Thread regarding SAP layoffs

@gf It'sa bullsh-t meme that mo--ns use here. He's not a real person, it's the name of a bond villain character from Diamonds Are Forever.

@bx Klaus is slated to become another Chief Happiness Officer and feature Happy Employees on LinkedIn. Big Payola.

They also kept mentioning these upcoming changes to compensation and how we should be looking forward to that. Does anyone have insight into what the he-l they are talking about?

I was very impressed with the board.

@c6 all of that hiring is being done in cheap low standard of life countries

@c6 and how many of the 8000 were hired in India? I saw mentioned on another post that new hires from India were replacements for the soon to be layed off employees. From who I've spoken to, this has been the case.

@as in many teams, you are penalized if you do not fill in the unfiltered survey or give a good rating - see Signavio India. The worst of the worst managers are given teams of less than 7 so they don't get unfiltered results - see Signavio Engineering.

I remember last year the promise of how they weren’t laying anyone else off after Q1 of 2025. Here we are nearing the end of October and still layoffs and garden leaves are happening. The meeting today I noticed when someone mentioned layoffs, Christian quickly said “we hired 8,000 people as well.” All I kept thinking was yes all done last year and some of these year whilst others are getting laid off. I’ve only been with the company a few years and when I first joined I felt energized and now it’s more fearful that at some point another layoff can happen. My team already had 5 people get laid off and some are garden leave over the summer. Then I check my email today and see that more people have been let go and put on garden leave. When does it end? How does this build moral?

@ar Spot on the Burnout is crazy bad…. Not a good sign, it’s very hard to recover from.

After this demoralising call l somehow suspect that Unfiltered results will still magically look great. As someone mentioned, it seems clear the agenda of the board: layoffs has constant axe to adjust financial figures, reduce compensation packages and travel budget to the minimum, pretend that people are happy and thriving, layoff cycles to happen whenever needed without transparent communication...We already know how 2026 is going to look like. Manage by fear is the leadership style!

Same story for the last 15 years, employees have to beg for a promotion.

It’s simple. They always want to keep their labor costs down.

The BS about promotions? DEI and culture advancement is BS.

They keep spending mega money on marketing, and offices -all for branding. Employees have to take crumbs for promotion.

Keep begging.

It’s a vicious circle.

No wonder people are burnt out.

@ad not just that. They talked about how other companies are also doing layoffs and that they’re to be accepted as part of life now.

There was also a good question about data that shows low adoption of Joule and some of the tools they’re pushing. But we got a dud answer that the numbers are better now. In reality, data has shown that it isn’t a game changer.

There was another question about an AI bubble that they completely dodged.

It seems that the board is aware that SAP isn’t going to survive the AI battles but they’re still pushing the narrative and waiting for the bubble to burst so they can lay off more people and don’t have to be held accountable.

It was a depressing call.

I missed the call and was waiting for the replay but it sounds like I shouldn’t bother. When I saw some questions in the chat before the call it looked promising that colleagues were asking tough queries about layoffs.
But judging from the above comment, it’s seems like they just avoided any real talk again. I’ve filled out the survey to share also my displeasure , hopefully they get results there that voice our frustration. It’s very sad what is happening at SAP, I’ve been here 20 years and unless there’s a leadership change I fear we will all be ground down to nothing.

My observation is they realise they are damaging staff moral and they want to keep up appearances whilst doing the same as they have been. The little rant about how prior leaders missed the boat on cloud and data, whilst factual correct misses the fact that the big leap SAP has done under his leadership is to move the same cr-p on prem erp bloatware and shove it on hyperscaller infrastructure and call it cloud whilst hobbling all the actually cloud native LOB's with trash platforms like BTP, Gardener and Fiori

So I have seen very pointed questions from Germans, but always in the room by the works council representative who has protection.

Summary: no matter of your feedback, disappointment, demotivation and psychological impact...we will continue this way...and on the top of that no transparency whatsoever about when the next round will start. I hope there will be more voluntary packages at least. Super toxic environment!