The biggest sign of poor leadership is a complete lack of transparency. The leadership purposefully doesn't tell us what's really going on with the company's direction or our own job security. Good management is honest with its employees, even when the news is bad. Being left to guess and worry in silence is the worst way to run a place.
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@12t Amen to that, mate. Amen to that.
I would also much rather read information and well-reasoned opinions and interpretations of facts than mudslinging, AFD discussions and unsubstantiated rumours.
@OP Wow this thread is changing into Germans vs Migrants discussion and AFD political party program.
It's just not the place for this discussion.
People come here to get inside tips and information impacting their job at SAP.
Please keep it that way.
@12q TB is that you? You who supported the „Flügel“ from day one? Would not surprise me.
And no: the vast majority of SAP colleagues in WDF and ROT are decent and well-educated. The percentage of AfD voters among them is way below that of the general population.
@12q you can come back and check your post in Jan. 2027.
You will still be fear mongering about migrant layoffs in SAP Germany, but nothing would have happened on ground.
Write it on you wall and read it daily.
@12n in your dreams - yes.
Actually there should be a stinky finger emoji for your thoughts :)
@12e actually we don't want either. For AFD, MAGA and Heritage Foundation, only Europeans, Scandinavians, Americans, the British, Canadians, Australians, Kiwi and South Africans are okay. Everyone else is a part of the remigration scheme whether they are Indians or from any other region or religion.
@110 no it’s people like you why this world is becoming dangerous every year.
Germany needs more Indians and less people from Islamic countries. Your leaders have realized this and therefore making deal with India to get more people from India.
Sadly many well educated and successful Indians don’t want to move to Germany.
Could be because of language or radical people like you, or both.
You are misinformed and presenting wrong
Statistic. Currently Indians are very very small percentage of migrants in Germany.
@yb people like you are the reason why AFD is so popular in Germany. If you like India so much, maybe you should move there. The rate at which migrants are growing in Germany is alarming. Research indicates that by 2030, more than 50% of Germany will be made up of non-Germans. Should we change the name from Deutschland to something else then? Remigration is the only way Deutschland can survive. SAP is a big part of the problem because we're hiring more Indians and migrants by percentage than other companies. But Dominic Asam is fixing this. He is a national hero.
@y1 it's already happened at Signavio. In the 2026 Q1 reorganizations, this will be expanded to Leanix and Walkme. From 2026 Q2 onward, other areas under Alam will also undergo this change. And then it will only spread to the rest of the company. I'm half expecting that in 2027, they let go of a few thousand engineers and mid level managers and talk about making our HR teams leaner by moving them into those mid level manager positions. Of course, they will never fire the high level managers and VPs and Area Heads who do not add much value but make close to a million in salary and benefits and company perks. If we need layoffs, they should at least be focused on non-essential employees and not software engineers and product managers and support engineers and QA and other vital roles.
@t4 y
We actually need more Indians in Europe.
Indians are the one who have made USA great.
Repeat this every time you are in front of a mirror - I HAVE NO IDEA how this world works. I will not rant about other nationalities in my head. Full stop.
@t4 I prefer any immigrant any time over a wa-ker who supports the fascist AfD.
@t1 It is definately a dangerious signal when Tech teams are led by HR, especially in software company.
Eureka!! Thats how Loretta keeps moving through various roles! They get moved when people start to notice that they’re incapable of leading. The survey shows that the gig is up…
@pg that is a strange take on things. The executive board is moving budget allocated towards salary increments to executive bonuses. And they have no solution besides layoffs. Performance Management is simply a way to help them fire anyone they want from 2027 onward. And all you care about is the stock price? The executive board is also manipulating the stock price with help of share buybacks. In a few years, the company would have gone to sheet and the executive board members would have a billion each in bonuses. If there is anything to be done to remedy the situation, the time is NOW.
@t1 you're wrong. People leads are better development managers than software engineers can ever be. MS Alam knows this.
The problem here is not people leads. The real problem is migrants like Indians who are taking European and American jobs. The US is already fixing these problems and Germany and other parts of Europe should do the same. But only the AFD can save Germany now.
