Afraid I've dug myself into a hole
MHollender: I'm in a similar position working as a Navision ERP consultant/developer (MS Dynamics-NAV), doing it for 6 years now. But my advice is different.I think it really boils down to one question: are you American (or Japanese, as your nick seems to suggest) or not?Americans and Japanese have this cultural thing that your job should be your life, your major form of satisfaction, it should be something you are really motivated to do. In this case do switch, because if you lose your motivation you fall behind those who do have it. And besides, if your job doesn't make you happy, you'll always feel you are losing something from your life. The real reason behind it is that Americans (and Japanese) IDENTIFY with their jobs: they say "I AM an programmer/salesman/whatever". So how good you feel about your job is how good you feel about yourself. In this case best thing is to move to the edges of SAP - get involved in writing other software that communicate with SAP.But if you are, say, European or British or something, it's differnt. We "oldworlders" tend to think this way: it's just a fucking job. It's just to pay your bills. You don't have to love it, it's not supposed to be your major source of happiness, you don't have to be very motivated, just do it OK. If it's bearable and pays the bills, OK. Reason is that we don't identify with out jobs, we just do programming or sales or whatever for a living and don't think we "are" programmers or salesmen. I'm not "am a Navision developer", it's just something I do. In this case, just stick to SAP, and not just for the money. No, not for the money at all. For the respect. That's the important thing. After 6 years with Navision I'm starting to become something sort of an expert. People praise me all the time, I solve hard problems fast and they think it's magic, all that. Not that I'm very smart or anything, it's just experience. And boy, it feels good, that you are not a beginner anymore whom everybody looks down on, but you are starting to become an authority in your field. Slowly you progress to the situation where nobody cares if you come late in the office and leave the suit at home, because you are the "wizard", and everybody knows "wizards" are different, but yet they are very useful. Man, that feels good, this kind of respect you receive after a certain amount of experience, the self-esteem you can take out of it, it's really great. This is what makes it worth doing it.There are two kinds of excellence. That of the hacker, the discoverer: who keeps solving new problems. And that of the Zen archer, who solves the SAME problem year by year, decade by decade, but in a more and more perfect way. I think the second one buys more self-esteem because after a while you are simply incapable of making any errors in your narrow field and thus never get chewed out. So I chose the later.