They wrote you can be agile if you move to the cloud. Did you try that?
I jest. But that's kind of the point. SAP is terrible by the nature of the beast. It's a closed off system with specialised developers who require all sorts of expensive certifications. That doesn't make for good developers, that makes for pigeon-holed developers who don't have a lot of competition.
A terrible SAP developer with all the certifications to their name would probably still find plenty of work, because the expectations are low to begin with, as proven by SAP being held in low regard across the industry.
To me, needing expensive certifications to prove your worth (as if...) is a big red flag. I'm a developer who has 20+ years of experience, I recently worked for Apple and other Fortune top 50 companies, I went from startups to enormous companies.
Nowhere did I need certifications. And my past experience was never enough to land a job. I'd have to prove myself in every job application. That's tiresome and feels extremely unnecessary, but it requires me (and my peers) to stay sharp.
Of course, none of the above is very black and white. There are certified developers who are amazing, and there are open-source developers who keep themselves relevant who actually suck at what they do.
But I'd argue that the SAP group of developers have far more developers who aren't very good and grow complacent, oftentimes because of their certifications. That, combined with a closed-off system, bad documentation, a lack of online support, and a much smaller community, will MORE often lead to software that is of lower quality.
I think you don't see the full picture here. The developers working for SAP usually don't need any certifications. They are regular computer scientists/physicists/mathematicians etc. who write code / design systems.
There are of course the certified consultants that work for clients of SAP. I can however understand why they need certifications. It's probably impossible to configure these systems without some kind of special education in them.
And as for the quality of SAP devs.. I work for SAP and I have met many very qualified developers at the company. Far more than I anticipated before joining the company. Quite a few have been poached by Google et al but that is another topic.
I think they were talking about "front end" SAP devs that are hired to work on custom solutions by a client. Not the core devs that actually work for SAP on building the product itself.
I jest. But that's kind of the point. SAP is terrible by the nature of the beast. It's a closed off system with specialised developers who require all sorts of expensive certifications. That doesn't make for good developers, that makes for pigeon-holed developers who don't have a lot of competition.
A terrible SAP developer with all the certifications to their name would probably still find plenty of work, because the expectations are low to begin with, as proven by SAP being held in low regard across the industry.
To me, needing expensive certifications to prove your worth (as if...) is a big red flag. I'm a developer who has 20+ years of experience, I recently worked for Apple and other Fortune top 50 companies, I went from startups to enormous companies.
Nowhere did I need certifications. And my past experience was never enough to land a job. I'd have to prove myself in every job application. That's tiresome and feels extremely unnecessary, but it requires me (and my peers) to stay sharp.
Of course, none of the above is very black and white. There are certified developers who are amazing, and there are open-source developers who keep themselves relevant who actually suck at what they do.
But I'd argue that the SAP group of developers have far more developers who aren't very good and grow complacent, oftentimes because of their certifications. That, combined with a closed-off system, bad documentation, a lack of online support, and a much smaller community, will MORE often lead to software that is of lower quality.