Afraid I've dug myself into a hole
mechanical_fish: Of course you can get a different job.Pick a specific alternative technology and field, and learn that. If you go looking for "anything but SAP" of course you're not going to find it. That's spread too thin. And "I could be productive with any of those languages" is a very bad sales pitch. People don't want a generalist. They want to hire someone who will immediately get to work on their specific problem. Decide to become a Ruby web programmer, or a Java middleware programmer, or an Objective-C iPhone programmer, or (god help you) a C++ game programmer, and focus: Read the books, read the blogs, go to the user group meetings, build a practice site or practice app.If you want to leverage your SAP experience as you seek another field, you could try sniffing around the edges of the SAP world. For example, there are surely lots and lots of web apps that are compelled to talk to SAP. If you know a little about web apps and a lot about SAP, a team might want to hire you.The masters' degree might be good for creating a break on your resume, and perhaps for buying you a little time, and it will help you meet other programmers who have nothing to do with SAP. But you're probably right to worry that the degree itself won't help you. You probably need practice, and allies, and networking more than you need formal courses.