What are my career opportunities?

What are the Career Opportunities/paths in SAP labs, India?

• I have got an opportunity to join SAP labs, India as a fresher just after my B-tech in Computer Science Major from NIT-Karnataka. I'm really confused to join SAP labs as i am getting mixed replies from people about SAP (some say it’s an excellent domain, recession proof, people die to work in SAP labs etc; where as others say it's obsolete now, “They will indulge you in technologies like ABAP,Webdynpro,Fiori,Java,HANA,Android,IOS etc. but you won't be doing any quality work. People work in SAP to resolve issues with 5-10 year old poorly written code”). I'd be glad if you could put some light on where i can take my career to in the following years in “S.A.P”. Also, I have heard that as many BIG firms/companies use SAP for ERP solutions, we get high paid jobs in these companies after some (2-3 years) of experience in SAP. What are the opportunities in this sector ?  PS: I am looking for a more managerial/functional job in long term and not doing coding all the time. Also, travelling opportunities and high pay scale are a BIG plus. I certainly don't want to remain as ABAP programmer more than 1-2 years in my career.

• Answer:

  Okay, Its gonna be a lengthy one and most probably I would not be able to give you a yes/no answer. I hope that the answer could provide you data points that would help you in deciding for yourself. First Things First: You would have done it already but if not, look up ERP, SAP, SAP modules (FI, CO, HCM, SCM, MM, there are many more but these should give you a rough idea of what SAP actually does.) There are three primary classifications in SAP: ABAPers: These guys are the developers, they write code in ABAP language that executes logic to cater to the business/financial needs of the company. BASIS: These are the guys who look after SAP environments. Once the SAP software is installed and implemented in a company, (in layman's terms SAP implementation would mean on-boarding company's business management onto the software. and once it is done company needs a dedicated team to maintain SAP software, their task is to make sure all the environments (deployments/servers ??) of SAP are functioning and available to the SAP team and end users. Functional guys: These guys know the inside out of how SAP functions, the business logic of "HOW" to do accomplish the requirement, "Where" to fetch data from, "WHAT" configurations to use etc. etc. And then  there is BW which sits between the client and SAP team, to translate the Client's natural language requirements into SAP specific requirements / task. "It's an excellent domain, recession proof, people die to work in SAP labs" Yes, No and maybe. Yes it is an excellent domain for people who are interested in "How" part of the answer. SAP is an out of the box solution that allows users to develop on it and extend the usability to cater the business and company specific needs. So if you are keen on learning how a particular business is run or how does a company manages it's business data, what does it do with it, then you should be in SAP. you wont learn it overnight but you will reach there with time. In short its a specific domain that requires expertise and one becomes expert in it with more and more exposure and hands on. Recession proof?? that's doubtful. SAP teams for product companies / MNCs  are usually small and hence does not get affected by lay offs as much as other teams do. SAP skill set is rare and very expensive. On the other hand in service companies, which hire by bulk, the SAP staff is quite big and they do have reserve pool of SAP skill set, so things may not be so rosy there. People die to work there??  Well, if you like it you would die to work in it. plus good pay is an added incentive, but don't hold your breath on it. I will cover more on this later. Quality work. Now that is the crux of the question. Most of the giant companies are already on-board SAP those who are on competitive products have too much to loose to migrate, Which means giant clients/companies who pay big have already implemented SAP and now they are either maintaining it or customizing/extending  the ABAP code written during implementation. OR they are going to implement more modules as their business grows. Implementation: This the phase where an SAP professional gets to learn the most and quickest. So if you get to get into an Implementation project, don't miss that train. Customizing / Maintaining: As the business needs change or business itself evolves the way SAP works also needs to be changed, rather modified or customized. for example if a particular financial report needs to be modified to add another column. or a new kind of financial / taxation report is to be produced to meet any legal obligation. Here people get to work in isolation and learn only specific things. its a slow process. Chances are most of the clients will require this kind of job from their SAP teams. Upgrade: upgrading from one version to next major is also a big task and you get to learn rather quickly in that process too. Usual trend is that people start as ABAPers and move on to become functional experts or basis experts or BW experts ( in that order of experience and time ). Now you mentioned that your offer is from SAP labs. That is the research and Development part of SAP (the SAP company itself). Which means that you wouldn't be in a situation like those of Service companies SAP teams. You would not be working or writing ABAP code to on-board a client's business on SAP, rather you would be writing code to develop SAP product itself, or working on the problems that other companies face while using SAP. Much like working on / creating a product rather than using that product. That should remove some of the concerns that you have, some of the concerns that you mention do not apply any more to your scenario. And yes, people who work in SAP team of service companies do die to move to SAP Labs... I hope this helps you in making your decision. In case you want to discuss this further, feel free to comment below :) And, thanks for A2A.