Thread regarding SAS Institute layoffs

Leave when you can.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careers/i-worked-nights-weekends-and-holidays-after-being-put-on-a-performance-plan-i-saved-my-job-but-it-wasn-t-worth-it/ar-BB1h5L6s?cvid=4b16dfa9c3dd446b915ad4142d7f72ed&ocid=winp2fptaskbar&ei=8&sc=shoreline

I did not intend to introduce politics. Perhaps instead of saying, “they destroyed the value that others created”, I should have said,

“The slackers, sycophants, and incompetents inherited one of the premier products for analyzing data. During the explosive growth of data caused by the Internet, they were unable to capitalize on their opportunity.

They were unable to maintain their existing revenue stream, while Tableau, QlikTech, and PowerBI took market share. As a result, all of us must now watch layoffs at the company we loved.”

This is a sad situation, but it helps to share it with others who’ve had the same experience.

"What I care about is that the slackers and the sycophants and the incompetents got control. They became the majority, and they got control, and they destroyed the value that others created."

Many feel that also describes our beloved country.

I would just voice agreement. I don’t care that people worked 35 hours per week, because that was the deal SAS offered. I don’t even care that people worked less than that, or that incompetent sycophants got rewarded. A certain amount of that happens in any company.



What I care about is that the slackers and the sycophants and the incompetents got control. They became the majority, and they got control, and they destroyed the value that others created.

Indeed, they drove many of our best and brightest out. Some got tired, while others got pushed. The cognitive dissonance was bad enough, but the abuse under toxic managers should never have been allowed.


If I were still at SAS, and needed 2 or 3 years until retirement, I’d work a solid week, never argue, and stick it out. They’ll lay off another 5-10% during that time period, but those are good odds.

But if I needed 5 or 10 years, the odds aren’t good anymore. The slackers and the sycophants and the incompetents have proven they have no idea how to grow the company. They’re shrinking it; that’s all they know how to do.

“I’m very grateful for a long SAS career. It’s very unfortunate that a series of missteps and ineffective management over the last 15 to 20 years has led the company onto its current state. Failing to recognize and truly reward the most loyal, hard-working and effective employees are sadly a big reason why this decline has occurred… Most of us truly loved SAS but could no longer handle the cognitive dissonance. Now we are gone.”

Here now, when she took my Cadillac
Well, that didn't bother me a bit.
But when she took my BlueTick Hound,
She should've never done that sh-t!

I never thought I'd see the day
Her love would be as dead
as the...

Finish the lyrics to claim your true hillbilly roots!

@2mko+1qgyyQes

I’m one “hard-core” former SAS person who actually grew up among the working class, visited their dilapidated houses and trailer homes on rocky hill sides many times. My first job was washing dishes in a greasy spoon during the summer and on weekends at age 13, followed by a string of similar positions,6 among many working poor. My kin literally rose from historical scenes that could’ve come right out of Fried Green Tomatoes. Thankfully, I was fortunate to attend a low-priced state school and get the most minimal education necessary to enter the tech world.

The best things I learned from my good salt of the earth kin folks was work ethic and standing up for myself, even when others attempted to put roadblocks in front of me. This happened early on with a coworker and my first job out of college chided me for basically not having the right degree from a better school. I don’t know what became of his tech career, but mine shined brightly due to a vociferous work ethic imparted by my hillbilly kin, along with a lifetime willingness to continue learning — most often on my own time and using my own money.

I’m very grateful for a long SAS career. It’s very unfortunate that a series of missteps and ineffective management over the last 15 to 20 years has led the company onto its current state. Failing to recognize and truly reward the most loyal, hard-working and effective employees are sadly a big reason why this decline has occurred. There were several hundred of us who were “making the difference” even as little as two years ago. Most of us truly loved, SAS but no longer handle the cognitive dissonance. Now we are gone.

"What will SAS be remembered for?"

SAS will be remembered for having a brilliant beginning tarnished by failures causing their disappointment of an ending.

A very sad case study.

Well that's good to hear.
SAS deserves it's decline.
Sad but true.
So many blunders as the decades passed.

It's not a credit to SAS, but more a testament to the resilience of the business model of the software industry that SAS is still in business. Because it hasn't released any innovative and competitive products since the 1990's, but the revenues kept rising for another 20+ years before things started to decline.

That's an awfully long time to turn around a failing business, yet JG squandered the opportunity, time and time again.

Here's an interesting fact....in 1980, SAS had revenues $10m and Microsoft had revenues in $8m. In 1981 both companies passed the 100 employees mark.

