Chill work environment overshadowed by poor management - werkgeversreview Data Engineer bij SAP Concur

Work life balance is great

Forgot about growth unless switch teams which is very difficult

Compensation & Benefits: The benefits package, including health insurance and the unlimited sick leave policy, is solid and competitive. Peer Group: There is a subset of highly intelligent, hardworking individual contributors who genuinely care about the product and engineering excellence. Slow Pace (until it isn't): For those looking for a slower-paced environment, the workload is manageable and expectations are low, making it a comfortable place to coast in the short term. The exception is when everyone realizes there is a deadline and someone has to pull some heroics to make up for mismanagement. If you are not this hero, then you can continue to relax.

Operational Offloading: The recurring annual layoffs and reorganizations have severely damaged team structures. Eliminating specialized QA teams and PMs has not streamlined the organization; instead, it has dumped non-engineering overhead (like running manual test suites and project management) directly onto software engineers, distracting them from core development. Stagnant Tech Stack & AI Paralysis: The technical direction is hampered by conservative decision-making and a slow-to-paranoid adoption rate of newer technologies. A heavy reliance on legacy systems, combined with extreme hesitation around modern industry tools and AI, has left the product architecture lagging behind industry standards. Internal Team Toxicity: While individual experiences vary, middle management is usually quite toxic but frequently lacks objective accountability. Active, high-performing engineers who advocate for structural or process improvements are often targeted. Performance evaluations, compensation allocations (such as bonuses), and leadership opportunities (like Team Lead tracks) are sometimes leveraged punitively to reward quiet compliance over actual technical merit. Useless Skip-Level Paths: The escalation path is structurally broken. Skip-level managers and directors consistently default to protecting the middle-management hierarchy to avoid conflict, completely ignoring valid documentation of retaliation and favoritism. Inter-Team Friction & Duplication: Product verticals operate in silos, creating massive friction. Feature teams regularly bypass platform architectural standards or duplicate core services (even attempting to split off competing apps) just to circumvent platform dependencies. This political maneuvering results in disjointed, fragmented end-user experiences. Parent Company Resistance (Concur vs. SAP): There is an internal narrative that Concur must remain "special" and separate from SAP. Local leadership frequently resists standardizing SAP-wide operational policies, such as unified design languages, centralized security/privacy frameworks, and modern, structured agile practices, hindering true product maturity, even when engineers are begging for anything to improve conditions. Attrition: With all the above issues, there are no good, motivated engineers left. The ones who were brave enough to speak up or act to improve things were either chased away by the toxic people and environment or beaten down into apathetic obedience.