The Boring Enterprise Nerdcast

Sure, Jelena and Paul talk about ABAP in the cloud and all things RAP and CAP - but you should really stick around for the end of the episode where we play a rousing game of "Two Truths And A Lie"!

We dive deep into results and chat about the SAP Developer Survey 2022, and have some deep thoughts and giggles about the developer demographics. You might also want to view the visual-enabled version of this episode at https://youtu.be/8yQHXYTKsVA. 

Paul and Jelena talk to Graham Robinson - or Robbo, to those in the know - about a plethora of interesting subjects. Community keeps coming back up, like it did with Jamie Langskov, but we also dove into APIs, how to be rebels, and the impact of Antarctic journeys on one's soul.

Jelena and Paul talk to Jamie Langskov, well-versed in all things community, community-building, and other areas of general-purpose nerding. Jamie is Senior Director of Community at Unusual Ventures, where - short and sweet - she gets to build "the future of tech communities". Pretty awesome, if you ask us.

Paul M: [00:00:00] Hey, everybody, welcome back to the boring enterprise nerdcast, where we are really boring and we talk about boring things and it's really boring and nobody cares.And so with that in our heads today we have myself and Jelena. Say “hi” Jelena!Jelena: Hello.Paul M: Say hi, cause we're on video and audio. So you can say and wave hi. Today we have with us to talk about like just a plethora of things like a wide variety of inside SAP, inside SAP tech, nerd things.We have the amazing, I'm a big fan. I have been a big fan for years. We have the amazing Paul Hardy. Paul say hi, give us a quick how you doing whatever intro if you want, but please. Yeah. We're lucky to have you on. It's great to have you. Paul H: Okay, I'll give you the, I'll give you the 30-second biography. Paul M: Yeah. Paul H: I'm Paul Hardy as has been said, I'm originally from the UK, but I've lived in Australia for the last 20 years, author of seven [00:01:00] SAP books, thus far,Jelena: Wow.Paul H: SAP mentor, and do lots of talks at public events. And that’s about the size of it really. Paul M: yeah. And that's like, so seven books. That's incredible seven SAP books. That's incredible. That's awesome. When did you, because you guys, so just again, the inside SAP thing, I just became an SAP mentor. And within the last year or so, and you guys are, I think are like long time, like, you know I don't know if you're still a mentor or not Paul, but it's been a while since you were first brought in.Right. It's been been years since you've been there. Paul H: Yeah, I suppose it's time goes by like a rocket, but maybe 2015, 2016. I can't remember exactly Paul M: And then Jelena you were even, I think a little before that, right? Jelena: Yeah, it was a 2014, I think, until like 2018, 19, something like that. Yeah. We overlapped quite a bit with Paul’s a [00:02:00] mentorship. So we have ultimate mentor power. So they, in this podcast, Paul M: Yeah, like, do we need to, maybe we should sign some NDAs just for fun. I don't know. But really what we came on here to talk about is like lots of different things, SAP development wise. And I think one thing that would be great to do is because we're all mentors, we're all authors. We're all deep SAP nerds.Is, we should really start to give our perspective. I think, from the, from the like author mentor level of what's the, what's the current state of SAP development, like as developers who out there, like getting stuff done for our customers, our, our, our companies, what's the state of that. What's the, what's the state of play in the universe for that.Jelena: I think, I think I can start and then pass to Paul because the books that I have published most recently, it's an introduction book. So it's a, it's a book for about [00:03:00] beginners and we who brought it together with me, we intentionally try to place it as sort of a prequel to really excellent Paul's book ABAP to the future.So ours gives a developers or any, anyone who is curious to learn about above some ground knowledge. That Paul's book and they have, I think it's a, it's a first edition here for our URS on YouTube. And Paul published many more additions after that. So our introduction books book is not just introduction so above, but it's also kind of introduction to.Paul's book series that allow everyone to explore much, much Forrester. So yeah. Paul, Paul, over to you. What's. So what's, what's, what's your view on back to the future and state of future of our buff, if you will.Paul M: Yeah. Paul H: I have to say it does evolve very, very quickly and there's always loads of new things coming out. [00:04:00] But from my observation, it's rather like the, the Amish in in America people would like to stay like a hundred years behind as it were, which is why procedural programming is not going anywhere in a hurry.And why the SAP GUI is not doing any. a, in a hurry. And I have to say from doing interviews lately, there is a gigantic skill shortage out there, which is why your books, like the introduction to ABAP are actually absolutely needed because I was doing interviews the other day and of the candidates, only one had even the slightest idea of what an inline declaration was. For Paul M: Yeah. Yeah. Paul H: even this very Friday, Got a recording with SAP up to do a two minute video of trying to encourage young people to go down the app route, shall we say? Because they really not many are.Paul M: What's it [00:05:00] like, I, this has been something that's popped into my head and I think maybe almost for the last four or five months or so, I've kind of become aware and then more and more aware. What's the, why is it? You guys think that and people can tell by my accent that I'm born and raised in the U S like, why is it?We think that the US kind of lags in the ABAP department. Right because we don't like, I don't, I think you're right. I think the US is a little bit of a, like a, a weight in the cart of, of things progressing forward. So to speak in the tack in, in that kind of stuff. Why do you guys think that is. Paul H: Well, one thing I was talking to a us colleague of mine and he was amazed when I told him that in Monash university, in Victoria, in Australia, it's actually you can do courses in SAP. Paul M: Yeah. Paul H: And I don't think there's anything like that in the states. I believe.Paul M: [00:06:00] There's one program I know of that. I think might've even died, so, yeah. Jelena: Yeah. So there are programs in universities, but they are not an ABAP. They are not even in SAP development. I can speak like for the whole university Alliance, of course, but all the programs, all the professors I talked to and. Faculty staff, all those programs, they are preparing functional consultants.None of the programs, programs that I know of, it doesn't mean they don't exist, but they obviously not very well known. If, if not many people heard about them, they just do not prepare developers. And I suspect that maybe historically us was more effected by outsourcing. That's one of my theories and maybe second theory is.To be honest at this point in time, I think wages for SAP developers are really not on par with the rest of the development world. So whoever like me and Paul kind of started a while ago and just [00:07:00] continuing we are I'm not, I'm not likely to switch to Java programming. Even though I can, I'm sure all of us could do well in other languages, but it's just it's, it's not the time for us probably changing careers, but as our developers, younger developers, they have very little incentive to go into SAP because they don't have to go through specialized training. They can use a lot of their knowledge that they got out of college and go play someplace else that pays them sometimes, literally I think twice as much as, and then whatever it the United States at least.Paul H: That would do it. Wouldn't it.Jelena: Yeah,Paul M: Ah, Yeah, there it is. The, so there's, there's an interesting, I think there's an interesting sub question here or related question and Jelena you and I have discussed a little bit, I think, and the question is, oh gosh, how did, how did this go? This, like, we were very [00:08:00] observant of what, like SAP that people like us who are the mentors and the authors and the, like the passionate people.We're very observant of what SAP puts out there in terms of like dev advocacy and events and things like that, that push that push tech and tools. Really far forward. Right. In good ways I think. But there's also like what what's happening in the real world right out at companies out at the big size. I don't know, all that kind of stuff like Paul, do you see that?There's like a, like a pretty big, like a yawning chasm. Between like, whoa, shiny new and yeah, but here's what happens day to day. Right. Do you see that? Paul H: Yes. Like what a wonderful example of, of this sort of thing. Take the good old, take the. B O P F Paul M: Yeah. Yeah. Paul H: that was that was being pushed by SAP as a big, shiny new thing. [00:09:00] And only, I think it was two months ago the development manager and now our company in Germany has heard of it. I, and he said to one of my colleagues, right.Do you think we should do training on this? He says, no, because. So by the time people have heard of something it's obsolete. Paul M: Yeah. Paul H: So there's a gap between SAP bringing something out that it's used in the real room.Paul M: That's hilarious. Well Jelena what are your thoughts there? Cause we've talked about this a bit, but for the world, like what, what do you think is going on there? Jelena: Yeah, I kind of advertise more books Paul's, they have written some except I have just one of them. There is a SAP data science with SAP and you also . It's funny because everything, all of our books, essentially, all of them, it took three people, three people in ports. All right. But all of that is what SAP developers are expected to know.[00:10:00] And, and to add insult to injury, all of, all of this knowledge and effort for lower pay compared to other developers. Come on now. And yeah, to add to this SAP kind of constantly dropping all toys to chase shiny new toys and without even, you know, real strategies there, I totally understand that technology kind of rotates become subsidy.I mean, come on, throw us a bone here. Just, you know, or cut some slack, however you call it. I mean, we just, you need to share with us what's what's your next way is at least or something like that, or, yeah. Do something about it. Paul M: Yeah, it is. I do think there is kind of that possibility for every, for every new shiny thing it's possible for someone who has, I mean, even modest longevity in their career for them to entirely [00:11:00] miss it or not have to worry about it. Right. It can go, it can go peripheral to what you're doing and.By the time, just like Paul's example, by the time you become aware of it, it won't matter.

