Would you recommend working there? Not necessarily as a developer. I don't care about "disrupting the industry" or "making the world a better place through minimal message oriented transport layers", I just want a comfy well paying job with great promotion prospects.

That they have impossibly generic names? Every time this company's mentioned people probably thing they were referencing software development in general.

The concept is called "hidden champions" and they exist in Germany all over the place: companies that run impressive revenue and profits and sometimes keep surprisingly big parts of the economy (domestically or even internationally) afloat by simply doing their work that everybody depends on - and that nobody (outside their circle) has ever heard of.

Software AG isn't _quite_ that because hidden champions tend to be privately owned while SAG is publicly traded and was big in the M&A space, but they're still close enough in my opinion. Private companies in important niches of the economic fabric can work for a long time without anybody but their employees and direct commercial partners ever hearing about them.

On the other hand, such companies tend to over-specialize and aren't very flexible when it comes to adapting to market shifts. Take automotive for example where there are a bunch of companies (that you likely never heard of) that do marvels in mechanical engineering for the big brands (that you have heard of): A fair amount of that is falling apart with the move to the much simpler electric designs where that kind of process simply isn't necessary anymore.

As an example, when people are concerned about the German industry and economy taking a hit by the move to EVs, it's not so much Daimler's (et al) hesitancy to move to EVs that they're thinking of, and worrying that they might not make it, it's that cottage industry of specialists which support Daimler et al that becomes redundant. That hesitancy to move off the well-trodden path might, in part, be motivated by a desire to keep that ecosystem alive, maybe due to political encouragement, maybe because it's the devil you know, maybe out of concern for the economy and workers.

A very german phenomenon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_champions