Knowing college people who did SAP consulting and having some family folks in this field as well, it’s purely just because it’s a very limited specialized skillset that most people would never learn or use in real life. It’s sorta also hard to get into I think unless you get a gig which needed it or you were “hired” early by a consulting house to train/do it.
I did ERP stuff in the past on Oracle/Peoplesoft and I doubt any of the SAP stuff is “hard”, but what in tech really is considered hard given enough motivation/interest?
I think the pay is “decent” (I don’t think 200k is insane), because people who implement these typically have to travel so that lifestyle isn’t for everyone. Most companies would also not want to keep a lot of SAP talent on staff and advancement career wise is limited if you wanted to reach higher levels of management or IPO.
It’s surprising large scale projects like this are still about, but with tons of government contracts and old legacy systems and simply, users wanting to do things their “custom” way, I doubt it’ll go away soon.
If consulting, there is very little advancing pass more pay or management opportunities.
Honestly, the guy doing your yard work or cleaning your house I feel has a “harder” job than most desk jobs out there.