There are still many persons in SAP who lead teams such as Design Thinking , Enterprise Architecture , Innovation Factory, very fanciful title, and the thing is many of us can’t figure out what they are doing, they sure are paid well!
So much this. Why do we still have people like this at SAP? And some of our best are gone? Makes no sense.
While I can agree to your observation bit-by-bit its obvious that these superfluous roles and positions are just overhead cost.
The big and looming problem for SAP is the loss of its USP - seamless integrated data and applications. The enforced migration to S/4 until 2025 may likely be the point for a big share of the client base to reconsider. The ‚restructuring’ that would follow by then would make everything we discuss here look like kid stuff.
I worked for SAP many years and it has been like this for the longest time. There are so many directors at SAP is a big joke - just do a simple search of the corporate address book where the job title contains the word "director". They are handing out these senior job titles like candies but the individuals that are no longer part of the "inner circle" are given vague job titles with the same high salary - that's where the hidden costs are!! Wake up and smell the coffee people!! The sad part is, these senior titles don't mean much in the real world .
You have lots of individuals that don't contribute anything but flying under the radar and collecting a huge salary. E.g. There is a marketing director from marketing operations that was "transferred" to manage the global social sabbatical/corporate social responsibilty teams - I bet you that he is still getting the same salary as a director while his responsibilites have changed to something meaningless.
The organization is very corrupted with a lot of unethical top/middle management teams. They are well protected and will cruise along for a long time. Don't even get me started on the diversity initiatives, they have wasted so much on these programs just to prove to the world that they truly believe in these principles. If you question any of these individuals what is the true meaning of "diversity at the workplace" - they will not be able to give you a clear answer (e.g. s-x/age discrimination).
I am flabbergasted too. On one hand we have a cost cutting exercise, on the other hand there are fluffy roles with fluffy targets. Such diversity!