Thread regarding SAP layoffs

Somethings tells me we are going to see another one of the big T5 cuts again.

Senior roles being advertised as T4 only. Lots of “VPs” who have no staff across my region.

No one is safe now . Don’t get too much into Ai projects . Those projects are easy to cut . Also you are not billable by a customer.

@a9 you forgot: • Do not report ethics and compliance violations to avoid retribution

The replies I read are great. Actually one of the first times I've seen good, honest responses that make sense. And it makes sense across any company really. So kudos to the posters. The only thing I might add is yes...your job is temporary, at the whim of whomever. I'm 62. I design hardware, write software ( I don't work as SAP). I've worked at 5 companies in my career. I've always treated each job as temporary, as I only left ONE job on my own, the others were all RIFs. Each day I check the job listings in my area, and keep track of who is hiring. I keep my resume up to date. I network, keep track of ex coworkers, where they are working. My job before this, is how I was hired. I never really interviewed, they all knew me and my skill set. Why did I lose it? They closed down my office, so had to hunt again. Took me about 4 weeks to find the current job. Why? Because I knew who was hiring, and the history of the hiring. So make sure you always are looking out for yourself first, the paycheck provider second.

You need to learn to become resourceful. Work is and always has been a means to an end. I don't care for work, I care for my family. Stop giving a fu-k and being a woke snowflake, deal with it, man up and take responsibility for your loved one's.

Stay current. Stay informed. Be relevant. Most importantly, keep your network warm at all times. In the end, you're responsible for you and companies are soulless machines.

@b1 Or Sankt Leon Rot. It is as good as Walldorf now. Several employees in my area have reduced working hours because they do not want to be laid off by their managers. Three have moved near Walldorf or Sankt Leon Rot.

Be in one of the main offices in Germany or France, other than that your a number on a spreadsheet that the CFO can decide to cross out to boost the share price. If you speak french or German then try and move to Paris or waldorf

You simply cannot. The sooner you realize you are just a number above or below a red line in an Excel spreadsheet, the sooner you will be at peace with it.

@a9 Why do you think that unfiltered results are not anonymized?

@a9 you seems to know the game well. LOL

Ok@a9 speaks the truth. If I were to rank order them - do not provide candid feedback about your manager on the survey unless it is glowing, flatter and never outshine your manager, and think politically in every action. Just look at the combination of emea south and north - it was like Survivor and only one person was meant to survive between the north and his/her south counterpart - and yet the politically connected ones survived and they still have emea north in their titles despite the merger, or they changed their title but neither the north or south person lost their job. Politics is king at SAP, performance is irrelevant.

Decisions are generally made by L1 and L2 in any area so a lot of these points don’t make sense. But it’s true that the track AI usage, amount of wfh, salaries compared to other team members and so on. Just use your common sense OP. And don’t try to stress too much. Better to look for another job if this stresses you. Maybe you’re not cut out for tech.

Here is a strategy based on a Dev Lead experience in Google:

Two choices to make:

a. It's either you join a front runner team or project on AI for Joule (it's the hype now) and you accept a fellowship or get hired (best)

b. Or make a dependency on yourself by taking in charge the maintenance of a product (OnPrem) where knowledge is very limited to a small number of (old) people who are close to retirement: it's not se-y but someone has to do it and if it happens to be you then bingo !

Someone made a video about it on YT and said that not only he survived layoffs but made a long stable career on it (he made them second choice)

The only ways to be really safe are as follows

• be a white male
• be German or European
• move to the Walldorf or Sankt Leon Rot office
• engage in company politics and be a yes man or woman to your manager
• use SAP’s AI systems a lot as they’re tracking usage
• be visible by sending emojis or gifs on All Hands calls
• visibly show support for what managers do such as spreading HPOM even if it’s ineffective
• do not engage in skip level meetings if your manager doesn’t like it
• reduce working hours to part time so your salary is lower than peers
• ensure you aren’t the highest paid person in your team; McKinsey recommends firing the highest paid resources in a team and distributing their work to other team members
• give very high ratings in Unfiltered because they can easily find out who rates what
• answer internal work emails in German if only German colleagues are present because people using English have a higher chance of getting laid off
• do not take part in extracurricular activities such as marathons
• reply to external parties outside of working hours when important colleagues are in CC
• do not take a lot of sick leave as such employees are seen as unreliable
• create only 3-4 goals that are actually achieveable
• do not take a company car
• if using flexible mobility, keep your expenses lower so they don’t see you as someone who uses benefits a lot
• go to the office even if you don’t need to because they track office usage using the lunch card swipes
• create a lot of wiki pages and presentations with your name in them and make these visible everywhere
• show up for work events and parties but don’t stay too long
• if you’re a woman with a male manager or manager of managers you know what to do to keep your job. Like the woman who got Juergen Mueller fired.
• do not take very long vacations where your Job can be done by someone else
• pay church tax because it seems our conservative management is using that to find and fire “woke” resources
• create elaborate technical architecture documents so people think you’re smart
• like and share SAP posts on LinkedIn but don’t overdo it so they’ll see you’re active
• do not apply for internal SAP positions unless you have your manager’s approval because they can use it to show that you are not satisfied and so you are unreliable
• do not take part in business trips unless necessary as they tend to lay off colleagues with high Concur costs