SAP

I was part of the North America layoffs for SAP. I don't feel all too bad, because I thought SAP was rather courteous about it. Given the recent news of other companies' layoffs, I got a message ahead of time, a month of sort-of not-really "employment" (to look for another role in the company, if possible), and general help with my sort-of not-really "unemployment".

I mention all this because SAP, and I, prided the company's "family" values. It did seem the company cared about the employees.

During the pandemic and after, there wasn't a point where my arm was twisted and I was forced to do so-and-so. My team and I worked at our own pace and took the breaks we needed for our mental health, and we worked better for it.

While I considered other opportunities in the past, this culture really stuck out to me and I felt this would have been rare in other companies. All the compensation in the world really doesn't touch upon this.

That being said, I was bitter over not being bitter. I had been re-assigned to a different project last year, and it was intolerably difficult to affect any change. There is a prevalent sense the company should be Agile, but no one with any influence was willing to criticize very slow, essentially Waterfall practices. My team and other teams were re-assigned, but we had little training and were given few tasks to do. It would take several months to actually get features—fairly small in anyone's definition—shipped. New projects would be planned, and talent would not be assigned. It was a huge waste of resources. Meanwhile, our competitors were soldiering ahead. In this environment, one inevitably thinks about their own career. This hurt because I like the company. I understand Rome wasn't built in a day. And, with Scrum, it's not about blaming anyone. But that's my honest opinion. My hope is that other domains in SAP take the actions to be and remain competitive.