I wonder if JG ever looks back and thinks about that. Yes, he's fabulously wealthy, but surely it reached a point long ago where it's not about the money any more...it would be about leaving a legacy, wouldn't it?

What will SAS be remembered for?

Probably just another sad case study of a once great tech business that was squandered by bad management, just like Kodak, BlackBerry, Motorola, Compaq, Xerox, Yahoo, etc.

… and so did many others for most of the same reasons

@3vpr+1qgyyQeI

Exactly what I did.

"Many of our coworkers enjoyed identical benefits/security and although our “hard-core” salary+bonus total compensation might’ve been higher, it did not approach the increased value our efforts provided for SAS."

Sorry, but I just find this comment a little too self-righteous. "I deserved more than my coworkers because I delivered more value"...get over yourself. You're obviously not that good, because if you were you would have left and gone elsewhere.

@2mko+1qgyyQes

Not to mention that the relative difference in wealth between JG and that of the most hard-core contributors in SAS’ History is likely much greater than the difference between the blue collar “working poor” example that you give and the mill/mine/shop/etc. owner who employs them.

Of course those of us who spent long careers at SAS are grateful for the work environment we experienced and the consistent employment/pay we received. That however does not mean SAS was completely righteous in not paying us according to our contributions. Many of our coworkers enjoyed identical benefits/security and although our “hard-core” salary+bonus total compensation might’ve been higher, it did not approach the increased value our efforts provided for SAS.

@2mko+1qgyyQes

If the latter, I suggest you go get hired there.

Many of the most hard-core former SAS folk did just that. SAS “lost twice” for each one.

Yes, others struggle in life and have it far worse. Some folks work hard to overcome those struggles, and then they come to SAS, where...

...they may be managed by people whose greatest struggle in life was deciding where to take their 3rd or 4th vacation of that year. Born on third base, but thought they hit a triple. Lucky sp--m club and all that.

Those "second-handers" aren't here complaining, they still have their jobs in management. Their work was knee-based fealty work. That could be part of what upsets folks so much. How's that for another perspective?

@2mko+1qgyyQes
Spoken like a true HR.

"Hard mental labor exhausts the entire human being in a way that nothing else does."

So many sheltered people that have only ever been around white collar people all their lives. I'm not saying there isn't a ton of mental stress for some white collar folks ... but ever think about what it's like to work a physically demanding job (and often unappreciated and looked down upon) for 50 hours a week AND:

have to keep your house at 58 degrees during the winter because heating oil is so expensive relative to your paycheck?
be under constant financial stress where an $800 car repair bill is more than a week's take-home pay rather than just an annoyance?
forego health insurance because there just isn't enough money there?

We can always just focus on the negative, but there has been a LOT to be grateful for as an employee at SAS .. even for those hard-core folks who aren't fully appreciated and are pulling their weight plus that of slackers.

Some perspective and gratitude about your $180K/year might be in order .. or ... continue to be jealous of the guys at Apple/Google/etc. with their $400k+ compensation packages .. up to you. If the latter, I suggest you go get hired there.

This thread really has become a bit of a pity party, hasn't it?

It's one thing to lament poor treatment and bullying behaviour and I feel genuinely sorry for those who had to cope with that at SAS, but I don't have a lot of sympathy for people who complain that they worked 65-70 or whatever number of hours a week in R&D at SAS and feel they weren't compensated sufficiently for their efforts.

Yes, you were underpaid for your work, SAS is notorious for underpaying. But you chose to stay when you could have left and gone somewhere that pays better. Your choice. Perhaps you were intoxicated by the SAS lifestyle with all the lovely perks...and let's not forget that many would have been living in rather grand 5000sqft houses in the leafy suburbs of Cary that cost less than say a pokey 1 bedroom condo in the Bay Area.

It was good while it lasted, but all good things come to an end, and that's what's happening here. It's just coming to an end a little bit sooner and a little bit faster than some might have hoped for.

@2ajs+1qgyyQes

As a SAS “hard-core “ R&D person, I fully concur with everything you say and my experience is very similar to yours in multiple installments over decades of employment. When it comes to compensation and recognition, JG and HR seem quite indifferent to the ROI generated from the best hard-core employees versus those of average/mediocre ingenuity and productivity.

Hard mental labor exhausts the entire human being in a way that nothing else does.

"you aren't putting in 14 hours a day at the coal mine, getting paid in company scrip."

This site is about SAS, a software technology company...mostly white-collar jobs in a high-tech industry. Our labor is our intellectual capacity, our brains and our fingers that type out complex code (at least for those in Development). You can't compare us with coal miners or blue collar jobs. That's comparing oranges with apples.