Paul: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. Welcome back. This is Paul. Hi, Jelena. Jelena: this is Jelena. Paul: For our first episode with a guest, we have a, a great, a great man, a legend, a Titan of industry. We have Michael Keller with us to talk about learning frustrations, training, tutorials, all that kind of good stuff, the in the SAP sphere.And I think with that, Jelena take us away. Let's just, let's just start going. Jelena: Yeah, sure. I want to welcome Michael to our podcast, please say hi.Michael: Hello, greetings from Germany.Jelena: Excellent. So we, the starting point of our conversation today is a blog that has been posted on SAP community by I don't want to butcher his name, but they hope I pronounce it semi correctly, right. Radoslaw Chudziak. The book title was learning frustrations, often SAP developer, and I think all of us[00:01:00] personally and Michael, we both commented on the blog itself.And I think all of us can totally relate to the subject of this blog. So I, I'm curious to hear from both of you how do you relate personally to the subjects that that is raised in this, in this post? And we can start with Paul.Paul: Yeah. So, okay. Thank you. I think so, as I reflect on, we kind of want this blog post and I reflect on my sort of personal learning journey in SAP. I think the, I think one of the key points here that was for me was the, so when I say. It was, I had a very specific, my job was I went from a different job in the development world into an ABAP developer job.And so the company that I was with, they sent me to an ABAP training course, because this was like 2010. So the online presence of that stuff was less, it was there, but it was less. So they sent me to a specific place that had like an SAP. [00:02:00] And so I was like, okay, well, I'm going to be a good little student.I'm going to do all this stuff the right way. And I'll do S flight, this S flight desk, blah, blah, blah. And it was a week long stuff. My brain was full by the end. And I came back to my job and. It was, it was, it was almost like, because, so then I got back to my job eventually I got my sort of my first rice F like assignment, you know what I mean?Like do this report or do this. I can't remember exactly what it was, but I remember thinking to myself, this, this training basically did nothing for me in terms of what I would be doing, because, like I was already sort of a relatively experienced developer, you know, and it, it basically did nothing for me in terms of getting that job done, because all of, all of the stuff that was hard, like for somebody who is a programmer, you understand like swapping variables and [00:03:00] this and assignments and things like that in sub routines already.I did not understand anything about SAP processes. I didn't understand anything about the, the sort of like the, the, the divisions of RICEFWs in general and what those things were. It would've been, it would have been infinitely more powerful for me to have done that training and to have done like a real, like literally SAP must have like a backlog of like, here are actual customer enhancements that they have done to actual things and say, okay, your job is to enhance the sales order.Do you have another field that does this and this and this when the customer clicks save or whatever, and that flow happens. And that, that would have, that would have set me off on a thousand different places. So it was okay. The training was okay, but I still, I still. I left not [00:04:00] having kind of gotten the speed I needed to do what I was really going to do because there's programming.And then there's what you do when your program and SAP development is, has like lots of, a lot closer, like stitch togetherness to business processes than other languages and things like that. And it would have been really nice to been, to been like, sort of bundle up together with like, here's an, here's a real-world example of an enhancement to sales or a screen or whatever.Right. That's kind of stuff. Anyway, that was my experience of kind of onboarding and training and stuff. And I really, I really reflected on that when I saw this, this piece out there, because I was, I, I feel for people who land inside SAP and they're like, oh my God, I'm in like a. in a different universe, you know, I'm floating in space compared to like there's possibilities.And like, I don't have, I don't have a map. I don't have rockets to get there from where I am now. [00:05:00] Anyway, I, I I've just babbled on a lot, but that's, that's my sort of learning perspective on that stuff. Jelena: Yeah. Yeah, definitely think it's something we can all relate to. I think SAP development is sometimes not even as much about development itself as a. Firefighting, I think your language skills, but it is, as you said, it's about business process. It's about data model. So it's really much more to that. So Michael what's what's what do you think, where, where did this