People getting paid very little money are always willing to jump to another company for just a little more money. The Altair Analytics Workbench with R, Python and the stolen SAS is now owned by Siemens. Google that boomers. Look familiar? Search Siemens jobs for SAS programmers in Pune. Siemens can legally sell their own SAS anywhere in the world except North Carolina. SAS should have learned a lesson during Covid when people paid too little left SAS for better paying jobs and Viya was destroyed. Send your Workbench IP to Pune and watch it drive off the campus to go work at Siemens. Major management fail.
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"OS fired some people. Nobody quit because of him or Viya."
Moot point because alot, perhaps most of they lay offs are because of Viya'a underwhelming impact on revenue.
The folks who have been canned realize that.
OS fired some people. Nobody quit because of him or Viya. They left for alot more money when data science jobs went up during COVID. SAS tried big retention bonuses but too late. SAS had to hire weak replacements at the top of the pay scale with only one candidate and just a friend recommendation for references. To fix that mistake SAS now has to hire contractors in Pune. No raises for loyal employees while new employees get paid more and their jobs are shipped to India. China just said that services would need to be part of a trade deal. JD Vance meets with Modi next week.
I love Viya! Viya is the best! Come to Demotivate in Orlando to hear me speak live!
"Stop Conflating Genius With A**hole"
You think Oliver was a genius? He created no iimpacrful revenue to support that.
However, if revenue was correlated with Oliver's arrogance, SAS would be a $7B company due to the smashing success of Oliver's brainchild called Viya. That ship sailed right back to the home port called academia.
The laid off SAS folks miss him like they miss a hemorrhoid.
Many in American society have come to accept behavior that previously was not socially acceptable.. When the writer wrote “we”, that’s all they meant: not psychology, just a statement about how our society has changed.
But I expect that the BG was promoted in spite of his behavior, not because of it.
“ we started believing that in order to be brilliant, you had to be unbearable”
We didn’t start believing that.
Not all brilliant people are a--holes. Not all a--holes are brilliant.
Some brilliant people are a--holes. Some are eccentric. Some are not.
Dime store psychology.
Oliver was the worst C-level I have ever seen at reading a room. His on and on droning set a bad tone for the rest of the Viya rollout. It was a real time demonstration of the Peter Principal.
Stop Conflating Genius With A**hole
https://www.joanwestenberg.com/stop-conflating-genius-with-a--hole/
(above URL mangled by censoring, I’m sure)
Somewhere between Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, we started believing that in order to be brilliant, you had to be unbearable. That cruelty itself was a kind of clarity. That the sneer, the kicking and screaming, the impossible-to-please demands were just signs of a mind operating on a different level.
The myth took root.
The sharper the mind, the sharper the tongue.
Kindness is mediocrity in disguise.
It's become a socially acceptable archetype. The difficult genius.
'OK, I have to ask—were you at the Long Beach opening session at SUGI26 in 2001?'
Agree that was tacky.
Oliver was the worst C-level I have ever seen at reading a room. His on and on droning set a bad tone for the rest of the Viya rollout. It was a real time demonstration of the Peter Principal.
Talking about Pune vs USA based development is mostly pointless because the new management(post sale/IPO) will have their own ideas.
Politely, and with all due respect, Jim and John are on their way out and thus likely could not care less about this discussion. It is an interesting discussion and would make alot more sense if the current owners were in the game for the long haul.
The only thing we can count on today at SAS is more change. Good luck to everyone!
“I was there too and saddened to say that it was the worst opening session of the many SUGIs and SGFs that I have attended.”
OK, I have to ask—were you at the Long Beach opening session at SUGI26 in 2001? The one with planted SAS people popping up in the audience to announce they’d just gotten a SAS alert on their phone, the knockoff Solid Gold Dancers, and the “The Power to Know” theme song? Because for me, that was peak opening session cringe. I walked out of that bad boy hiding the SAS logo on my polo shirt.
But I do agree that Oliver at the Vegas opening session was truly awful.
"Last week Lutnick pushed a vision of a happy future army of “millions” of Americans delighted to sc--w sc--ws into cell phones once tariffs somehow move those kinds of jobs back to the U.S. from China.
The army of millions and millions of human beings sc--wing in little sc--ws to make iPhones — that kind of thing is going to come to America," he boasted to CBS News (to the horror of many who responded on social media).
But then in a total turnaround he said those were the kind of jobs that would be automated.
Bannon smirked on his podcast: “No we’re not doing this so robots have a better life.”
Lutnick was also the one who said that Trump’s tariffs would not cause a recession, but then said if they did cause a recession it would be “worth it.” He has also insisted that only “fraudsters” worry about the possibility of missing their Social Security checks, and that his 94-year-old mother-in-law would never “call and complain” if her check didn’t show up.
Bannon has also railed against Lutnick supporter Musk, primarily for pushing special H-1B visas for immigrants to do higher-paying tech work, while leaving jobs like sc--wing in sc--ws to Americans. He has also called Musk a “parasitic illegal immigrant.”
Source:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/steve-bannon-wants-nearly-unmitigated-disaster-commerce-secretary-lutnick-yanked-off-media/ar-AA1CW1Oa?ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&cvid=f4b65ad9175b4635c9efdfb3599d45e8&ei=15
He exempts software companies from tariffs because tech bros like outsourcing and H1Bs. He also does not take into account that US has a huge surplus with trading partners on "services" like software since US provides a lot of services to many countries worldwide. US does not do low-end manufacturing at home but provides a lot of services worldwide.
If SAS sends R&D jobs overseas, then does SAS thus expose itself to import taxes? One point of tariffs is to bring jobs back to the USA, not to send jobs out of the USA.
Software companies are in a sense software factories, and we are workers in a software factory. We manufacture, repair, and service our software.
@f1+1jrsx9faz - but the best developers are in Pune. Not Cary. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
Back to the OP’s point… Employees in India will tend to job-hop, unless SAS pays them top dollar. In my experience SAS never paid top dollar. So I would hope SAS would shift only maintenance work there, and keep critical work in Cary.
"Seeing customers underwhelmed by Oliver pontificating ad naseum years back at Las Vegas SGF was a big clue that Viya was dead on arrival."
Can not hold my tongue any longer. I was there too and saddened to say that it was the worst opening session of the many SUGIs and SGFs that I have attended. It was completely energy draining. Went back to the hotel absolutely exhausted.
Really wish things had played out better. SAS was by far the best place I ever worked and am saddened that it is where it is now. This might sound tacky but the grief is like that of a good friend passing away.
This thread is the first that I have heard of Altair. I found the following comparison.
https://www.gartner.com/reviews/market/data-science-and-machine-learning-platforms/compare/altair-vs-sas
“During Covid when people paid too little left SAS for better paying jobs”
We did; but Covid occurred after the first buyout. By that time, headcount reduction was a corporate goal. SAS wanted us to leave.
The larger points are unfortunately true. People in India have strong incentives to job-hop. And Altair Workbench is a serious competitive threat.
Does SAS still have R&D in China, not just India?
'SAS should have learned a lesson during Covid when people paid too little left SAS for better paying jobs and Viya was destroyed."
Covid did not destroy Viya. Viya was destroyed because too many customers saw little or no value add with Viya. Seeing customers underwhelmed by Oliver pontificating ad naseum years back at Las Vegas SGF was a big clue that Viya was dead on arrival. The writing was on the wall even way back then.