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For someone with a web development freelancing background wanting to get into enterprise software, would you recommend going into SAP? Would Salesforce be a bet

by cptaj 7y ago

For someone with a web development freelancing background wanting to get into enterprise software, would you recommend going into SAP? Would Salesforce be a better path? Which one is better for a freelancer working from home (if any)? Feel free to share any other thoughts on the matter

neves 7y ago
I don't know about Salesforce, but SAP courses are really expensive. Just corporate users do them. It's almost impossible to self educate yourself without working in a SAP Consulting firm.
- chris_wot 7y ago
  This is the reason I hate SAP. There are a small bunch of people who can know it, and they make huge money largely because of this artificial scarcity.
- bock 7y ago
  There is https://open.sap.com/ https://open.sap.com/ Free courses directly from SAP without expensive consulting firms in-between. For parent maybe this would be interesting: https://open.sap.com/courses/cp7 https://open.sap.com/courses/cp7
npace12 7y ago
I think definitely Salesforce if you want to work remotely. It's easy to get into, much smaller system in both scope and complexity, and tons of free documentation. Get a couple of certifications, do the trailhead stuff, contact some consulting firms to tell them you're available for work and it should be easy to find work. Getting into SAP and finding work can be challenging. They have a lot of new things from what I see but the majority of the SAP work you'll find is old non-cloud stuff that you'll basically need to have worked with at a company before to learn. I went from SAP dev inhouse -> SAP dev consulting then jumped on the Salesforce wagon around 2011. SAP work was enjoyable to me, partly because I was working in the manufacturing space, which I found interesting. Software-wise, it felt like I was 20 years behind everything, working on a mainframe. Salesforce, I just immediately hated. It was just limits after limits and some crappy java-like language and html templating that took forever to deploy. It's gotten a bit better with lightning but you'll see the shit underneath pretty quickly. I also found the projects also extremely boring. Going from controlling machines and automated warehouses with SAP to projects about collecting email addresses and creating contacts felt like I made the wrong move. tldr -- avoid getting locked into proprietary-land if you can help it
- burntwater 7y ago
  Wait, you can literally control machines with SAP?
  - npace12 7y ago
    Not directly, but via a message sent from SAP to a PLC. The point I was trying to make is that SAP has a big foothold in deep the manufacturing space and Salesforce doesn't, so you generally won't get to work on those kind of projects with salesforce.
davedx 7y ago
I’ve worked with Salesforce a little (previous company used it and I worked closely with the SF team). It’s easy enough to get started - Apex is basically a stunted version of Java - but the dev and deploy workflow is very uh, “cloud native”, so working from home initially could be challenging depending on the experience the client has with SF, how many devs they have, etc. All in all though Salesforce is pretty accessible for learning. Plenty of resources out there, and I know SF consultants make nice money.
unixhero 7y ago
Salesforce is a very good path. I did it for a year, did a pm role and a product manager role. Ot was great. Loved the platform. The customer/clients were really into it, and the result ended great in both instances. Of course the platform and ecosystem is not perfect, but it was absolutely not bad. Highly recommended. Get an administrator cert course on Udemy for USD15. Get the administrator cert from Salesforce for USD100, and then profit.

by cptaj 7y ago

neves 7y ago

I don't know about Salesforce, but SAP courses are really expensive. Just corporate users do them. It's almost impossible to self educate yourself without working in a SAP Consulting firm.

chris_wot 7y ago
This is the reason I hate SAP. There are a small bunch of people who can know it, and they make huge money largely because of this artificial scarcity.
bock 7y ago
There is https://open.sap.com/ https://open.sap.com/ Free courses directly from SAP without expensive consulting firms in-between. For parent maybe this would be interesting: https://open.sap.com/courses/cp7 https://open.sap.com/courses/cp7

npace12 7y ago

I think definitely Salesforce if you want to work remotely. It's easy to get into, much smaller system in both scope and complexity, and tons of free documentation. Get a couple of certifications, do the trailhead stuff, contact some consulting firms to tell them you're available for work and it should be easy to find work. Getting into SAP and finding work can be challenging. They have a lot of new things from what I see but the majority of the SAP work you'll find is old non-cloud stuff that you'll basically need to have worked with at a company before to learn. I went from SAP dev inhouse -> SAP dev consulting then jumped on the Salesforce wagon around 2011. SAP work was enjoyable to me, partly because I was working in the manufacturing space, which I found interesting. Software-wise, it felt like I was 20 years behind everything, working on a mainframe. Salesforce, I just immediately hated. It was just limits after limits and some crappy java-like language and html templating that took forever to deploy. It's gotten a bit better with lightning but you'll see the shit underneath pretty quickly. I also found the projects also extremely boring. Going from controlling machines and automated warehouses with SAP to projects about collecting email addresses and creating contacts felt like I made the wrong move. tldr -- avoid getting locked into proprietary-land if you can help it

burntwater 7y ago
Wait, you can literally control machines with SAP?
- npace12 7y ago
  Not directly, but via a message sent from SAP to a PLC. The point I was trying to make is that SAP has a big foothold in deep the manufacturing space and Salesforce doesn't, so you generally won't get to work on those kind of projects with salesforce.

davedx 7y ago

I’ve worked with Salesforce a little (previous company used it and I worked closely with the SF team). It’s easy enough to get started - Apex is basically a stunted version of Java - but the dev and deploy workflow is very uh, “cloud native”, so working from home initially could be challenging depending on the experience the client has with SF, how many devs they have, etc. All in all though Salesforce is pretty accessible for learning. Plenty of resources out there, and I know SF consultants make nice money.

unixhero 7y ago

Salesforce is a very good path. I did it for a year, did a pm role and a product manager role. Ot was great. Loved the platform. The customer/clients were really into it, and the result ended great in both instances. Of course the platform and ecosystem is not perfect, but it was absolutely not bad. Highly recommended. Get an administrator cert course on Udemy for USD15. Get the administrator cert from Salesforce for USD100, and then profit.