Long and enduring family type relationship with a Great Company Led by great people (not just great leaders, but great .
Pros
Sense of belonging. Pride in the culture (although eroded slightly in recent years). Belief in the vision and strategy of the executives (particularly Hasso). Generally everyone has their heart in the right place. An ethical company, certainly as evidenced by the actions of the executive leadership teams. Many great and incredibly talented people. I considered it a privilege to work at SAP during my time there, not just because of the company but because of the amazing people that I worked with (not least, my line management). At the end of the day SAP has GREAT PRODUCTS, if only we (they, now) all knew how to articulate that and explain to the client base how to get the most from them ! There is no room for comments in the section that asks if you would recommend SAP to a friend. But just so that people are aware, not only have I done so in the past but a number of friends and loved ones have gained employment, are still employed and still enjoy their time at SAP.
Cons
Inequity in remuneration. Whilst generally the pay is reasonably good for most people, many (and I mean many) times the company will pay more to attract new employees than they pay to existing team members without much effort to "normalise' the existing employees remuneration when the disparity becomes apparent. Sometimes this even applies to existing top performers who go to winners circle year after year, but earn less than newer employees doing the same job (they might take home more because of overachieving targets, but their base salary and OTE components can be significantly lower). - This will (and does from time to time) cost SAP good people. (No this is not sour grapes, as it did not happen to me, but certainly to others whom I know) There has been a significant (maybe I mean exponential) increase in recent years in the amount of time spent on "internal stuff" regarding compliance, internal approvals and sales forecasting. All of these are necessary in a sales business, but SAP now seems to be making an 'art form' of the level of detail, time, and effort required. There is now no doubt, that the hardest "sale" at SAP is not to the client or the "prospect" but it is now "internal". The effect of all the "internal stuff' is that customer facing employees spend significantly less time face to face with customers and prospects than they have ever done in the past. The reasons given for all the internal stuff are that it is supposed to ensure that people are only focussing on the things that matter, that the business in predicable, and that it all helps to reduce risk. But in the end a significant amount of people don't believe that and just do it because they are told to. The mathematical assumption and consequence of all this, I would assume, is simply more lost business opportunities than in previous years due to the reduced customer facing time (this is evidenced in some "mature" markets where the revenue has been fairly flat year on year recently when there were expectations of reasonable growth) .