@p6 you wrote "One small thing HR could do is to make the survey review mandatory and undertake an investigation into why some leaders get poor results, yet never have any repercussions."
But they already have a solution to this. And they are using it at Signavio. It's the same solution as the Catholic church. Every time someone has a bad review result, one of the three things happen:
I> They are moved to a different team either on the same role or as a different role. If it's a different role, they are getting 7-10% raise in their salary.
II> Their reports are shuffled between teams. This results in a smaller team than seven so the results don't count. Or it makes it easier for them to identify who is giving a bad review.
III> They move to a non-management role. Do you know how many T4PM and T5PM exist in Signavio who have had not a single report in the last year? More than ten. They all had pending complaints with the Betriebsrat. Four of them even went on long-term sick leave for months so they could easily move into a non-management role. All of them got a 7-10% raise to move into their new role.
So how do you propose to fix this? The bad managers from SAP HQ have already taken over this area and they only have loyalists in management now.
If you are ever curious about how they make sure to get a better unfiltered survey result for themselves, have a chat with the Signavio teams in India. Every employee there is coerced into filling in the survey and giving a good result. If they do not, then the whole team suffers in the March appraisals. That is why SAP has the highest unfiltered participation in India and also the highest "manager" scores.
If you are undecided on whether this is really a problem or not, see the current allocation of managers at Signavio. The entire top management is purely made of SAP HQ employees who have been with the company for a couple of decades. They all earn in millions and have more HQ managers under them. Very few exceptions here and all of them are from Signavio but pressured into leaving. Besides them, 90% of engineering managers come from non-software backgrounds and were called People Leads in the past. They are actively making the environment bad for all engineers and trying to get them to leave. Replacements are rarely filled and instead of replacements, they usually go for external consultants. There are seven managers at Signavio who previously worked at these consultant companies and are actively pushing to hire external consultants from those companies. AND DIGITAL is one of these companies. Accenture is another. If you go back a few years, you will see these managers raising invoices for millions of Euros to be sent to AND DIGITAL and these companies. So it is a big problem.
There is no way out of this till someone powerful enough decides to weed bad managers out of SAP.
SAP- Lions being led by donkeys!
@p2 like this band of “elites”
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-resolution-criminal-and-civil-investigations-mckinsey-companys
In coporate world, everything is good news. So I look at stock price as good indicator, now it is falling.
You are exactly right that anyone who has been with the company 20+ years is well positioned and will eliminate anyone who threatens them or their comfortable life. They add zero value, have fat salaries and bonuses, and just agree with every inane idea from the board or their L1 manager. I know of three senior managers in Europe who make between them around 2 million in salary and benefits and are hands down the worst managers who add no value - and the survey proves it but they don't bother even reviewing the survey with the team. One small thing HR could do is to make the survey review mandatory and undertake an investigation into why some leaders get poor results, yet never have any repercussions. Why not just eliminate the roles and give their salaries to their hard working teams.
@OP Correct, it's not just SAP, if you notice it's a trend in public companies. There are a small number of "elite" consulting companies and most companies are using them for strategic downsizing efforts, it's global in scope and across all global industries. Part of these efforts is to go back in time to the older, top down, "do as I say, not as I do" style of management. It's generally accepted that companies have given their employees too much power/input on things as a result of COVID and the era of remote work, they are trying to stamp that out.
@g1 There are actually three parts of management by mushroom.
Keep them in the dark.
Cover them with sh-t.
If a head sticks out, chop it off.