blog touched?You personally?Michael: Very personally, I agree with a lot of the points in the blog, and I want to compare it with lego bricks. Perhaps you know these little lego bricks. Yes. And when you are a child, you are building a house with it. And when you were an adult, perhaps you play with lego bricks from time to time. Paul: Yeah, Michael: It's like working with lego bricks, you can build a house, a small, tiny house, and then your customer comes in and ask you to build a skyscraper [00:06:00] because you can build a little house. And he said, oh, build a skyscraper and do it with what, not the stolen material. And you're sitting there and thinking, okay basically. I know how to do it. I have an idea about, oh, I need an architect. I need some experts for that, that, that, so the blog describes a lot of points that I experienced in the past very well. Think about your experience with, or your journey with the business. And you first tried to try to post a partial order and you were Ridley, you were so bewildered, what fields have to be filledJelena: Yup.Michael: that you get this magical sentence? Yes, it's postedJelena: Yeah, exactly. It's like, does this field work [00:07:00] now? Does this field work? Can you tell me, what do you want me to do? No, you just, just keep trying, just keep trying, keep, keep entering some fields and eventually it's going to work out. Yeah, it's still totally ridiculous. And I think that overtime. Some, in some cases actually CP when they hadn't updated poppy documentation, but in most cases, even today, you look at.Really, there are thankfully many posts on SAP community where you can find out what's actually needed. But in most cases, I mean, no one bothered it really to go back and update the commendation for them even using the same community posts. So, yeah, it's very, yeah. And I just want to speak for myself for a second time.Totally when I saw this blog, when they just saw the title in my RSS feed, I was like, yeah. So that's, that's something that they, that they totally feel. And there is just so much going on and I feel that sometimes even developers get sort of a backlash for that. Well, what do you mean? You know, it's always, you need to [00:08:00] always slower and you need to always.I totally agree with that. But if you do not give someone specific direction, what, what should they learn really more specifically, not just, yeah, I mean, totally. I learn things every day in many areas, but for my professional life, I would really appreciate better direction. Like what would, what would work for me?What would work with my preferences and with systems that I'm working in. But I feel that that's just not there at least, at least still not yet, even though we we are long ago since the days when Paul started his career, when I started with Michael started and still were talking about the same issues that existed many, many years ago.So that kind of takes us to another subject that that they wanted to discuss. It's the learning material. So this is, I feel the case when too much is not really good. Because there is so much content and it's really great compared to having [00:09:00] no content at all, which was the case maybe 20 years ago.But it is gotten to the point where developers are overwhelmed and it's not just the platforms themselves, even those are. Well, very manual right now is there is SAP community was a blog post and some Q and a, there are YouTube videos that are open. The CP courses. There is, there is official official SAP training, which is probably quite far from your life at this point.There is. There used to be SAP learning. I think it still exists at least for certification and SAP just opened officially is our new learning websites which so far I'm not convinced is solving really any problem. So so how do you feel about this proliferation of different platforms and overall kind of spreading of information and knowledge and how can developers manage that better?Paul: So, let me, let me jump in here real quick, like, I, [00:10:00] I don't want to, so here, I'll preface this with this. Is it like SAP has an enviable, not an unenviable problem here, because, because to go from like total new to like proficient or whatever. I think it's probably a more daunting task in the SAP universe than it is in, you know, Java, Python, whatever is because you have, you have a lot of places to jump to and you have a lot of like programming, proficiency being a good programmer is not even close to enough to do the right thing, so to speak in this place. And so like, I like, I totally, I mean, I, I don't what I, while I might be saying like, okay, this, this or that is not good enough. It's not to say that like, oh, SAP, you really stink. And I hate you. That's not the case at all. [00:11:00] It's just that they have a hard challenge because of the complexity of the topics here is enormous it, when you consider what somebody has to go through to, to, to get to where

