Massively oversubscribed for both voluntary and early retirement. They hoped for 2500 in Germany and had 5600 applications
In order to cut costs as drastically as possible they are going to accept all the early retirement applications, but none of the voluntary redundancy applications.
That's THOUSANDS of the most knowledgeable and experienced employees. These German employees will have 20, 30, 40+ years of SAP knowledge.
Especially the older ABAPers who are essential for solving so many issues caused by quirks or weird legacy code or system design decisions.
When all that knowledge of effectively 100 MILLION hours of experience just goes poof in 3 months, life is going to be a nightmare for the remaining staff. Sh-t will hit the fan