Yeah, I feel for the blue collar folks but this (USA) is a country of opportunities even if you're poor there's assistance if you try hard to look for it and work hard for it. Many people come from poor families in poor and dysfunctional circumstances but they can work hard and rise above their station in life. No need to get jealous or envious. If you're capable then you will demand and expect what you deserve and walk away when the time is right when you don't get the respect and compensation you deserve.

When I worked 65-70 hours a week at SAS, I worked every day and then even in my sleep I thought about work problems and tried to solve them in my head. Needless to say I did not have a peaceful rest even in sleep. Sometimes ideas floated in my mind while I slept and came up with solutions or code to fix the problems the next day. That's how hard-core white-collar workers in high tech sometimes have to do. If I were a blue collar worker I would not bring the job home and keep thinking about it all the time at home and in my sleep. If I were a mediocre lazy white collar worker working 35 hours or less a week and dependent on my other co-workers to pick up the slack, I would not think about work in my sleep either. Be thankful that SAS has/had some hard-cores that carry the company. Once they're all gone, you'll be sorry and it will be too late.

"The slackers can't handle the truth and don't understand or sympathize when hard-cores complain about being overworked with no extra compensation. They have it easy, you don't. You carry them on your back, they don't carry anyone, not even themselves."

I can absolutely sympathize with the really hard workers who are not compensated in proportion to their output RELATIVE to co-workers, or feel unappreciated for the outsized effort they put in. Just don't get carried away, and have some perspective RELATIVE to the vast majority of the rest of the world; after all, you aren't putting in 14 hours a day at the coal mine, getting paid in company scrip.

Some jobs at SAS are not hard and do not require more than 35 hours a week.
However if you're in R&D, especially if you are developers or testers and in the same/similar types of groups doing the same kinds of work and you're working 50 hours or more a week but your co-workers do not and only work 35 hours or less and you're not being compensated fairly or recognized then there is a BIG problem.

When SAS brags about having 35-hours work week for everyone, they sort of lie. Not everyone has the luxury of working 35 hours a week at SAS. Not if you're in R&D the last few recent years.

@1mlz+1qgyyQes
Do you actually work for SAS? For how long?

Yeah, they work for SAS, alright. inHuman Resources.

@1sdl+1qgyyQes


I had the exact same experience, with a different manager. I tried to have an “adult” conversation about duplication in our code, and our architecture generally. He called in HR and filed a “Performance Improvement” memo, which said I was insubordinate and delaying our project, among other trumped-up charges.

It never bothered me that some people worked 35-hour weeks, because that was the deal SAS offered. But people who work less than that, and incompetents like that manager, are the root problems of SAS.

I worked 50-hour weeks because I saw a chance to build world-class software, and ship it to hundreds of thousands of people. If you work 50-hour weeks, you need a reason.

If I were still at SAS, I would recognize that an IPO or other exit is coming soon, and therefore all managers are under pressure to cut costs. I would make darned sure that I did not give my manager any reason to lay me off. That might mean a 45-hour week, but not 50.

To add one more agricultural analogy: incompetent people, and people who work only 35-hour weeks, will not change the course of SAS. SAS hired and promoted such people for 50 years. The chickens are coming home to roost.

If you're smart, work hard, and are being mistreated at SAS or not being recognized for your hard work, please find another job with another company and manager that will appreciate your talents and work ethics.

Leave SAS behind with the rest of the lazy slackers, mediocre people and all they will have left is the same people with the same mentality and without smart hardworking ones to carry them so they will go down like the Titanic.

The slackers can't handle the truth and don't understand or sympathize when hard-cores complain about being overworked with no extra compensation. They have it easy, you don't. You carry them on your back, they don't carry anyone, not even themselves.

Whether white collar or blue collar, middle class or poor background, everyone expects to be paid what they are worth especially when they work extra hard and go beyond what is expected of them. No one likes to be taken advantage of, taken for granted, and having to carry other lazy people with no good work ethic on their back all the time. For every good worker at SAS, there are 10-20 of not so good ones. It irks me too to see so many people coasted while others busted their as--s in the same company, division, department, or group.

I once tried to have a series of "adult" conversations with my manager about the bizarre actions of another manager who was creating a lot of extra, no-value work for employees.
Think 60+ hours per week of worthless churn for folks, only to be thrown away the next week.

