After all the cuts and good people leaving, we’re stuck with the most clueless management yet. Every decision feels like it’s made by someone who’s never done the actual work. How is this even sustainable at this point?
15 replies (most recent on top)
https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/23/sap_staff_cuts/
Signavio has a history of horrible design managers against whom compliance complaints have been filed, investigative articles have been written by Bloomberg but these managers have been promoted to design directors and PDLs (now design managers after HPOM).
Here if you have the right connections or have a long tongue then you can grow in this department. Everything is a facade to fool the newbie and mid level designers. Once they get to know the truth they leave or made to leave by these toxic design managers. To compensate for the horrible design managers, the design head and HR staff runs DEI workshops where the victims and abusers are invited and equated on the same level. Piece of $#IT!
Yes - my department has terrible managers that have been the subject of numerous complaints (both from within the team and sales leadership) and consistently receive poor survey results but they remain while the good managers leave or, when they threaten the job security of management, somehow wind up in the redundancy pool. At SAP it’s all about whom you know and not your performance.
@vt+1jv6ka84t You are right on the money here! I’ll just add that we are “transforming” into a SAAS company at a time when Satya Nadella, Bill Mcdermott and others are predicting the death of SAAS. The predicted future is massive databases with AI agents extracting what they need.
Digressing here: I’m wondering if AI can replace CEOs and CFOs? Both positions are more artifice and method than talent. You can feed an AI model with a bunch of group - think BS from corporations worldwide so that its output is more of the same. And let’s nor forget AI’s propensity to “hallucinate” (Lie and make up “facts”), another requirement of these roles.
How can SAP innovate given its ridiculously complex products? We’ve experience almost 15-years internal wars between in-house developed and acquired product teams. Very little simplification and/or rationalizations have occurred.
Can innovation really be achieved within our portfolio? The AI battle will be over in the next 9-12 months. And companies like ServiceNow, AWS, other hyperscalers will only be left standing. Our blue-washing is a joke.
Unfortunately SAP has reached the point in its arc where there is no more home grown innovation. For the next few years, it’ll be movement to low cost centers, more perfunctory leadership, and a slowly eroding pipeline. This would be more noticeable if it was not so prevalent in enterprise software and tech as a whole.
AI generated a lot of buzz and is going to be a major disruptor, but between all the approaches it’ll still be the same Coke vs Pepsi debate ALL THE WHILE a somewhat dull yet easily promotable human thinking of the next lame use case.
I hope we change and I hope we get inspired so we can get ourselves out of this malaise.
@h1+1jv6ka84t How are you going to find more inspiring product leaders if the strategy is to replace high cost locations with low cost ones? Imagine paying someone in South Asia a third of what a product manager and leader gets in Europe. Do you think they are going to bust their a$$ off with new and cool innovations for SAP? There's a reason why local talent is always preferred. Sadly, this is affecting sales in a lot of our product portfolios.
Yeah it use to be a culture where people would work together. Now it's a culture of weeding people out. Or squeezing them for as much money as possible. We've lost way too many good people. Trust has fallen.
someone said "We desperate need inspiring product leaders" giving the example of Google. It is just the opposite. Google used to be a software engineer company first then PM would refine the product. Nearly all major products from Google were introduced like that. It all changed and that lead to the downfall. PMs have no vision to see if ChatGPT is the next evolution of Search.
We need to go back to tech first to save tech.
I'm not the OP... but if you're going to call out someone for not naming names, the least you can do is not post anonymously.
what's his name?
Well.... I guess all of those people who complained on and on and on about "the dead wood" and how that "dead wood" had to move on just have to finally step up and perform for the first time in their careers.
Funny... I heard recently about a guy who I've known for years -- a younger guy from Buenos Aires -- who seemed to be moving up steadily. Then, a few years back I heard he was on a Fellowship. And then moved into a role as a result of that Fellowship... only to eventually take on another fellowship... and then another. And another. It seems like his career is now bouncing around the globe, taking selfies, working in a series of 6 month and 1 year gigs, never actually completing anything of substance that is started, but finishing a lot of little projects that have literally no impact.
This guy seems to embody the spirit of SAP. Bullsh-t your way through your career... Until someone else who is a bigger bullsh-tter finds a way to push you out, only to do even less, to accomplish even less, to make an even smaller impact.
Just life at Sad and Tired Joke SE.
They have genuinely never effectively sold software, ever. They then measure and hold us responsible for a task that they are completely incapable of doing.
Way to chase out all of the good people that know how to do the job, Loretta. Enjoy the plummeting revenue.
You only have to look at the mess Google is in now to know what holds the future with SAP. We desperate need inspiring product leaders and getting back to building better products rather then financially engineering our way into a higher stock market.
Indeed, we have been let with “leaders” who have no experience managing people, with no experience in their domains. Sadly at SAP knowing someone above will define how much you progress, earn and succeed. This company is sinking even though they picture it as we are on good track.