Wel­come back to Nerd Exchange, a new ASUG col­umn from Jele­na Per­fil­je­va and Paul Mod­der­man, The Bor­ing Enter­prise Nerds. Help­ing sub­scribers stay on top of SAP, AI, Cloud, and enter­prise soft­ware news through their hit Bor­ing Enter­prise Nerdlet­ter, Jele­na and Paul are fun­ny, cyn­i­cal, and always inter­est­ing — a breath of fresh air for the enter­prise soft­ware land­scape. Below, the Bor­ing Enter­prise Nerds offer their take on the top­ics of reskilling, upskilling, and con­tin­u­ous edu­ca­tion for the SAP ecosystem.

Paul: Let’s just start with a sim­ple truth: if you want to stay in the SAP tech nerd realm, you’re going to have to board the upskilling train. And ensur­ing your suc­cess in upskilling means find­ing good ways to do it. We talked about this at ASUG Tech Con­nect, ASUG’s research sur­veys point to reskilling and upskilling as grow­ing pri­or­i­ties for its mem­bers’ orga­ni­za­tions, and SAP is start­ing to address the top­ic as well. Jele­na, you and I have been around this block a cou­ple of times. Maybe, in our advanced age, we have some wis­dom to offer. What was it like for you to skill up to ABAP the first time? 

Jele­na: I had fair­ly diverse expe­ri­ence when I start­ed in SAP, and that gave me a sol­id foun­da­tion. My main­frame days exposed me to com­po­nents sim­i­lar to ABAP dynam­ic-pro­gram (dyn­pro) screens and Process After Input/​Process Before Out­put (PAI/PBO). And I dab­bled in SQL and MS Visu­al Basic. My com­pa­ny sent me to an ABAP train­ing (the famous BC400), where I imme­di­ate­ly bond­ed with the instruc­tor over our com­mon main­frame background.

When I got back, SAP imple­men­ta­tion was already in progress, and the real learn­ing began. The con­sul­tants we’d hired were legal­ly oblig­at­ed to do knowl­edge trans­fer. They were eager to show us the ropes and share knowl­edge beyond just check­ing the box. More than any train­ing, those folks tak­ing time and care to guide us was huge. 

Paul: I had­n’t encoun­tered the unique main­frame world when I got start­ed in ABAP. I brought some pri­or knowl­edge as a web devel­op­er, so the feel­ing I had look­ing at an ABAP main­frame was, ​“What in the pro­gram­mer heck is this?” I think I learned the mate­r­i­al well at the BC400 train­ing, but upon return­ing to my com­pa­ny I just… sat at my desk for about two months. I could­n’t get the man­ag­er to give me an assign­ment. Final­ly, some­one impor­tant real­ized us SAP new­bies need­ed to actu­al­ly do some­thing, so we all got con­sul­tant bud­dies who sat with us at our desks. And I won the lot­tery there — my men­tor was off-the-charts bril­liant and patient, and they let me dri­ve the key­board. That was when I found my toe-hold on ABAP Mountain. 

Jele­na: Man­age­ment often seems to think train­ing cours­es are a sil­ver bul­let. No way. 

Paul: No way! I see the impor­tance, but I would not trade my pair-pro­gram­ming men­tor time for any­thing in the world. I know, in your job, you often men­tor folks, and I some­times do too. And when I do, I draw on every sec­ond of that time I got years ago. 

Jele­na: There’s an impor­tant moment that comes after build­ing up those base skills. When you feel like you’re pret­ty com­pe­tent in one area, you need to decide where to go next. And you can’t let some­one decide this for you or just chase the next ​“hot skill.” No mat­ter what you set your eyes on, what makes the most dif­fer­ence is your own inter­nal direc­tion. Choose your own adventure!

Paul: Dear read­ers, we don’t want you to think we live in a mag­ic uni­corn utopia where we can choose any eso­teric tech skill to dig deep on. For work at the behest of your com­pa­ny, that com­pa­ny is prob­a­bly going to exert some influ­ence on your direc­tion (and you have to make sure you can pay your rent). But even inside that influ­ence, you can still find room to chart your path. 

Jele­na: There’s anoth­er trick to all this, for teams. I made this joke in our ASUG Tech Con­nect pre­sen­ta­tion: pro­gram­ming is not a team sport, but upskilling is. Let each team mem­ber pur­sue their own learn­ing direc­tion, and then come togeth­er and teach each oth­er what you’ve learned. After all, the best way to learn is to teach.

Paul: Some­times, your ​“team” can be big­ger than you think, too. Online com­mu­ni­ties like Red­dit and SAP Com­mu­ni­ty have active con­ver­sa­tions that can expose you to more than you ever want­ed to know about your favorite cor­ner of SAP. Local user groups (scroll to the top of this very page!) are insane­ly pow­er­ful tools to find folks pur­su­ing sim­i­lar paths. 

I had the last word last time, Jele­na. The floor is yours. 

Jele­na: Folks, here is our patent­ed strat­e­gy to help you learn bet­ter, faster, stronger.

• For­mal train­ing is use­ful but not sufficient. 

• Seek bril­liant men­tors, then seek to men­tor others. 

• Team mem­bers can give each oth­er boosts that go above and beyond indi­vid­ual learn­ing paths. 

• It takes a vil­lage to raise a devel­op­er. Find your vil­lage! (Or build one.)

And final­ly: don’t con­fuse the need to upskill with a stress­ful urgency to do so. Pick your next path, apply your focus care­ful­ly, and leave your­self some breath­ing room. Your val­ue as a per­son is more than just acronyms on a resume.

For more Nerd Exchange, check out Jele­na and Paul’s first col­umn, pre­view­ing ASUG Tech Con­nect, and sec­ond col­umn, offer­ing their pre­dic­tions for 2024, and sub­scribe to both ASUG First Five and the Bor­ing Enter­prise Nerdlet­ter.