This manager was severely out of their depth and wasting time and resources with their ineffective nonsense. They were utterly incompetent, in my opinion, but well-connected somehow. People catered to this person, but I couldn't figure out why. Any conversation I had with my manager about the situation was soon turned around on me, and I was painted as an insubordinate employee and run out via a trumped up charge sheet.

That manager is now high up there. The only way I've found to mentally reconcile the situation is to believe that they are a spawn of JG, hired via a paternity suit, long, long ago.
Only at SAS.

“Virtually every other” meaning roughly half of the folks we worked with

@1grm+1qgyyQes

I come from a similar background as you and credit that my “salt of the Earth” kin taught me to to work as hard or harder than anyone else and get paid what I’m worth! I’ve spent decades in tech doing just that. Do you know what disgusts people like me (and there are many others here)?

To work our collective as--s off, labor well beyond the hours expected of us, keep up our tech skills on our own time/dime and yet see virtually every other coworker go home after a sparse 5-7 hour workday only to come in the next day no more enlightened on how to be a more effective employee than they were 5 years prior. If you understand anything about the tech industry then you know why this dynamic has significantly contributed to the decline of SAS.

Every wise farmer works to have a good crop and return from their herds. Every craftsman and professional blue-collar person I grew up with expected to be paid well for a hard days worth of work. Many common folks became millionaires working their as--s off for 15 years at Walmart during its incredible rise of the 1970s and 80s.

Please spare us the rural self-righteousness. Those folks are typically smarter about money than most white collar yuppies.

@1grm+1qgyyQes I hear you man. I’m very much one of the white collar these days. But the old days are ever present both in memory and watching family members struggle.

Nothing wrong with always wanting more but the whining and talk of collusion against people making really good livings rubs me the wrong way also.

If there is better out there then quit tomorrow and go do it!

Some of you will find better but many will regret quitting which is why you talk about it instead of doing it.

Having grown up in a rural state in a poor family, hearing you white collar guys with 6-figure salaries and on-site health care working in your private, air conditioned offices whining about working your fingers to the bone for cr-p pay literally disgusts me.

Get some *#% perspective.

@1rhu+1qgyyQes

Yep, that strange admixture of arrogance+(relative)incompetence+indifference among the power elite who bear much responsibility for bringing SAS down. It is quite possible they have colluded to keep salaries among even the highest performing rank-and-file as low as possible, because that’s ultimately what JG/HR rewards them to do. They have long been keepers of the status quo which is precisely why SAS has lost so much ground over the past 15 years.

I too am tired. Tired of working myself to the bone for ungrateful and incompetent people who are all too happy to ride on my back to collect their massive paychecks. Directors and VPs, I'm looking at you. Maybe 1 out of every 10 are deserving of their roles. The rest should have been let go a long time ago. But to do so would make waves and we can't have that. How else would the 1% pay for their beach houses and vacations and prep school tuitions for their spawn?

I'm disgusted with myself for believing anything could ever get better here. I've given almost 20 years to this company, years that should have been prime earning years, in exchange for little more than health benefits I've barely even used. The stress of carrying so many people who do absolutely nothing all day long every day for years and in some cases decades was not worth it.

Anyone who is young needs to get out now or risk getting stuck in the quicksand like I did. Huge huge huge mistake to stay here so long.

"To have the scope of my job keep increasing while other group in SAS tell me they can't do their job anymore? "

What do you mean, OP? Are others saying they really can't do their jobs any more (why not???) and your manager dump their work on you instead?

What area you're in, OP? Are you in R&D or another area?

In my experience, even direct conversations with good, trusted managers rarely results in change. Upper management frequently won't make chances, or is blocked by even higher ups.

Yep, I was working double the hours but got half the pay so I left. You should do the same.

“ The correct way ”

You give SAS management too much credit and assuming they will do the right thing and rectify the situation. They can also easily and more likely to ignore the problem, in denial, and do not rectify anything.

If you're good and have options, just leave if you can.

You can

1. Just su-k it up and be miserable at the current conditions you're in at SAS. This will eventually wear you down and mess up your health, mentally and physically.
2. Try to transfer to another job at SAS with another manager if the job and manager are better than the current one you have at SAS.
3. Look for and apply to jobs outside of SAS and keep trying and don't give up especially if you're younger than 50.
4. Just leave if you can do so financially or have backup plan.

If you're older than 55, you'll be targeted for layoffs eventually and if 60 or over then you may or may not get VRBP if they ever offer it again or just get layoff.

OP, if you are Principal level in R&D and your total compensation including salary plus bonus is less than $240,000 annually, then you are being underpaid even in this local market -- especially if you were giving SAS 50-hour/week productive work.