- 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 bargain 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 it 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 build our own stuff in order to get the job done
