SAP

• Friendly atmosphere, supportive colleagues.
• Empowered to make my own decisions.
• They do a good job of hiring young talent and have excellent internship programs.

• Heavily underpaid. As a software engineer, you will often make 30-50% below market, or in some cases even more than that.

It also feels like SAP takes advantage of people who can't leave with their work visa; they don't have any bargaining position. With extraordinary performance (when we still had ratings), I didn't even get the regular 4% that everyone else got, only after explicitly asking for it.

• SAPsv identity crisis: Pretty much every person I talk to at the Palo Alto location questions what SAP does in Silicon Valley.

• Prepare to be stuck to your career level: When we still had performance reviews, I had "extraordinary performance" a couple of times in a row. Now, with SAP talk, things became very wishy-washy. I still get good feedback, but haven't seen any action or tangible output. My manager keeps pushing things out to "next year". Not the manager's fault, though. Also, the curriculums I am interested in that would help me advance are unavailable in the Bay Area, even though my manager supports me in participating.

• Processes: Software engineering is a hell at SAP. We have to use a lot of proprietary tools that don't even get the job done, simply because some process owners in Germany have too much power. Our team in particular wastes 30% of our resources to fit their engineering processes/tools and still builds our own stuff in order to get the job done.

Give us more valuable work in Silicon Valley that fits Silicon Valley.

Make SAPsv a "research", "startup", and "partnership" location primarily.

Prevent good people from leaving.

Pay better salaries to people who perform well.