Thread regarding SAP layoffs

I am saddened to see the comments on morale, but felt the same several years ago and left SAP after many great years. Lack of strategy, incompetent leadership under CK, HR violations that were never addressed, bullies out of Walldorf who made it their personal mission to get those who disagreed with them on cloud strategy walked out of the US offices. SAP has had this coming ever since CK took the helm; while I am watching this from the outside, I wish all employees well and hope you will get better soon.

Thank you for posting the Jim Cramer earnings call video.

I use do to think of CK as Elmer Fudd. Sadly, I over shot. Mr Bean? 🤷‍♂️. I’m stumped. 🤨. Inspector Clouseau?

Please help me here? Perhaps we SAP employee stock holders should challenge CK at the stock holder meeting and vote in a competent leader.

Listen to the Jim Cramer interview with CK. This was recorded Thursday evening, after the Q4 results were announced and the all hands call, both of which informed about the restructuring/layoffs which were going to take place.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAugrwXDWms

Listen to his answer as to why SAP decided to do the restructuring..... "because we are winning in our core portfolio..." ???

Also why we are thinking of selling Qualtrics ( who now has 3X sales from when we acquired them).... " because what we are doing today we can continue to do while we enhance the value to our shareholder" ???

I'm lost - Pretty difficult to listen to - little if anything made any sense. This is our face to the global marketplace?

To see this interview first hand is to see how far in over his head he is in this job and the same can be said for Hasso for putting him there.

Too bad for us... Might as well get ready for Round 2 of the layoffs when Dominick Asam starts in March, It's going to get real ugly by summertime.

WE SUCK

SAP has missed every tech trend since client-server. Our customers know.

Half of S/4 customers are NNN. Few marque names run S/4 due to the upgrade / conversion costs.

Fear not teammates. Hyperscaler business remains strong. I’m jumping and will take whatever fraction of bonus I receive.

In the end, Germans always lose.

Don't be mislead about any layoffs in Germany, i have seen some info about 200 being cut. It's complete bs. I have managed teams in WDF and had to implement some cutbacks about 7 years ago and had to put 3 people on the list.

First off nobody goes anywhere for at Least 6 months due to their employment contracts, that's a minimum number. After this the works council steps in and had to review the situation ( FYI they only meet once per month). Their role is basically to prevent anyone leaving until every opportunity to seek another role is completely exhausted . In my case by the time the final individual found another team to latch onto was one year after the required 6 month notice. There were performance issue with these which was why they were on the list in the first place. So for a year and a half they did absolutely nothing and then departed for some other team.

I have never seen any labor organization have control over the employer like the works council has over SAP.

Take it to the bank - nobody in Germany will be let go, absolutely nobody.

Also do not forget the very very strong German employment laws. Getting rid of an employee in Germany is very hard and many who were laid off successfully sued for reemployment. Plus unions in Germany. There are no such things in the US and naturally, you go the way of least resistance. Still sucks for people in the US though.

I’ll start by saying that as an employee I don’t like the uncertainty more than anyone else and I’m a bit shocked that only “200” of the employees based on media reports are from Germany (sorry German colleagues). But I’m perplexed by your numbers and saying we do let know. Assuming your an employee, they clearly said 3000 which aligns with media reports and as soon as they file their WARN act filing well know for sure. Unfortunately layoffs Happen, but what shocked me the most is that employees have offer to leave early and they were basically told it doesn’t work that way. This tells me it’s targeted and the know departments and teams under perform.
It sucks and the said part is companies typically get rid of the ones the keep the company running while the c-suite is untouched. Time willl tell

My two cents.....How poorly we are run!!!  It has been said over and over on this platform how the  continued performance year after year  of SAP posting negative profit has been an anchor around our neck.

Do not worry as we have again closed out last year on the same note of profit loss !

