A lot many of my colleagues keep asking me...
I am currently a JAVA programmer working on production support for client X offshore. I see no growth in my current job.
I was thinking of maybe getting into SAP since my company is hiring a lot of SAP guys and I heard that you can make a Lot of Money in SAP and that the demand for SAP professionals is going through the roof...
I am sure that many of you must have come across such statements quite often.....
I am not sure what to advise this very good friend of mine....!!!!
First of all I start thinking :
If I were a fresher ( fresh out of college ) - I get placed in a company which trains me in JAVA / .NET etc etc
Then I am put in a project and expected to grow within the organization.....
As for SAP ...?
If I were a fresher - I am hired out of campus and trained in BASIC production support for SAP Modules....
With Modules like BASIS and BW being the easiest since the requirements are less rigorous than other modules.
Example :
An L1 for SAP BI would be typically involved in monitoring Data Loads and a L1 for BASIS might be involved in
transports and at best taking backups / monitoring jobs etc.
Now coming to the intriguing part ....
As for the NON SAP space - the career ladder would be production support --> Application Development team member....
As for SAP .. the requirements for implementation typically come as 2 years Implementation experience - this would mean that the Production support guy never has a chance to get into implementation unless the experience is faked ( for want of a better word ) - does this mean that effectively we are encouraging integrity breaches by putting such conditions.
Then this leads me to ask the same question again :
1. What does it take for a person say with 2 years experience in production support to get into the SAP world and grow his/her career
2. All this was referring to Indian companies... also if a person is a fresher and has missed the bus on campus recruitment and gets trained in some local institute in some SAP technology - what should h/she do to get a job.
How does a person with no Experience (read: Fresher) get into SAP ? and where can a fresher expect to land a job particularly in terms of responsibilities . How does one grow in SAP Projects – irrespective of modules – or is it module specific ?
Again voicing out my opinion - have we built walls around us that are too high to scale and end up facing a shortage of people for projects and end up with sub optimal resources that might work for some time and then blow up in our faces ...?
I was reading Is SAP Certification Worth the Money?
and his column on ERPGenie.com
And Santosh V's blog on Certification versus Experience
All these blogs talk about experience in the market - what does it have for a fresher ? All along the offshoring model works on having a bulge in terms of cost of the resource versus the billing for the resource - but the blogs seem to indicate that there is no room for the fresher or a fresher has to essentially be content with production support and nothing more . nothing less ?
This is more of a rant than a complaint ... have a lot of friends who work in technologies like JAVA / .NET etc and have put in a lot of work there but are mainly clueless about where to move to and get into SAP.
Of course these technologies can be used in the SAP world also but then the job profile requires them to have knowledge of the SAP world also which sort of spoils the whole experience.
These views are just my personal opinions and not to be considered as representing my organization / against any organization in particular.
Just wanted some feedback which I thought I could point people to in order for them to develop their skills in that direction.
