Thread regarding SAS Institute layoffs

@4dfs+1rM2cPKs Is high as a kite. Don’t try to parse that diatribe of nonsense.

Is the "Lavender Level" person referred to by others as being "so nice!"?

I'm thinking about R5 and the lavender carpet?

@4dfs+1rM2cPKs - What do you mean by "Lavender level'?

The Defects of Fate:

A product has numerous open Defects. A superior wants them closed. The manager is directed to resolve and close these defects. Rather than assign the defects to team members directly based on skills, knowledge of the issue, etc., they write the list of defects onto a large Post-It note. They cut the Post-It note into strips, with one defect per strip.

They take the strips, fold them in half, and then make tape flags from the adhesive strip at the top of the Post-It note. Using these tape flags, they tape the strips closed. At the next team meeting, team members are directed to draw strips from a hat. The defect you draw is the defect you resolve. You can trade defects with other team members if they have the knowledge and experience necessary to resolve the defect.

This was a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.

Undeserved promotions did not just occur at the Lavender level.
Hire some who are incompetent because their spouse is a friend or neighbor, require others in the group to do all of their work for them. This extra load requires the others to work at night and on weekends, while the unqualified ones who su-k up to the manger and become the manager's pet, go to the gym ALL DAY, talk on the phone with their mother and children IF they are in the office, or leave early to drive their daughter to the Cary library at 1:30 pm and never return to work that day and not log in from home.
Person documents their work and all the work they did for the others in the group who do nothing and don't even try. Manager reads summary and tells the other person in the review meeting that his/her work is amazing and manager has emails from all teams the person worked with that year praising them. Despite that comment, the manager gives the person a bad review. The manager buries all the emails received from the other teams praising the work of this person and creates slander in the review. Nothing based on fact. Slander. The other person thinks that this person thinks this so the other person resents this person. So this person is at fault.
This is ridiculous. How can one person control what another person thinks they think? The manager tells the person "I made your review negative on purpose".
Because of this negative review I cannot promote you. "
Essentially the manager needed a reason to not promote the person doing all the work and to promote the incompetent person who literally did nothing.
Manager promotes the other one who has no educational background in the area, no experience in the area, does not even try to do the job and gets everyone else to do her work for her.

Yahoo!

@1mct+1rM2cPKs Don’t even bother. Most of these yahoos make stuff up and tear others down not because of facts but because it makes them feel good about themselves.

The same phenomonon is found everywhere. Instead of standing taller try to chop others down.

Well the first one I just looked up has the word Chief as first word of his title.

Case in point, OS, the Big German, the person most responsible for SAS's failed product strategy...now back in academia.

@rmk The OP does not need any personal letter to know their current status. One can easily see the LinkedIn profile of our former leaders.

Well this would certainly explain why I never reached a leadership position. Le sigh.

Have you actually followed prior head of R&D to see what they are up to? just because they didn’t send you a personalized letter telling you what they are up to doesn’t mean they are now failures.

I’ll wager that without looking it up you also haven’t heard about what former R&D leaders from most companies are doing these days.

That is not typically what you hear in any business. It is a very common refrain that people get promoted to their level of incompetence.

Nothing unique to SAS

This was very validating. Thank you!