Thread regarding SAS Institute layoffs

@1er+1k2f0n8m0 Outlet locations should certainly be discoverable online. But even with them not being available you could have maybe visited your destination office first…

Some of that is on you.

@1ej
What's hilarious is I had the same issue when moving offices. The outlet(s) (I seem to remember just one or very few) were on the opposite side of the office. Spent an entire day rearranging my furniture.

But I knew better than to complain about that. /s

@1ej+1k2f0n8m0

That is so bizarre to me. Different folks different experiences I guess.

But in 30 years with many different groups and managers I’ve never experienced that or even anything even remotely close to it. So much so that such a reaction is unimaginable for me.

"More broadly, SAS promoted sycophants. Saying “yes” was their main job qualification. And when you select for sycophancy, you get mediocrity."

Very early in my career at SAS, our department moved offices. Afterward, we got a form to rate the experience and ask for feedback. We had gotten a diagram of our new office, and we were supposed to draw where we wanted our furniture to go for the movers. I was honest and said it would have been nice if the diagram showed where the outlets would be, because that influenced where I set up my computer and monitors. So I had re-arrange everything when I got in. All I said on the feedback was "it would be helpful if you could show outlet locations on these diagrams". They told my boss who called me and reamed me out for "complaining and whining". And my takeaway was be VERY careful with your feedback - some people welcomed it, and others most definitely did not.

@1cm “I don’t get even close to the numbers posted here… it is meaningless anyway.”

I am sorry those numbers are meaningless to you. Here is a simpler example:



Search for jobs with the word “Viya” — without “SAS”.

Indeed returns 6 results, LinkedIn 11.

@1d3+1k2f0n8m0 You just described 1995. Not 2025.

Maybe there is a reason so many testers were laid off…. Oh never mind it was just big bad SAS being evil.

@1cn+1k2f0n8m0
No. You run smoke tests on everything you ship because that's the ticket to ride. You run the Level I tests that developers contribute on, maybe, 90 percent of everything you ship. And we all know that there's no inherent conflict of interest in asking someone to grade their own work. You run the Level II tests on the things that failed so spectacularly in the past that it made someone look bad. You run UI automation tests on almost nothing, because no one is willing to invest in actual, customer-centric UI design or maintaining automated UI test tools. You run end-to-end tests on basic workflows, ignoring edge and corner cases. You invalidate existing tests with every change. Some tests fail silently. Some tests never fail, making the test condition actually untestable. Bugs escape the company. You continue to bury technical debt. Your customers become your beta testers. It is 2025.

“How do you budget test hours for your largest sources of revenue when you don't know (and can't figure out) what software the customer is actually using? ”

You test everything you ship. It is 2025.

“If Viya is being delivered with SAS9 at many large customers than how do we know that many existing, employed SAS professionals are not using Viya features and integrating this into their work? My guess is this number is higher than you may realize.”

These folks don’t care. They like to cherry pick and sling meaningless numbers without have any abi,it’s to dig deeper.

For instance they compared a search of “SAS” to a search of “SAS Viya”. Why not “SAS v9” versus “SAS Viya”? Because that is a silly search. “SAS” is the bigger umbrella

Regardless even using the same search criteria originally described I don’t get even close to the numbers posted here. Much smaller discrepancy. But I don’t care and won’t share because it is meaningless anyway.

“If Viya was a growth story, the job counts on Indeed would reflect that. Sadly, they don't”

Every company wants to be a growth company. There are countless successful companies that are not growth anymore. Quarterly reports certainly favor growth but it doesn’t exactly hate the less flashy stable profitable companies.

which could be a successful strategy similar to Microsoft's strategy to bundle products with Office - IF there were also real demand, actual usage, continuous improvements, good performance, etc. instead of vanity projects, inept decisions, poor performance, slow delivery, bugs, missing capabilities, deployment difficulties ...

@1bt+1k2f0n8m0

The bundled mess

If you were in R&D the problem became apparent when you tried to scope test activity and were unable to determine how many customers a specific offering had. How do you budget test hours for your largest sources of revenue when you don't know (and can't figure out) what software the customer is actually using? SAS has spent so many years bundling some director's passion project with software the customer is actually willing to pay for that we were developing and testing software no one was using, but that customers were getting "for free" through some "deal crafting alchemy" (I'm totally stealing this) that Sales had to agree to increase the sale of to get their bonus. Or we were effectively giving the customer the software they actually use if they also bought Viya, or Cyber, or .

