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It really is insane, I know people who don't even work for SAP, are "IT consultants", whose credentials are a (very good) Art History degree and travel around n

It really is insane, I know people who don't even work for SAP, are "IT consultants", whose credentials are a (very good) Art History degree and travel around nationally and internationally to essentially push a button to do SAP database migrations after mergers and acquisitions. There are independent companies that just live off the fact how bad SAP is.

schst 7y ago
It must be a little bit more difficult than "pushing a button" if companies have to hire an external consultant for that. But yeah, SAP has huge ecosystem of external companies that profit from SAP's fails
- pferde 7y ago
  It often really is just pushing a button. But you can never tell in advance, and the real value of such consultant is knowing how to fix whatever breaks if it does.
schnevets 7y ago
I am an IT Consulting (not with SAP) who has a Computer Science degree. I would not hesitate to hire a liberal arts major for a technical role in my company. Programming and analytical thinking is a tiny fraction of my job; most of it demands public speaking, organizational skills, and business relationship instincts. If these people work at a firm like Accenture that just outsources the technical challenge, coding skills become completely unnecessary. Also, a ton of the industry is built around the risk of something unexpected happening after you push the button (as mentioned below) and distributing blame if the end-result isn't precisely what customers anticipated (the old "Nobody gets fired for buying IBM" adage) It may seem backwards to people outside of giant organizations, but it is a necessary aspect of modern business (and there are tons of industries that make more money while generating less value for society).
- erikpukinskis 7y ago
  Frankly, computer science knowledge and software abilities can be a real liability as an engineer. Many times what is needed is to let go of a sensible technical approach and just help the organization go where it is trying to go. It may not make sense technically, but it makes sense to the org, and that sort of matters more. I find my knowledge of good architecture often just makes it more painful to watch the code go through the inevitable logjams, rewrites, and process failures that are a crucial part of an organization “feeling” it’s way through a very complex multi-dimensional domain that includes many considerations that have nothing to do with code. I think in many ways, people with less technical skills can do that better, to live in the meta space. My brain keeps getting dragged down into the “why can’t we just do the sensible, minimal, technically correct thing that needs to happen for this problem to go away”. But the answer is “because the org doesn’t see the problem the way you do”. What good is it if I can solve problems no one else in the organization even recognizes as problems?
cc81 7y ago
I know a software developer who has an unrelated degree but is very good at his job. And yes SAP is bad but it is also something that will do most stuff you need to do and follow the right laws when you do it.

schst 7y ago

It must be a little bit more difficult than "pushing a button" if companies have to hire an external consultant for that. But yeah, SAP has huge ecosystem of external companies that profit from SAP's fails

pferde 7y ago
It often really is just pushing a button. But you can never tell in advance, and the real value of such consultant is knowing how to fix whatever breaks if it does.

schnevets 7y ago

I am an IT Consulting (not with SAP) who has a Computer Science degree. I would not hesitate to hire a liberal arts major for a technical role in my company. Programming and analytical thinking is a tiny fraction of my job; most of it demands public speaking, organizational skills, and business relationship instincts. If these people work at a firm like Accenture that just outsources the technical challenge, coding skills become completely unnecessary. Also, a ton of the industry is built around the risk of something unexpected happening after you push the button (as mentioned below) and distributing blame if the end-result isn't precisely what customers anticipated (the old "Nobody gets fired for buying IBM" adage) It may seem backwards to people outside of giant organizations, but it is a necessary aspect of modern business (and there are tons of industries that make more money while generating less value for society).

erikpukinskis 7y ago
Frankly, computer science knowledge and software abilities can be a real liability as an engineer. Many times what is needed is to let go of a sensible technical approach and just help the organization go where it is trying to go. It may not make sense technically, but it makes sense to the org, and that sort of matters more. I find my knowledge of good architecture often just makes it more painful to watch the code go through the inevitable logjams, rewrites, and process failures that are a crucial part of an organization “feeling” it’s way through a very complex multi-dimensional domain that includes many considerations that have nothing to do with code. I think in many ways, people with less technical skills can do that better, to live in the meta space. My brain keeps getting dragged down into the “why can’t we just do the sensible, minimal, technically correct thing that needs to happen for this problem to go away”. But the answer is “because the org doesn’t see the problem the way you do”. What good is it if I can solve problems no one else in the organization even recognizes as problems?

cc81 7y ago

I know a software developer who has an unrelated degree but is very good at his job. And yes SAP is bad but it is also something that will do most stuff you need to do and follow the right laws when you do it.