Hello,
I am currently 39 years old. I am SAP specialist since I was 24. I life in Germany. Official retirement age for people like me as proposed by the german government is 67. So I have one question for me and maybe others have the same question as well:
What do SAP specialists do when they get old?
How long can we work as consultants or developers in the area of SAP? When are we too old to learn new software versions or even programming languages? What do we do when that happens as I have doubts that this can be done until the age of 67.
I see alternatives like that:
- Try to do an early retirement if you can afford to to that. Still this will seldom be at an age when your learning capabilities are still excellent. Maybe before you do that you can do the next:
- Try to go to freelancing. There you might be able to move to calmer waters. Especially after you have been considered to old by your permanent employer.
- Try to go to management. In management experience is very important, I think, and you don't need to be that up-to-date with modern technologies.
- Try to go to an inhouse position. There you might also not need to be that up-to-date with the latest technologies. Maybe you can combine that with the next alternative:
- Try to go to support. Again here you can focus on software components which are not state-of-the-art.
- Try to do something completely new. So you could move away from the field of SAP and start a completely new career. Of course this could be difficult.
Until now I have not decided what to do in my 50s and 60s and I am not sure if I have a wide range of options.
What are your ideas about it?
Thomas Wagner