There's a case to be made for some of this as a "promotion", like "the first hit is free" promotion or "get it in someone's hands and see what they do with it" promotion, but because of the way Sales is incentivized SAS long ago lost the ability to differentiate between "sales" for the sake of promotion and actual sales. Sales can "allocate" chunks of a sale to different buckets to meet sales targets and earn bonuses. And that's probably where most Viya revenue comes from. It's all a shell game to manipulate the numbers and create a false narrative of demand and success.

@1b9

Jeezus. The bundled mess could wxplain why GAAP is taking so long to implement.

SAS's commitment to a Viya future is only because they have run out of ideas so they keep flogging the same dead horse. What else are they going to do? They don't have the wherewithal to anything else.

5 years ago when I was still at SAS, we had sold plenty of Viya in the country where I was based, by bundling it with renewals and all sorts of other deal crafting alchemy to make our numbers look good, but the reality was it all became shelfware as customers tried to integrate into their existing workflows and failed - every single customer I sold it to (about a dozen), stopped using it within a year. I'm not saying that's the case everywhere, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is.

Because of said bundling and deal crafting alchemy, they couldn't cancel without cancelling the SAS9 licenses that they were actually using. So on paper it looks like SAS has a bunch of SAS Viya customers and various useless execs at SAS get their bonuses, but in reality they're just using SAS9...and using it less and less as the users retire.

I"f Viya was a growth story, the job counts on Indeed would reflect that"

And so would total revenue....

@1ah

Are you sure the “Viya”-specific job counts reflect the who story? There thousands and thousands of SAS programmers employed around the world. If Viya is being delivered with SAS9 at many large customers than how do we know that many existing, employed SAS professionals are not using Viya features and integrating this into their work? My guess is this number is higher than you may realize.

It’s clear from pu--c facing content, ongoing conference papers, etc. that SAS remains very committed to a Viya future.

"Viya tech is being blended into existing SAS9 usage at major customer sites."

Is the above a reality or just a future wish list idea? Everything you mentioned is more focused on salvaging retention than being focused on growth.

If Viya was a growth story, the job counts on Indeed would reflect that. Sadly, they don't.

@157

We also don’t know how much Viya tech is being blended into existing SAS9 usage at major customer sites. When a revenue scale approaching $3 billion, if 15% of customers with solid existing SAS usage are integrating Viya-only capabilities, the SAS will continue to remain relevant and “sticky” for a longer period of time.

This is motivation to continue Viya development, including compatibility improvements, even if at a slow pace. As pointed out many times here over several threads, SAS can continue to manage cost with “trickle layoffs”.

This all appears to be the overall strategy

@17p “If SAS gets into trouble?” Are layoffs not trouble?



Enterprise software companies with revenues declining v. inflation are bought by private equity, or by a few public companies like Broadcom.

These buyers have a simple business model: cut costs, put everything in maintenance mode, and milk the declining revenue stream as long as it lasts.

That's who buys SAS. Although, the US government might also buy a stake, if SAS donates a billion or so to the right places 😂.

Who will rescue SAS if SAS gets into trouble?

"SoftBank Group has agreed to invest $2 billion in embattled chip maker Intel, a boost from the private sector that coincides with a government rescue effort.

Trump administration officials are discussing taking a 10% stake in Intel in a bid to revive the company’s fortunes and bolster semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S., according to people briefed on the talks".
Source:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/softbank-invests-2-billion-in-intel-as-u-s-considers-taking-10-stake-in-chip-maker/ar-AA1KKugf?ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&cvid=8c9e041e09944e888688990599e85915&ei=27

@157 SAS remains a marketable skill. On Indeed.com, a search for “SAS” returns 8,000+ jobs.

A search for “SAS” “Viya” returns 50+ jobs.

@14y

What we can't know is what revenue would have been without Viya. Perhaps non-Viya revenue sharply declined, and Viya keeps revenue at that flat number.

With obscure and secretive accounting, all we have is conjecture. It's set up that way on purpose. That way, the corporate gaslighting team can tell you that you aren't perceiving what you perceive. When asked for facts, they state, "It's a private company, and none of your business."

This thread, along with many others, is evidence of this dynamic.

@13r+1k2f0n8m0
“Denial is the first stage, my friend. Anger is the next. Use that anger to fuel action, and sooner is better than later.”

