SAP used to be the greatest company to work for, at least as far as I am concerned.
But now? Not anymore. The current board is su-king all joy and enthusiasm out of work.
But are other companies that different? Oracle... meh. Microsoft... no thanks.
Is there an alternative that a) pays well, b) treats their employees well, and c) is large enough not to disappear in the near to middle future?
I am not aware of any, unfortunately.
@q7 That is the obvious answer, however it doesn't allow you to blame minorities, therefore its ignored.
@p8 Maybe these people rise to the top because they are simply good?
@gp current CAIO also was promoted rapidly. From CEO's Assistant, to then leading a team in Cross-Product Engineering, then Innovation Frontrunner under Mr. PH, and finally to CAIO. All thanks to CK support. This is the path for growth at SAP! Also look at the “L2 Design Leader” mafia at BTP, he hires his friends, promote them with every reorg. Prepare decks and you might event become the next Board Member.
@a7 Servicenow once was a good exit, it’s seems to be facing our issues and is also following the Salesforce model of trying to be everything to everyone rather than its core offering.
It’s trying to rebrand as the API platform, but it too is going to get trounced by cloud platforms, data lake/houses like Snowflake and the AI shops like Palantir and then Open AI / Anthropic which have the smarts and model access.
@an it’s across a whole lot of areas. SAP is just the data store and core process engine, the money and growth is in all the applications sitting on top or ingesting the data into data lake/houses as the enterprise stack.
We worked in with the cloud platforms, but it’s clear they are now data plays. I expect Snowflake / Databricks etc were happy to get onboard with BDC as lead partners because they saw it as a way to “officially” get SAP data. A smart move considering the new API policy which seems a desperate play to stop what’s happening from happening.
Palantir is getting closer, they’ve worked out we hold the keys to their whole enterprise play but it’ll be the same thing.
SAP is becoming IBM and its mainframes. Still some very niche use cases, but the ecosystem is moving on and that’s where the $$$ are. You’ll see SAP then become money extraction by people playing games to get roles to harvest cash and then fly off. It’s what happens in failing companies, nations and empires.
@fg you remind me of Timo Fassbender who moved from T2 to T5PM in less than 4 years. Now he is working in the CEO office and he "leads" several L2 and L1 in different areas. Very few employees grow that fast. But then maybe he is that talented and others are not.
If you do a great job, you get a 3,5% yearly salary increment.
If you do a mediocre job, you get a 2% salary increment.
And instead of doing your job, if you just make connections, show hatred towards immigrants and lick the boots of L1 and L2 in Walldorf and Rot by creating beautiful presentation decks for them, you get 7-10% yearly salary increment as you get promoted once and change your role with a salary change once during the year.
This is how it's become since the last 5-7 years in Germany. So why would anyone in their right mind focus on work? It's an easier option to do less and collect more money.
Excellent article - and while it points to a number of specific reasons why SAP is declining, the real reason is lack of leadership across the entire exec and L1/L2 team. They are too self-interested and risk averse to innovate - so they simply want to protect the existing maintenance cash cow. The echo chamber the author mentions is not just external to SAP - it is alive and well at the upper levels of management. No one is rewarded at SAP for recommending a course of action that differs from their manager's preference.
@OP You want to work for Chuck Norris.
@at very good article, thanks for sharing
@OP McDonalds ??!?
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sap-crossroads-major-warning-signs-worlds-largest-erp-kimberling-btdmc?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&utm_campaign=share_via
I agree with @a7+1kr38tmx9. SAP is being eaten alive by competitors that build logic on top of ERP data. In Finance alone the list is endless, HighRadius, Kyriba, BlackLine, Trintech, OneStream, Tipalti, Kyriba,...
databricks, servicenow, snowflake and mostly any tech startup.