Thread regarding SAS Institute layoffs

@10x+1jvt63mq0 True, people always say that, but I'll argue that the talent/mediocrity ratio at SAS was below the norm. The best talent always considers Silicon Valley. They had no reason to consider SAS, unless they were already in North Carolina. Even then, they sometimes had better opportunities, because SAS did not provide equity.

History shows that SAS had enough talent to manage an existing revenue stream, but not enough to create new ones.

Regarding the ecosystem, for at least a decade management denied the threat from open source. Nowadays, they may not deny, but neither do they embrace. I don't blame them; you can't embrace what is ki-ling your revenues. Any positive comment SAS makes about open source encourages customers to leave SAS.

The only path forward was innovation, building products with better performance, or a better user experience, or better features that were not in open source. That path was blocked by a management that suppressed new ideas.

@p3 People always say this at every company. The truth is all of these companies at scale have a pretty similar population of talent versus mediocrity. The management continually failed to understand the ecosystem they operated in and refused to adapt. The stubbornness was top down and no amount of talent would have fixed that.

The culture was the best of any company I ever worked for until SAS fell out of top 30 in the Great Places to Work For rankings. Then SAS quickly became like any other place having pockets of decent departments and departments that quickly got the rep for avoidance.

I would work for my self now before going back to how SAS is now. Now it is an environment of every man/woman for themself.

"Was the guy who took dirty pictures a relative"

No. Just a fast talking morbidly obese sap. Saw him at the gym a lot but never saw him working out other than running his mouth to attractive females while they worked out. Weird.

Was the guy who took dirty pictures a relative?

Nepotism was only a small part of our problem. Some of the relatives hired were poor performers, others were good performers. They were a mixed bag, like the rest of SAS.

Mediocrity was tolerated, at all levels across the company, and eventually overwhelmed the talent.

@ej+1jvt63mq0

[ Insert woman yelling at cat meme ]

@ej+1jvt63mq0

Tearing down people you don’t even know says more about you than about them. It screams of petty jealousy.

Well... If I'm reading this correctly, the person you're replying to is intimating that strict nepotism plays a role in determining who succeeds at SAS, how successful they are, and how their accomplishments (or lack thereof) affect their career at SAS. In fact, if I'm reading this correctly, the person you're replying to appears to be intimating that those benefiting from nepotism have nothing to fear from layoffs, despite their failures or lack of success, because they will remain employed at the same company that might, at any time, lay off anyone who is not a beneficiary of nepotism for any of several non-performance related reasons, like being a senior tester making too much money after a career of being a high performer or a senior director having no direct reports despite being qualified for the senior management position they earned.

You haven’t the first clue what they have or haven’t accomplished.

And yet...

I doubt whether you have accomplished much but you know what that thought is worth? Not a thing as I don’t even know you.

Then why say such a thing? Be the change you want to see in the world, friend. I doubt you have accomplished much in your "career" at SAS, but I'm certainly not going to impugn your character with that accusation. Be better.

“ The secret love children need jobs and livelihoods, too, even if their accomplishments are all pretend.”.

Tearing down people you don’t even know says more about you than about them. It screams of petty jealousy.

You haven’t the first clue what they have or haven’t accomplished.

I doubt whether you have accomplished much but you know what that thought is worth? Not a thing as I don’t even know you.

@da+1jvt63mq0

The secret love children need jobs and livelihoods, too, even if their accomplishments are all pretend.

I witnessed the rise of an ingrown, micromanaging, and often less-than-competent entrenched management culture within R&D. We began surrendering effective platform innovation 20+ years ago and this is a big reason why SAS was 10 years too late to the cloud.

This theme has been covered ad nauseam over the last two years in various threads here.

Interesting and sad. Both the early days of the company and the decline will make for good case studies in business school. At least they can be a cautionary tale.

Spot on. I think if they had gone public all those years ago...around 2000 when JG seriously considered it, then the external governance that would have come with it, may have prevented the decline and given SAS the structure it needed to pivot and ride the next technology wave at the time.

Sadly, going public now is not about that.