Now we have graduated to anonymous online psychiatry based on no data.

Also worthless.

"To answer that someone would need actual number"

You want actual numbers, okay. Let's use the numbers SAS has shared. That is gross revenue. Gross revenue has been flat ever since Viya was hatched.

No conjecture necessary to draw conclusions from that metric.

@12z+1k2f0n8m0
Denial is the first stage, my friend. Anger is the next. Use that anger to fuel action, and sooner is better than later.

Viya has cost thousands of salaries over more than a decade. Yet revenues have remained flat:

Those are not conjectures ~~ just facts.

Worst ROI ever? Easily.

“ conjecture is all you have. You could not be more wrong.”

In your opinion. I find your anonymous conjecture worthless.

@12t+1k2f0n8m0

Conjecture is worthless. Actually worse than worthless.
lol no. This is the thing those who bet on the market imagine themselves to be good at. It is an industry, and there is an entire ecosystem of books, newsletters, podcasts, videos, and who-knows-what-else claiming to be the very thing you need to know to effectively value a company's stock given imperfect and often incomplete information about that company. It is the thing that anyone, if and when SAS finally IPOs, will have to do to decide whether or not to invest in SAS, or wait for the post-IPO drop to buy in, and at what price per share. In the absence of any real numbers from the company, conjecture is all you have. You could not be more wrong.

“ Does anyone know of a SAS product having a worse ROI than Viya?”

I was at SAS 30 years, including the big push for Viya. There was more headcount working on Viya than any other previous product during my 30 year stint. And it was over a decade long push. Those two factors alone suggest it was the most money intensive investment ever at SAS.

During the Viya push and ever since, revenue has remained flat. Conclusion: Viya has not been impactful from a revenue point of view.

“ Does anyone know of a SAS product having a worse ROI than Viya?”

To answer that someone would need actual numbers for Viya and other products. Conjecture is worthless. Actually worse than worthless.

"Big investments in products with limited market demand."

Does anyone know of a SAS product having a worse ROI than Viya?

SAS reminds me of Motorola in the late 1990s. Clunky products that are powerful but difficult to use. Big investments in products with limited market demand. A company ego that downplays the changing competitive winds.

The analogy between SAS and Intel is insightful. There must be thousands of Intel employees watching the rise of Nvidia and AMD, thinking: that could have been us.

SAS folks watch the rise of Tableau and other Cloud analytics vendors, thinking similar thoughts. Mediocrity may be inevitable, but it hurts when its yours.

Nepotism didn’t cause mediocrity. How many SAS employees benefit from nepotism, 1%? They’re enough to hurt morale, but not enough to badly hurt product quality.

More broadly, SAS promoted sycophants. Saying “yes” was their main job qualification. And when you select for sycophancy, you get mediocrity.

We had the talent, and early on at least, the leadership, to make this company last longer. But our best people didn’t always say “yes”, so we didn’t put them in the best positions.

A decline into mediocrity may have been inevitable, but the policy of promoting sycophants accelerated it. Now we are seeing the result.

“Look, honey! It’s the chickens! They’ve come home! They’re roosting!

You can leave SASiana anytime you choose…

Then you can start d-mbassiana and run it however you want.

It's more than several. Nobody is going to name names. That's how you get comments deleted.

Several. wow.

“ Several people at SAS did benefit from nepotism”

Wow. Several people.

“Nepotism is a whole other thing and it's a very real problem at SAS. Those who benefit from it will never understand how destructive it is to morale.”

I’ve not benefited from it and have no idea what you are talking about.

OP is dead on that SAS is not different than what other companies experience somewhere in their lifecycle. But people on here like to think that all these things are unique and easily solved. Or cast blame on group/person by claiming they are incompetent. Easy to shout whatever you want from the bleachers.

The hiring isn't the issue. The issue is that too many people who didn't do a good job were allowed stay. Not just stay but rise through the ranks.

That's how you end up with managers and directors and VPs who are so out of touch with how the work gets done every day that they become increasingly useless. Doubly so if they demonstrate no skill at management but are not held accountable for being a cr-ppy manager. Or director or VP.

Working for these out of touch people is impossible. They can't help with anything, can't solve problems, can't even back up their direct reports because it's been that long since they did the work, if they ever even did it.

Nepotism is a whole other thing and it's a very real problem at SAS. Those who benefit from it will never understand how destructive it is to morale.

The only exception is probably oil companies, but they have the most lobbyists.