http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sap-watch/what-to-do-when-you-can%e2%80%99t-get-an-sap-job/ A SearchSAP.com blog Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:24:36 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.2 http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sap-watch/what-to-do-when-you-can%e2%80%99t-get-an-sap-job/#comment-829 Name Withheld Wed, 12 Nov 2008 20:26:25 +0000 http://sap.blogs.techtarget.com/2008/09/05/what-to-do-when-you-can%e2%80%99t-get-an-sap-job/#comment-829 I'm afraid I agree more with the person who wrote that letter. Those of you who look at the industry as a whole are out of touch with the hiring reality on the ground. A fair estimation of "skills" is usually just a way for management to justify decisions that are based on primal feelings, hearsay, and most important, popularity. I work for a company with practically an unlimited supply of engineers it can bring over from India whenever something goes wrong in a project. They fire people and throw new engineers on the wall to see what sticks. Project managers are often not technical and don't know if a project should take a week, a month, or a year. They have no opinion as to whether it should cost a hundred thousand or a hundred million to build. The situation is entirely subjective. Then when things go wrong, they cover up their own managerial incompetence by blaming the developers and telling everyone they didn't have the right skills. I've played this "skills" game for fifteen years, keeping current, learning cutting-edge technologies, attaining at least one new certification every two years. Finally I got smart and left the consulting industry entirely. My advice for those who are still in the game is to forget about skills and just find someone well-connected to suck up to. I’m afraid I agree more with the person who wrote that letter. Those of you who look at the industry as a whole are out of touch with the hiring reality on the ground. A fair estimation of “skills” is usually just a way for management to justify decisions that are based on primal feelings, hearsay, and most important, popularity. I work for a company with practically an unlimited supply of engineers it can bring over from India whenever something goes wrong in a project. They fire people and throw new engineers on the wall to see what sticks. Project managers are often not technical and don’t know if a project should take a week, a month, or a year. They have no opinion as to whether it should cost a hundred thousand or a hundred million to build. The situation is entirely subjective. Then when things go wrong, they cover up their own managerial incompetence by blaming the developers and telling everyone they didn’t have the right skills. I’ve played this “skills” game for fifteen years, keeping current, learning cutting-edge technologies, attaining at least one new certification every two years. Finally I got smart and left the consulting industry entirely. My advice for those who are still in the game is to forget about skills and just find someone well-connected to suck up to.

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