Change of specialization, how?

Question

Career in IT

Good afternoon!
Every day, the suspicion grows in me that, as a programmer, I went the wrong way and SAP is not mine. I'm currently a senior programmer and I'm working as an ABAP developer on a support project. The work is not bad, the team is good, and the company is also large and stable, but... It is
simply unbearable to work with disgusting implementation beauty and elegance, as well as largely obsolete (reliable and time-tested) technologies! One Web Dynpro is worth something: an incredibly confusing, sometimes illogical and completely inflexible implementation of web interfaces from SAP. Nightmarish code tangles that often have to be sculpted because there is no other way, ugly design, lack of proper support for everything except IE8...
Actually, I want to change the technological basis of my activities, and at the same time, perhaps, the “subject area”. I want to use beautiful languages ​​and tools, solve interesting, complex technical problems.
My problem, it seems to me, is the lack of relevant experience for most of the current offerings. A Java programmer needs knowledge and skills in the Java technology stack, a Frontend developer - JS, modern frameworks, a C-project candidate is expected to have development experience in C ... And what did I work with? Web services that are largely specific in the application of SAP-style, printed forms-reports (the most common of which are PDF), OpenSQL is a dialect that bears little resemblance to the same T-SQL or PL / SQL.
Is it really necessary to start all over again now, and the last three years of life will not matter for the “new” employer? What to talk about in a resume, what position and compensation to apply for, if, on the one hand, there is a lot, and on the other, nothing?
Maybe you have experience of the transition "between the worlds" or thoughts on how to do it correctly?
Tell me please!
In any case, I will be glad to each of your advice and comments :-)

Answer 1

You can't drink experience. Get a job as a junior in a new area of ​​interest to you, I think in six months you will make up for what you would have understood on your own for 3 years.

Answer 2

As for me, the main thing here is a passion for programming.
Come up with a project that you would like to do, and do it at your leisure.
Or find a client for your project in order to combine interesting things with money.
At the beginning, I was engaged in website design, drawing layouts, etc.
Then I switched to sys. admin. (this is a separate topic of development from win to linux)
but I started with Perl, without even knowing what Linux is.
I just mastered and wrote websites, catalogs, guest books, chats.
Then I heard about php, in principle, there were almost the same languages.
Switched to php, began to write apply.
Sites to do.
Then they asked me to do it in the clinic - honey. system. started doing
at the same time I studied all JS, MYSQL, CSS3, well, html is understandable - it is simple.
I wrote my own, wrote the system, and someone else asked to finish the site.
And so it goes.
I recently got to the Frameworks, realizing that writing in a pure language has become more and not particularly safe.
The main thing is to have passion. And you can make your own resume.
And as for the aspects of knowledge, now there are so many new things coming out that you don’t have time to follow, even super pro. while they write on one - already 10 new products have come out.
You can not even fool your head. Main result!

The road opens under the feet of the walker.

Answer 3

You should have a good salary in SAP, every day you have 8 hours of free time + every week two days off + 28 days of vacation per year, at this time you can easily change your specialization.

Answer 4

Look towards the analogue of SAP from Microsoft Dynamics AX, also a large ERP system.
AX is developing strongly and capturing the market, there is a very high demand for developers, architects, and implementers.
In theory, you should know business processes at least partially and this will help you in AX
AX itself is very well structured and arranged both from the user's point of view and from the developer's point of view. But a very difficult system to study.