My suggestions on SAP ABAP transformation - a perspective from China

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My suggestions on SAP ABAP transformation - a perspective from China

 

 

A Senior SAP ABAP consultant will always face the anxiety and entanglement of transformation or career change.

 

An SAP ABAPer need to know why he need to have a transformation for his career.

 

-Does he want to quit program development or SAP ABAP development consultant? If he does not want to write programs when he is old (more than 35 years old), and he does not want to be a programmer whether it is ABAP programming language or other programming languages. Then he can consider turning to SAP function consultant. After all, he has been engaged in ABAP development for many years. In his daily work, he needs to participate in the discussion of business processes of some functional modules, and he can understand and master a certain SAP module through the testing and research of functionalities. If an ABAP Consultant often works with FICO consultants to develop financial functionality, interface or report, it is natural to consider becoming an SAP FICO Consultant. If an ABAP Consultant is mainly engaged in the development of SAP logistics modules in his daily work, he can also consider changing to be a function consultant of SAP logistics modules. This is a transformation or career change within the SAP consulting field. It is not a cross-border business. The transformation pressure will not be too big, and the career change is more likely to succeed.

 

-Does he want to stop being an SAP Consultant, including SAP ABAP consultant and SAP function module consultant? If yes, it should be considered in combination with their own personality and other comprehensive factors. If he has strong management skill and excellent communication and coordination ability, he can naturally transform to management. Possible positions are SAP department manager, SAP project manager, SAP technical director etc. If he wants to change his technology field and do not want to play SAP any longer, you can consider several directions: big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence etc. These technical fields are not too cross-border for a senior SAP ABAP developer, and the possibility of changing careers is not small.

 

-Does he want to stop working on technology? If so, and if he feel that he is not very suitable for management, then there will be some trouble. Does he want to change his profession to deliver takeout? I believe that no matter how boring and uncomfortable SAP Technology is, it is more decent and dignified than delivering takeout. His parents spent a lot of money to trained him to go to college, not expected him to delivery takeout when he is older!

 

 

 

Transformation or career change should be based on the current major and personal advantages. It is possible to change careers across borders. This requires greater courage, and may experience more setbacks and entanglements. I do not suggest that a ABAPer completely break away from his major and change to a new industry or field that he is not familiar with. After all, if a novice in an industry is an older guy, it will always make people feel strange and unreliable. what you think?

 

 

Note:

This blog is based on the programmer career situation in China.  In China, many programmer which is older than 35 years old will face the difficulty of find new job, because many companies just want to hire the younger programmer. So many senior ABAP programmer or Java programmer will face the transformation issue in their career in China.

I know this situation does not exist in USA/Europe or other regions of the world.  So the senior ABAPer need not to change their career in those regions.

 

 

 

-The end-

 

Written in Suzhou on June 19, 2022.