training or send you off to get trained. It's the same way with most of the
big ERP systems.

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patkai
You said "like" SAP, not SAP only, so let me suggest Cobol. It's a language we
rarely hear about but it is an exotic niche that could also pay well. Well,
this is just an idea, I'm not an expert on Cobol.

~~~
jamesmp98
I don' think so. Most COBOL jobs I've seen want like 10-15 years experience
which is effectively impossible to obtain in 2017.

~~~
ci5er
Maybe, but I don't know. A lot of the COBOL-herders for billing systems for
utilities are retiring and people are searching for a journeyman coder they
can train. For now, the situation is held together by these older people
retiring, and then coming back on as consultants until replacements are found
and trained -- and they aren't cheap.

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junto
Work for a solutions provider. Get yourself on a SAP project and ask for SAP
training alongside. Work your way up. At some point you'll be senior enough to
leave an get yourself lucrative contracting gigs.

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rolandm
Study the new SAP systems like SAP HANA, SAP S/4HANA, or SAP Fiori. SAP moved
from R/2 -> R/3 -> SAP ERP -> SAP S/4HANA. It is always easier to jump on the
new wave than try to compete with experts with decades of experience in a
system.

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jorgthuijls
As an SAP (ABAP and web) developer: I stumbled upon an internship 10 years ago
which provided me with some formal training and a company to work for. It's
not an easy specialty to get into. Most developers I know are either converted
key users or the old school mainframe type guys since ABAP resembles COBOL in
it's syntax. The younger ones generally come in through the large consulting
companies who move massive amounts of juniors around to see who fits where.
Think IBM, wipro, TCS.

These days it's a little bit easier because you can get developer editions of
HANA for free, and their front end framework is open source (UI5).

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nirv
A friend of mine was recently recruited by company implementing SAP/ABAP
technology stack for their clients. He has been interviewed mostly solving
problems via Java and SQL.

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JoachimSchipper
A couple years ago, SAP courses were offered at my university; that should be
an interesting route for students, but might also work for people who live
close by - the explicit goal is to create more SAP programmers, and filling an
open seat in a course that would happen anyway isn't expensive for SAP.

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ccrush
SAP and such ERP systems are where developers go to die. That's what happens
when your bag of luck runs out, and you haven't filled your bag of skills yet.
Try something else. If you want to make real money, start a business. Hourly
wages only go so high.

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ig1
Join a consultancy firm that specializes in that area, many will hire people
with zero experience in the area and train them up. It's also the best place
to learn as you'll be exposed to many different deployments.

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Matthias247
friends of mine are working in the SAP domain. They just got hired for junior
consulting positions at SAP consulting companies (smaller ones). There they
got the (expensive) trainings for some of the SAP modules, which they then use
to implement customer solutions.

From what I see here in germany there are lots of these positions available,
since SAP is everywhere. It seems to pay slightly better then average
developer jobs, but as consultants the people there are often away on
business.

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sgt
Aren't we seeing more and more companies (especially smaller companies who
could never afford SAP to begin with) move towards programs like JIRA, and
achieving much of the same.

Where would JIRA (including its wealth of plugins) lack in terms of what SAP
can offer?

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dualogy
How about, JIRA is an issue tracker last I checked, SAP has provided a wide
range of corp/biz solutions from ERP to what-not since the early 70s...

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hfourm
man ABAP gives me night terrors

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saiya-jin
if you are clever, you will probably suffer from over-corporate environment
and seeing customers being milked because of vendor-lockin (aka morality, not
so common feature as I would like).

if you want enterprise, high salaries and don't mind/welcome wearing a suit
every day, I suggest rather JEE - backend never dies in one way or another,
and it is actually a very interesting field to live in.

IMHO one merge/market crash might gradually wipe the SAP market much easier
rather Java.

