#51: Bonkers Job Market, ABAP AI, Star Footballer Christian Klein
In this issue:
Christian Klein Joins the Premier League
Acceleration Economy named Christian Klein the Cloud Wars 2023 CEO of the Year. Go read the extended report and watch Bob Evans talk to Klein in this video.
Some key pieces I pick up on:
How easy it is to forget that Klein took the reins exactly when the world imploded with COVID.
BTP is growing at 40%...which is actually not a number I would've guessed.
RISE with SAP seems to be acknowledged as a big success.
Just like everything else I've read or looked at this year, Klein is driving focus on AI/GenAI.
I need to learn more about the broad market response to BTP and RISE. A fair portion of my network is end customer SAP teams and smaller-ish customization shops, and there's quite a bit more skepticism of BTP and RISE among those folks. And if the BTP number above is right, and I look at SAP's stock performance in the last year…well, maybe my perspective is too small.
At the end of the interview, Klein dropped a mention of Ted Lasso. As advice to other CEOs and leaders, he picked up on the (probably not Walt Whitman) reference during the famous darts scene: "Be curious, not judgmental." Uh oh - maybe my jaded techno-weenie perspective really is wrong. Maybe I'm Rupert Mannion!
So, Christian, I re-wrote the last bit of that darts scene with you in mind.
[Klein throws a dart and hits a triple 20, of which he needs another to win]
Klein: I realized about SAP nerds’ underestimating me…who I was had nothing to do with it. 'Cause if they were curious, they would've asked questions. You know? Like, "Do you have deep knowledge of SAP's history, customers, and vision?"
[throws another dart and hits his second triple 20]
Klein: To which I would've answered, "Yes, sir. Every day since I joined SAP at 19. Every executive board meeting with Hasso Plattner, until and through when I was 39, when I was made CEO."
[beat]
Klein: Share price.
[throws his third dart and hits the bullseye; crowd cheers wildly]
PM
Job Market is Bonkers
What’s the deal with the job market these days? The employers are worried about the skill shortage for their S/4HANA migration projects and there are allegedly millions of open jobs. At the same time, there are layoffs everywhere and tons of “open for work” circles in LinkedIn profiles. This doesn’t add up…
In this great video, Dave Farley talks about the “developer shortage crisis” (if there actually is one) and how did we get here. One thing he mentions has also been plaguing SAP ecosystem. The employers are looking for “developers with proven experience working on exactly the same type of problems, ideally in the same industry, using exactly the same tools as them”. In SAP world, this translates into job descriptions with a laundry list of abbreviations from the whole 50 glorious years of SAP history. And of course, the candidate will also need to go to the office 3 days a week. For bonus points, the office is either out in the boonies or in a super congested, high COL area.
And if the employers manage to fill in each Purple SAP Unicorn position, there is another problem with a baseball bat behind the corner: who will do those jobs when unicorns retire or move on to greener pastures? This Forbes article had a controversial take: there is a need for apprenticeship programs for young/beginner professionals. Dave Farley agrees: architects don’t build bridges right out of school, why do we expect differently from developers? Or SAP professionals.
Forbes article puts apprenticeship onus on the consulting companies. But the ASUG survey results, for example, are about the shortage of internal resources and skills. In this case, waiting for someone else to solve the problem is rather naïve. The biggest concern about apprenticeship programs I’ve heard before is “we train new people and then they leave”. Well, of course they will leave if your company sucks. As Dave points, people are “attracted to good organizations with interesting problems to solve” (his video has more good tips on this). Bottom line, if your company really wants to solve both ends of the skill crisis, look inwards and reflect on why you have a crisis. JP
Sauté Me An App, Please
Picture two kitchens, each equipped with the finest ingredients and utensils. In one, there's a state-of-the-art food processor that guarantees amazing results at the press of a button. In the other, a shlubby budget model that demands constant checks and do-overs.
A master chef could knock your socks off with either kitchen. The key difference? In the first kitchen, she saves time not needing to constantly tend to the food processor. So if you're a restaurateur, you should buy that food processor, because you don't have to pay the chef for long shifts. But in order to have knock-your-socks-off dishes, you still have to hire that master chef. There's no replacing her skill, even with the best stuff.
Now take that whole metaphor and apply it to enterprise low-code app development. You may be able to save money on timelines by applying the best low-code tools to your requirements, but you won't do it by having less-skilled people do the work. If you want evidence, take a look at the screenshots and notes on this blog (and the other blogs it links to) from the SAP community.