SAP’s profitability fell sharply  AGAIN in 2022 despite overall revenue growth and good cloud sales, prompting  the first round of layoffs  set for Q1

Just to make the point ( and sorry for the metrics)   - In the fourth quarter of last year, profit after tax on IFRS basis, fell 77 percent to 332 million euros from last years 1.44 billion euros.   IFRS earnings per share decreased 62 percent to 0.47 euro from 1.23 euros a year ago.  Adjusted profit after tax was 1.03 billion euros or 1 euro per share, compared to prior years 2.27 billion euros or 1.85 euros per share.     UNBELIEVABLE -  You have to work pretty hard to fail like this.

So we are now  all in  on a frantic effort to infuse cash into this leaking sieve before another "activist investor" comes in and  cuts this place to pieces and so we look to possibly sell our remaining interest in Qualtrics kinda like our  final gasp.  Go ahead and have a look at the posts on Salesforce where they are locked in  an alligator grip from our past friends at Elliott who are demanding more and more labor cuts - they  will not  be satisfied until they drain the company dry and take every dime they have.     And thanks to our stellar Leadership team, this movie  could again be coming our way soon.

How much more proof is needed to show that we have the most incompetent Leadership structure in the Tech industry  ( or any industry for that matter)  - starting with our Chairman, to our CEO and then  all of the rest of the Board Members. 

It is truly astonishing that they have been able to keep their positions as long as they have given the complete mess and failure they have overseen...and this is who we are supposed to have confidence in... ?     I don't know what could be worse, getting Elliott back here or keeping the frauds we have running the company.    I think many of us know exactly with whom the layoffs should and must begin  !!!

I couldn’t find any information either. My personal theory is that they’ll know they’re done getting rid of people when Accenture runs out of people to send over to fill the newly available roles..

In the last 18 months we have lost about 30% of my team members who left SAP and went to work for another company on a voluntary basis ( we are US based). They were disgusted with the status quo and found better opportunities.

These were all the best ones who left - the A team, and they saw the handwriting on the wall.

Because of the hiring freeze we have been unable to replace them. Means that we are already facing deep cuts across our bench of 30% plus whatever comes out soft these layoffs and what remains in many cases is the dead wood. The workload is still expected to be done with fewer and less competent people which will only get worse as time goes on.

I see the morale of this company which was already low going completely into the tank.

It's called self inflicted wound. Bail out while you can.

Agreed on the topic of  protection of the WDF workforce and the transfer of  management responsibility out of the US to Germany.  On my team we noticed about 7 years ago the management positions were  gradually being  transferred over  to Germany. Today we have not one US based manager, all management is now based in WDF.

For my team members based on the West Coast of US ( which there are many) they have no f2f contact with their German managers which was the case even before travel restrictions were put into place. ( putting aside that many of the German managers could care less about  what goes on in this region like workload issues, getting involved with the multitude of problems which arise, etc..).    We have a 9 hour time difference with WDF so you cannot even have phone calls with our German managers.  Everything is done via email or PPT.

It is clear that managing team members who are not local is just a nuisance for them. Without any doubt, this is the most inefficient and dysfunctional mess I have ever seen. 

However,  this all makes sense to our Leadership and Board Members     -   do we really  need to wonder as to  why we  have lost money/profit each year for the last 10 years in a row?.

One thing all of us "non-German" employees must recognize is that we work for a German company and they will take care of their own - that's life and that's the way it goes. We shouldn't expect to be treated the same.

Rather we should use this as a learning experience and take from this some lessons. First and foremost we should advise our friends and family that you play with fire when you work for a foreign company. These companies will look to run all global activities from their own domain as much as possible and the only need for international presence is to sell products to foreign customers and collect revenue. The personnel in these "outside" countries are fully expendable and will be the first ones up when layoffs begin, while the homeland employees will be protected at all costs.

Hopefully for all those impacted, I hope you will find future work with a domestic company which values your contribution whether or not you have a works council protecting you or a local address in the country where a foreign company originates from.

Danke fur ihren Beitrag!!