Reply to: Story of a Contractor to Permie

[milanbenes]

nope I'm not with big blue and these days my stuff works, the blagging days are long gone.... until the ££ go out of ERP and we all have to cross-train, sorry cross-blag into the next big demand area :-)

Milan.

[meridian]

Roots,

'Remember in the early days of SAP nobody else had a clue ! ',


As I get older it gets harder to get motivated to fly by the seat of my pants.

I know what you mean about situations where they ask you to do something and you start sweating ! Been there, worst is when they're all stood behind you cos your the expert cos it says so on your cv !

Milan.

Great, just great. You're not with Big Blue doing the SAP-SEM BCS/BW install at my current client's, are you? I have to test it and it's a pile of sh1t that looks like it's been knocked up by a .net amateur...

[milanbenes]

Roots,

'Remember in the early days of SAP nobody else had a clue ! ',


As I get older it gets harder to get motivated to fly by the seat of my pants.

I know what you mean about situations where they ask you to do something and you start sweating ! Been there, worst is when they're all stood behind you cos your the expert cos it says so on your cv !

Milan.

[cojak]

Ah.

'Nuff said *taps nose*

[rootsnall]

Roots,

if you a straight their 4gl coder then I tend to agree, you will pick it up, but it won't be easy especially understand the transporting mechanism etc in the beginning

but for anything outside straight coding and I mean anything technical or functional then blaggers haven't got a chance and won't get past elementary questions in a telephone interview, and I not trying to put peops off, this is true and I'm a blagger too, but luckily don't need to blag so much these days

Milan.

I do hear you ! I wouldn't blag completely cold, I would make sure I knew the basics and had a good chance of survival. A friendly minder also comes in handy. Remember in the early days of SAP nobody else had a clue !

My worst experience was after getting on for a year off and I went in cold on a new release and stared blankly at a screen I didn't have any memory of !!!

[milanbenes]

Roots,

if you a straight their 4gl coder then I tend to agree, you will pick it up, but it won't be easy especially understand the transporting mechanism etc in the beginning

but for anything outside straight coding and I mean anything technical or functional then blaggers haven't got a chance and won't get past elementary questions in a telephone interview, and I not trying to put peops off, this is true and I'm a blagger too, but luckily don't need to blag so much these days

Milan.

[rootsnall]

I found the opposite in my field of ??. Oz has too many qualified people and a much smaller market so they're more picky. The UK is blagger central which can be quite annoying when you're not a blagger.

I know the rates in Sydney were rubbish about 3 years ago, lower than 10 years ago, but the same applies to the UK in bog standard stuff.

I think its possibly that it's easier to blag when you are not on your home turf. I suggest you get blagging ! It's paid off for me in the past but it wasn't much fun at the time reading manuals at midnight and dreading the next day of confusion and sweaty palms. A semi decent coder could blag it in XXXX ( don't want to upset Milan ) pretty quickly but the new fangled stuff is a bit harder as you can't install a lot of the stuff at home to pick up the basics.

[milanbenes]

LOL

Milan.

[DimPrawn]

anyway, it's all .Net these days, that's the only skill you need,
.Net and you're sorteeeeeeeed

Milan.

.NET is dead. It never took off. All the smart people are getting back into Java/J2EE.

That's the future folks. Linux and Java. Whatever you do, don't get into .NET or any M$ noddy technology, especially BizTalk.

HTH

[GeorgeGregan]

I'm guessing you are from Oz, its a lot easier to blag your way into new fangled skills over there than in the UK. That was where I got into SAP via a boozing mate and a five minute interview. Once you've got the skill its back to blighty to cash in.

I found the opposite in my field of ??. Oz has too many qualified people and a much smaller market so they're more picky. The UK is blagger central which can be quite annoying when you're not a blagger.

[milanbenes]

anyway, it's all .Net these days, that's the only skill you need,
.Net and you're sorteeeeeeeed

Milan.

[rootsnall]

Don't worry Milan your contracts are safe, I got those acronyms off Wikipedia. Wouldn't know my ERP from my elbow.

I'm guessing you are from Oz, its a lot easier to blag your way into new fangled skills over there than in the UK. That was where I got into SAP via a boozing mate and a five minute interview. Once you've got the skill its back to blighty to cash in.

[milanbenes]

sorry about that George, I do worry, it's nothing personal to you, times are tough and the tide is going out on all of us, if you are onto something good don't shout about it !

Milan.

[GeorgeGregan]

with the greatest of respect if you are not already in this orbit then you have no chance

Milan.

Don't worry Milan your contracts are safe, I got those acronyms off Wikipedia. Wouldn't know my ERP from my elbow.

[rootsnall]

The R/3 stuff seems to be dying out but there should be a few more years into it.

The big question is whether to specialise in the BW or SCM stuff, or even APO.

You've missed the boat with BW, its now been beaten down to ABAP levels by work permits.

SCM and APO is a bit niche unless you are happy travelling to chase the money, I would also guess its also not much use to anybody other than the consultant and contractors who implement it.