There is NO WAY that in a few years' time that the same screens will be used in the exact same way to configure those pieces. Somebody has to have an understanding of all these keys, client IDs, client secrets, authentication URLs, and so on that are being plugged in everywhere. And that is not going to be your business process expert. They have enough on their minds from actually understanding how the business works to go spend a bunch of time learning what client IDs and secrets mean…let alone Postman/HTTP/REST/Groovy/etc.
Fusion teams aren't about removing skill sets from your enterprise. They're about moving faster together, because better tools mean quicker iteration on ideas from experts on every side of the problem. PM
More Better Developer Tools
In his SAP Community blog post Using AI in ABAP development Lars Hvam writes about using GitHub Copilot and VS Code. Based on the title, I was expecting more pizzazz but what Lars describes seems most realistic and practical.
Some useful tools are not flashy or super exciting. And may not contain any AI at all. ABAP RAP Generator has been just quietly helpful for a few years already. In fact, there is the whole ABAP tool Renaissance going on: good old abap2xlsx has been joined by abap2UI5, ABAP Cleaner, and many others.
You might ask but where is the magical AI? I think there might be some dissonance where the rubber of marketing hype meets the road of reality. Recently I got preview access to the SAP Build Code tool that was demoed at SAP TechEd. The official page defines it as “designed for professional developers” yet also somehow supporting “fusion teams”. (Reminds me of classic Puss in Boots: “For you, baby, I could be”. :) ) I think it’s an interesting tool that can help with mundane development tasks. It’s too early to talk about it in more detail but it clearly is not a magic wand. It’s more like IKEA furniture. You get some parts and then assemble them. And I think it’s fine, as long as everyone understands this. I’m all for more tools but less hype, please. JP
Bring Back Search Engine Wars!
“What happened to Google search?” ponders Enrico Tartarotti in his video. Indeed.
Being able to find information online quickly has always been the most valuable skill for SAP professionals. SAP websites rarely offer good search capabilities, which throws us into deceiving embrace of Google.
As one of the video comments notes, “Google is no longer a search engine”. These days our Google Fu is up against the SEO-gaming websites, “sponsored” results and such. It’s not unusual to search for some SAP stuff and get a weird mix of circa 2008 SAP Community questions and shady “Guru69” type sites. Adding “site:sap.com” helps somewhat but it can be a wild trip that makes you wish that SAP would actually join the SEO game.
I still turn to Google as my default search tool and (with all the ad-blockers on PC) it’s useful for simple queries like time zone or temperature conversion. But otherwise, I’m on the lookout for alternatives. Drop us a comment with your search tips! JP
Workflows As Code - Awesome
Last issue I got all turned around with nerd excitement on a really nice chatbot implementation, when I had intended to dive a little deeper into Apache Airflow. This time around, I will not submit to such pedestrian temptations.
Apache Airflow is a platform for creating and scheduling batch workflows, often used in data pipelines. While it was started as a project inside Airbnb in 2014, it has become one of the best tools available for managing RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) data ingestion - a vital part of one of the most common ways to enhance large language model prompts.
I'm reading and watching to learn more about Airflow. The coolest thing so far is its design focus on "workflows as code". It uses Python as the canonical design language for the workflows that data engineers create. When you think about it, that's pretty freakin' rad: using code to create workflows means that those very workflows can be conditionally constructed. And though this surely wasn't the plan when Airflow was first built, it gets huge benefits from its language choice, because Copilot-style development tools LOVE Python.
"Workflows as code" gives me warm fuzzies, because I have psychological scars from getting my hands dirty with SAP Business Workflow. Business Workflow, for all its power, does not have the elegance of pure code-definition-driven data workflows that Airflow brings. Color me continually intrigued. PM
Watch the corresponding Nerdletter Talk discussion for bonus content!
Want to take your presentations to another level this year? Say no more! We invited Timo Elliott, Global Innovation Advocate for SAP, to talk about what grinds our gears and share some presentation tips and tricks. Watch, laugh, learn!
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This didn't make it into my job market story (it was already getting too long) but it was mentioned in our Nerdletter Talk on YT. Just want to give a shout-out to another good video: The end of the "Self-Taught Programmer"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro4oGwMb-T4