Here are the notes from the episode, and a transcript at the bottom. Follow us on Twitter: @BoringNerdsFollow us on the web: boringenterprisenerds.comFollow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/boring-enterprise-nerds/Paul: This is the very, very first inaugural episode of the podcast. And so what we'd like to do is kind of introduce ourselves, talk about what we're going to do, get all of that interest stuff into our listeners ears. So they know what's going on. I mean, I'm thinking that we should, before we do anything, we should really give ourselves like a, sort of a personal intro to the universe.So I'm going to hand the podcast talking stick to you, Jelena, and say, please introduce yourself as who you are. What do you love? What you hate, what you do in life, all those things. Just tell us about yourself.Jelena: Hey, thank you, Paul. So I'm Jelena Perfiljeva. I am an SAP professional with many years of experiences, as I would typically officially introduce myself. In real life, of course, I have many other interests. But what we usually focus on with Paul is enterprise software in general. And we have started talking to each other. And we also have a newsletter that we're publishing and we decided to do a podcast as well.So talk about all the different things in enterprise software and then software in general, and even, even in life That that really excite us and that inspire us. So I hope that this podcast will also provide some interest in some inspiration to you, our listeners. Thank you. And back to you, Paul.Paul: yeah. the, the stick has been passed back to me and now I may speak in the, in the campfire circle. Right. So thank you, Jelena. My name is Paul, as you probably heard in the intro, and as you hear me speaking now, so I am also a professional software developer, focused a lot in SAP, almost entirely in SAP and a little bit in sort of some Microsoft and Google things in there, here and there, but pretty much in SAP these days.And, just like Jelena, I [00:02:00] have lots of strong interest in sort of the enterprise software space in general. And then of course, other things going on kind of outside the podcast. And we can add on some episodes someday, we should just kind of dive into our personal stuff too, at some point, at least a little bit of that personal stuff and get kind of a flavor of, you know, what else has been going on because I, for one would love to hear some of the little Jelena in the USSR, kinda like growing up kind of stuff, just to, just to learn more about that kind of thing. Right. It's interesting to me as…Jelena: Back in the days.Paul: Yeah those back in the day things can actually illuminate a lot of why, you know, why things are the way they are now for us as professionals in that kind of stuff.So, anyway, like I said, we started this to be, to be educational, to have some sort of semblance of community, to, to share our experiences and knowledge with folks. And because the two of us, like we talked to each other and we have a good time and we also like to be social and talk to people and we like to talk to interesting [00:03:00] people.And so we're going to have interesting people on this podcast and talk to them. So I'm excited. I'm pumped to get started on this. So, I think maybe Jelena, can you talk, talk us through why podcasting? Like what, what inspires you to think that a podcast is kind of the right thing for us to do in this space?Jelena: Yeah, I think that podcast format, it allows us to have discussions that go much farther than a simple post or a blog or newsletter article can go on. And when we, when we're talking life to people, I think sharing of ideas and kind of immediately bouncing back against each other, that’s what really makes great podcasts stand out.And I hope that we can have really great guests here. And talk to them and we can learn from them. They can hopefully learn from us as well. And then our listeners can learn from everyone here and maybe even [00:04:00] participate further, or maybe give us some feedback in our comments section, or just reach out to us directly.Paul: Yeah. And I think one thing that's great about podcasts and why I think that we talked about this is like, you know, we, at this point we do a lots of our things on social media, right? We post on Twitter, LinkedIn, we have a newsletter, that kind of stuff, those things are engaging in a certain way, but sometimes, you know, comments and social media interactions they're disjointed.And also you don't get a very good personal flavor sometimes because sometimes there's nuance, it's hard to interpret in just the typed word. And I think, I think that adding a personal touch of literally just talking to somebody will really help us kind of uncover some depth and get a kind of feedback that we can't get from like the digital, like written digital things in that space.So I'm excited to, to have people on. And then if you, or I disagree in some way with either each other