5 Jun 2021
good company to work for
Anonymous employee
SAP Business Objects Reviews
4.2
81% would recommend to a friend
John G. Schwarz
82% approve of CEO
75% positive business outlook
SAP Business Objects has an employee rating of 4.2 out of 5 stars, based on 89 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The SAP Business Objects employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).
Reviews by job title
89 reviews
2.0
29 Jan 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook
Pros
Business Objects was a medium sized tech firm. It was a great place to work if you wanted to experience Big Company life without having to take a position at a large company. This was a great place to implement ideas, if you were willing to follow through on them yourself. Even our interns were developing features in our products (perhaps 10% of the engineering staff were interns, most of whom were working on shippable features). Really good salary for new grads. The Vancouver office is very well located. (From what I can tell, most of their big offices have great locations). People are very friendly and easy to get along with.
Cons
There's not a lot of community recognition. If you drop the name at a party, you'll almost always get blank stares. This is even more true now that they have been purchased by SAP -- the brand recognition in the tech community of either Business Objects or SAP is unfortunately low. The salary, at least in Vancouver, is really high for new graduates, and really low for people with some experience. It was very common for someone to start working at BOBJ right out of school and make 10k more than their peers at other companies. However, in three years, they would be make 20-40k less than the same people elsewhere. The product is made for the business sector, this may not be interesting for many purely technical people. There are very, very few perks for working for this employer. You come to the office, you do some work, you go home and get a cheque in the mail. They do offer bike storage, a gym and a foosball table, but that's about it. Over time, the office has lost more and more benefits. Stock options are gone, stock purchase plans are gone, health benefits are getting worse every year, retirement benefits get worse every year, bonus payout formulas are constantly readjusted to lower the payout (or so it seems), company bar-b-q's are being cancelled, etc. All of the good reasons for working here are systematically being removed, and there is no replacement. There is very little company loyalty amongst employees. In the development side of the business there is a huge stigma associated with being a Software Developer. There are basically two kinds of people: Developers, and everyone else (QA, translation staff, IT, PgM, Tech Writers, etc.). If you weren't a developer, you were looked down upon -- this was especially noticeable during bonus time or salary review time.
2.0
2 Aug 2008
A once amazing place to work has deteriorated to "barely tolerable" after a few months of SAP leadership.
Anonymous employee
Current employee
San Jose, CA
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook
Pros
Business Objects provides a great benefits package. The software is in demand. The skills you learn here are valuable. Once you get the experience at Business Objects, customers will pay top dollar for those skills if you want to work as a contractor. There are a lot of great people who work in the trenches.
Cons
SAP. SAP. SAP. SAP has ruined our support site. They've ruined many of our internal systems. They are a company that puts process and protecting one's own turf over common sense and getting the job done well. If the last few months are an indication of the future, Business Objects will no longer be the great place to work that it once was. Our leadership wants things to look good on paper regardless of how they look in the real world.
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