There has been a lot of positive language around agreements concerning job security, training and finding alternative positions. On paper, that sounds reassuring.
But there is an important phrase that worries me:
“In case” an alternative position is found.
What happens when there is no alternative position?
And what happens when operational reasons are used to justify termination?
@b0 barely any genuinely low performers - that is not true of the people in back office functions (non sales and non product) who have no performance metrics. There are more low performers than top performers....hr....legal - as long as they flatter their manager, they have job security.
@n9 Don‘t spread rumors and lies, Tommy.
An SAP employee of Indian origin was involved in the attack on the Saxon village of Beicha. SAP legal teams are trying to hide the story but it will come out in a few days.
You all can disagree how much ever you want but SAP plans to lay off employees and replace them with AI agents. And there’s nothing we can do about it besides complaining online. HPOM, performance management and recent changes to AI policies all point in that direction. Without layoffs, executives cannot maximize their bonuses and they want every million they can squeeze before their contract ends. The supervisory board and works council are complicit.
@ew Exactly.
And this is as it should be. A few fig leaf Germans and Indians the real people in charge.
@bh there are no refugees working at SAP, only Indian migrants and a few Germans.
@bh Keep your disgusting hatred to yourself.
Go away.
@b0 not the previous poster and I partially agree with you as well as them. The new performance management does not identify low performers. It is simply a tool to make it promotions and appraisals harder. Right now, the only employees I see getting good reviews are the ones who are on good terms with their managers. And there are no off-cycles so you see new fake roles being created and some employees getting very very high scores even though they do not deserve them. Managers at SAP play the game on god mode. They rarely face layoffs and they have complete control over the careers of their reports. Performance Management should deter nepotism but at SAP it does the opposite because it is created by HR to ease the life of managers.
Leeching is definitely the wrong word here. It triggers me as well but I have heard it in context at some of our offices in Germany. The most common context is where long-term SAP employees refer to acquisition employees as leeches. SAP allows for stock options to retain acquisition employees after entity consolidation. Of course SAP employees from Walldorf or ROT suddenly end up in high level positions and they bring their friends and these stock options all go to them. And the acquisition employees who do not leave are called leeches. A good example is the Signavio acquisition where long tenured Signavio employees call themselves Signavians and the managers from SAP call them leeches.
AI is a tool. And if it is not used effectively, you will see no value. I see so many colleagues using AI for mundane tasks where the value generated by AI is not that high compared to the costs. On the other hand, some processes have seen real efficiency gains. I do not agree with the current approach where everyone is forced to use AI and AI usage is tracked and used for performance reviews. But I also feel that we need to reprimand the Anti-AI employees who outright refuse to use it because they think they will lose their jobs if they do.
You make good points but SAP works for it's shareholders no? Shareholder profits and executive bonuses are a higher priority than customers or employees at SAP. This has always been the culture here and it has only gotten worse in the last decade. In a free market, an employee can choose where to work and employers can choose which employees to keep. That is what is going on at SAP at the moment. 2027 and 2028 are the years when most of the executive board members conclude their contracts. So they are just squeezing ever additional million that they can move from SAP into their personal accounts. I don't think this can be avoided till the supervisory board and works council stop playing politics and they grow a spine.
@ak If “leeching” was really the problem, then the new performance analysis should simply identify the low performers. But that’s hardly the reality at SAP, there are barely any genuinely low performers. Most people are busy, delivering, and keeping things running.
Speaking personally, I can barely remember a day when I had nothing to do. And AI doesn’t magically solve that. It has little context about how our actual processes work, and I often spend more time correcting its mistakes than I would have spent doing the work properly myself. If doing something manually is faster, more organized and more reliable, why exactly should I use AI just for the sake of saying I used AI?
And employees are not disposable pieces of software. If the answer to every problem is “become a Data Scientist or AI Engineer,” we should also ask whether that actually creates value for SAP’s customers. Many customers are trained around the existing SAP GUI and established processes, they care about getting their business done reliably, not whether everything suddenly has a Joule or ChatGPT button that uses a Knowledge Graph that has only 80% accuracy and 20% pure hallucinations.
And finally, if employees are supposedly “leeching” by expecting security, what do we call shareholders collecting value simply because they own a piece of the company?
Why is job security so important to you? If you can do your job, you are not wanted in the company. If you aren't good enough or can be replaced by AI, the company doesn't need you. Why should they pay you salary if you're just leeching from the company? SAP needs good people who use AI and help their managers grow. Anyone not wanted by their manager or not using AI enough will not find any alternative positions.