or with that person we're talking to. Of course it can be civil and then it can be easy to sort of like, say, I don't understand that. What do you mean by this? And then we can come to that resolution right there.I think that's really neat about podcasts that I don't think Twitter has that, you know what I mean?Jelena: Yeah.Paul: Twitter has a different kind of energyJelena: Exact, exact opposite.Paul: Twitter has a little more…Jelena: …blurt out stuff. And then taken out of context, disagreements.Paul: Yeah, love/hate back and forth a little bit kind of thing. And that, that hopefully we don't get too much love and hate back and forth in this podcast.So our release schedule, we're starting out with once a month that may someday go maybe slightly more often, but right now we're being sane with our own lives, our own personal lives, our schedules, our listener's schedules too. And we're just going to go once a month with somebody interesting and go dive deep on a topic. So look for us to publish about once a month.Our structure on the podcast is actually pretty simple. I think because really what we do is we identify a topic like training or learning. That'll be our first one and identify a person, a luminary in that space. And then we just, we just go to that.There's no, like there's no news review and there's no like top 10 music hits or whatever kind of thing going on. It's just talk to another nerd, stitch it together and get out that's our, that's our format. And, and hopefully that's simple and quick and easy and kind of fun for people to get into.Jelena: We just lure people in and then we question them.Paul: Yeah, there's, there will be a virtual, like light bulb hanging over their heads. And we're going to have like a picture of a big burly guy in the background doing like this, then we're going to try to get the real answers out of them, you know, and make them talk, make them squeal.Jelena: Yup.Paul: Of course, like, I, I think we talked about this briefly before we started recording this, Jelena, that like these intro things are a little bit dry if there's not some kind of personal touch to them.So I would love to add just like a tiny little spice of something personal to this. And so what I would love for you - and I'll do the same thing - describe for me, one of your favorite early moments in your programmer slash developer life, talk about something that was sort of formative for you in that nerd space.Jelena: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So for me, it was very, very long time ago. My formative years are way, way, way behind. So think about late, late nineties or very super early two thousands. Before SAP, I was a mainframe consultant and the way I started this I found the company back in Latvia that did training for mainframe consultants that they then provided for projects for the rest of the world.And prior to that, I did some development, but only for small [00:08:00] computers or personal computers of different kinds. Even though by education. I was essentially a system designer. I just, it, it was very typical path. I think for many developers for you get education in certain areas and you do work with some other things.And for me suddenly that course, that training was suddenly connected to my education that I received at university. And suddenly I was able to apply all those concepts in the context of much bigger mainframe systems. And I think it is, it is similar, it's not the exact same experience, obviously, but it's similar to what many developers can relate to. It's a differences between enterprise and non-enterprise software and just having your learning and education in one area and maybe doing something else. And then suddenly later in life, connecting back to what you have learned and digging into that knowledge unexpectedly sometimes. So yeah, that's, that's my “origin story”, if you will.Paul: That at some point we should have a, we should have a guest or a topic on that, like that difference between enterprise and non-enterprise development. That would be fascinating because I mean, for both of us, I think, the vast majority of our lives professionally have been in enterprise-shaped environments and it would be, I think, it'd be great to have somebody sort of contrast our experiences with theirs in, you know, startups or gaming or whatever like that, and really kind of illuminate some differences in that kind of stuff. That's an interesting, interesting take on.Well, okay. So thank you, Jelena, for the, for the opening the history book and turning back a few years.So you know, something that stands out to me in my, in my life as a programmer is even before I had a job as like a developer, I think one of the first programs I ever wrote, I was in college. And I didn't do tech in college, I did like theater and psychology. I did kind of just liberal arts stuff in college, and I noticed that my girlfriend, who is now my wife, she was playing lots of Sudoku.So the, the n