@hs this happens with every acquisition. In 2026, there are so many Signavio reorgs to wipe out any long time Signavio employee who is on a higher position and replace them with SAP employees from the HO who have been with the company for at least a decade. The fact that you worked for Signavio for a decade means nothing to the vultures who are only joining an acquisition area to get higher pay rises than they can get in well established areas. From what I hear, there are about 7 reorganisations taking place in 2026 Q1. These are all approved by the Betriebsrat so don't go crying to them. The Betriebsrat wholly supports these powerful HO employees because in return they can save a few jobs. If the Betriebsrat takes any action and these HO employees get anywhere less than 10% as a yearly increment, they will start to give bad performance reviews and try to push for more layoffs and the Betriebsrat don't want that. I personally know three HO employees that moved to Signavio who got at least a 5% increase year on year in their salary. And on top of that, they got stock benefits. The same stock benefits that were supposed to be allocated to "retain" existing Signavio employees and new Leanix and Walkme employees. Do you know how they did that? They got promoted or changed roles or teams once a year. In March, they get an increase that's higher than average. And during the year, they change the role to get even more. And they instruct these "people leads" that you talk about to give less than average pay rises to all their reports to keep the pressure on. The same thing happens with every acquisition. You have two choices. One is to keep up with this and try to get on their good side by being part of the boys club. If you do that, you will grow. The other is to find another job. Because if they think that you are a threat, they will find a way to kick you out and the Betriebsrat is powerless to do anything about that. Pick your battles wisely. No one is powerful enough at SAP as HO employees who have been with SAP for 20 years or more. Most of them are millionaires already and the new layoffs won't target them. The layoffs are only targeting who they want gone. Because they are the ones feeding the executive board with lies that there is no better way to save the company than layoffs. The executive board will change with time but these HO employees will continue to be there long after they are gone. And they are the real people who are su-king the company dry.
You know what's worse? Noise and the lies. I would be okay with them not giving much transparency. But I am tired of the noise and their lies. The noise about how they care so much and want to do better etc. And the lies that we don't have money so we won't be getting pay rises and bonuses anymore. I would much prefer an executive board that looks us in the eye and says "Hey we don't know what to do so we are just following all other companies by working on AI and doing layoffs. find another job so we can maximize the executive board bonuses. But no. Instead, I have to listen to so many amazing programs that HR came up with to upskill people leads and teach them about development what I learnt at university and a decade of working in tech. They expect that in three months, these DEI coaches will become so proficient in our work that they will be able to teach me how I can be a better technical architect. When I talk to my manager, she asks me what an ACD is any why we need it. Her only job before becoming a coach was in retail and she got a job at Signavio because the person coming up with this HR bullsh-t happens to be her best friend who recommended her. Has she ever used Github? No Has she ever written a line of code in her life? No. Has she ever worked in a company that did anything even remotely related to software engineering? No. But she has the audacity to tell me that my performance is getting poorer and that I do not have the right attitude if I ask the T2s in my team to pair program with me so they can learn and we can get more done together as a team. This is what we're dealing with. Someone from Signavio Engineering made the decision that knowledge of software engineering should not be a prerequisite for becoming a development manager. And I have already started looking for a different job because my manager wants to fire me and hire someone cheaper. Because that will make her look good to her manager. No one cares about customers anymore. No one cares about engineers anymore. We are working in an Engineering department where 8 out of 10 development managers have no technical or business experience and they have been brought in only to make us so miserable that we will leave and will not have to be fired. It's pathetic, really. The Engineering VPs here are based at Walldorf office and all they care about is how often they can get to travel around Europe and to India and plan some hackathon and spend money frivolously instead of giving me a decent yearly raise. And you know what happens if anyone complains to the works council regarding this? Nothing. A development manager with too many complaints is moved to another team or moves to a new role or has a team split so they have less than 7 reports so they can move teams again. And the cycle continues. I wish the executive board had the audacity to tell the truth instead of all the noise and the lies. And that they would share information on programs with transparency instead of playing these games. You know why my manager got this job? Not because she is qualified. It is because this enables Signavio to have the highest percentage of "women in leadership". And this is the same Engineering department where they decided that only German men will be allowed to be managers of managers and women will not be allowed to grow beyond the manager role. But they add more and more women to expert and other roles to show that they're doing great in terms of diversity. They are making life he-l for developers so we quit. And when we do, they want to outsource to cheap companies in cheap locations. It's a nightmare disguised under the veil of AI and layoffs.
SAP is a firm practitioner of mushroom management theory.
That is, keep employees in the dark feed them sh-t.
I'm not trying to sound edgy, been there forever I have have come to accept my role as a mushroom, but I still believe communication and empathy could be much improved.
Chuck is in the know.
Noone dares to keep him in the dark.
I don't think that they know themselves...
Now they're just driving with uncertainty and hesitation.
They think that by copying others they're not taking risk BUT what works for others won't necessarily work for you...