Like someone here said - this company has betrayed the employees that help build it. They may hide behind the statements like "oh, we are just cutting one percent of the workforce", but the fact is a lot of people being laid off (or being kept but demoted) are experienced people in their fifties+, the very ones putting this place on its feet. Mark my words, this terrible move will bite them in the a-s very soon.
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This comment holds true to most of the people who were laid off:
“ In addition to this - there was MUCH new development going on in these products, which required continued testing - and in order to find and fix bugs, the current TE's were totally consumed with testing (required by the Dev/Test mgrs) in order to certify the product as ready to ship.
Despite this, there were TE's who WERE implemented automated tests IN ADDITION to the heavy conventional TE work. Many of these people WERE included in this RIF. To say they had not attempted to make the transition is a LIE. I am not one of these people, but there were MANY who WERE included in this RIF. So the blanket statement that those laid off brought it on themselves is pretty much NOT true in almost all cases and it a TOTAL LIE in others.”
JP fashions himself as a televangelist.
I left in 2021 and I will say now what I said then: JP and BH are not to be trusted.
"I worked with several of the laid-off testers. To say that they were incapable of learning is not credible."
Can't remember exactly how he worded it, but I recall it being more along the lines of they were given the opportunity for training and didn't take advantage of it.
That take is also bogus of course. For one, the courses su-ked. Secondly, without other infrastructure in place, a tester had no opportunity to apply any of what was "learned" in the cr-ppy courses.
Anyhow .. it still bugs me how JP came out in the Town Hall acting all hang dog about the layoffs ... but by the end, they are laughing and BH is blaming the folks who got laid off .. and then inviting everyone for a party. Really a bad look for a place that has treated me personally very well and which I loved.
It was so painful to read how the RIF was handled, especially the pre-recorded Teams meeting. What exceedingly gutless individuals.
So much for the SAS culture, irrespective of the rah-rah Kool Aid post you see on LinkedIn.
I hope people find the door before they are mistreated like this, or possibly treated worse.
Thanks so much for posting your firsthand account.
I worked with several of the laid-off testers. To say that they were incapable of learning is not credible.
This layoff seems to have been handled about as badly as it possibly could have been. Whatever management hopes to do in future, they've made their jobs more difficult by eroding trust.
As someone who SAS career was ended in this event - I want to try to post what I know/experienced as clearly as I can - knowing that I am biased by my experiences and also knowing that some posters here will write off my comments as sour grapes - but here goes.
- . RE: How we were notified. Each person received a meeting request to a Teams Meeting from their division director where they were the lone invitee. This meeting request was sent late on Wednesday afternoon and the meeting was at 9am Thursday morning (the "official" start time for the SAS day). Only by calendar surfing was it possible to see those who did (and did not) have the Thursday 9am (30 minute) meeting on their calendar. None of our direct managers had any knowledge of these meetings.
- . RE: The meeting. At 9am on Thursday when you joined the meeting - it was not a typical Teams meeting. You had no way to control the meeting, could not see any other participants. It is not 100% clear to me whether it was live or pre-recorded, as my director acted as if he was waiting for a few minutes for all to join the call - but that could have just been acting. The director quickly made a few comments about changing directions and re-evaluation of company needs - then lowered the hammer -- "if you are on this meeting, your job has been elliminated." He then quickly passed to an HR rep who covered all the specifics of what would happen next. There was NO opportunity for questions. At that time it was possible to back up the meeting to re-play parts of it (hense the suspiscion it was recorded), but later in the day it was not possible to re-watch the meeting.
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. RE: those let go had not kept up with new technology/tools, and/or refused to move to the new automated testing processes. It was their fault they lost their jobs.
It is possible that this could be the case for some people in this layoff. However, in truth what happened is much more complicated and nuanced. Several years ago senior mgt in R&D announced the intent to move to only hire new testers into the "Software Developer in Test" (SDET) job classification. It was not clear at that time that the intent was for ALL Test Engineers (TE) to migrate into that same type of work. Over time, it became clear it WAS the intent for TE's to become SDET's. In some parts of R&D, this was an easy migration - as the testing of much of SAS Procs and other language components could be adapted easily to automated testing. However in other areas - particularly the testing of large scale applications with large UIs - this happened much more slowly. Part of this problem was that the applications were not properly architected with standard element tags which were necessary for any automated UI testing, and partly due to the inability to decide on a common platform for UI testing across all UI based applications. Work would start with a particularly piece of UI automation testing software, only for senior mgt to decide it was to costly of a tool - and moving to another "better" or "lower cost" tool. There also was a total lack of a direction and plan from the Development Managers of these UI apps - to decide on how automated testing would be implemented, and on what schedule.
Then a couple of years ago, R&D mgt hired Cloud Academy - a web based training vendor, to provide a set of training courses tailored for existing TE's - and all TE's were required to complete the courses. The courses included basic Cloud enablement training, Kubernetes introduction and beginning classes, introductory Python, Git, and some other courses - possibly including a UI test automation package (but not one currently in use anywhere in SAS). All TE's took the courses (and I suspect most if not all passed them).
The problem was: for many of the TE's - NONE of this training had ANY direct application to their jobs... there was NO opportunity to immediately put this training to use. Either the TE's were using OTHER tools, or their Development/Testing managers had NO plan to implement automated testing using these tools. In most groups there were one or two TE's who were tasked to investigating how to do automated testing with the UI intensive applications, but again this was as far as anything had been taken.
In addition to this - there was MUCH new development going on in these products, which required continued testing - and in order to find and fix bugs, the current TE's were totally consumed with testing (required by the Dev/Test mgrs) in order to certify the product as ready to ship.
Despite this, there were TE's who WERE implemented automated tests IN ADDITION to the heavy conventional TE work. Many of these people WERE included in this RIF. To say they had not attempted to make the transition is a LIE. I am not one of these people, but there were MANY who WERE included in this RIF. So the blanket statement that those laid off brought it on themselves is pretty much NOT true in almost all cases and it a TOTAL LIE in others.
Again - I'm sure some will dismiss this as sour grapes... in actuality for me it was a blessing - as SAS is paying me well to terminate me, despite the fact that I would have retired shortly on my own - and they could have saved themselves many $$... I'm laughing all the way to the bank on that one. I am angry for the many late 50's to early 60's folks who I worked with that had their key earning years before retirement scrapped before their eyes.
IPO = Daffy Duck saying "Yoiks and awayyyyyyy!"
As in IPO ready ... fire ... aim?
I think the plan is to cut expenses with no regard to the viability of individual product operations long term. It feels like we are looking at the end of year numbers and nothing else. IPO ready by 2024. The cuts are still cautious so we don't draw too much attention.
In my previous post, I should have said that there are no external openings in R&D. I suppose the laid-off testers could apply for external Sales positions.
I'm really surprised at how this was handled. I always thought SAS would look at the list of products, noting e.g. "this one's not profitable" or "that one's barely profitable" and then lay off all testers, developers, and anyone else associated with those products.
And I still don't understand the plan going forward. If they laid off 40+ testers, who'll do the testing?
All I can confirm is that the people laid off went in as usual and were told it was their last day. They were not allowed to apply for internal openings, and there are no external openings.
The recording sounds a bit far-fetched -- but so does having a 'social gathering' afterwards. A friend attended that and said the atmosphere was strange.
Sounds a bit far-fetched, but it could be plausible. I'm thinking about the logistics of how this would play out.
Alternative 1 - There was an onsite meeting, and they all went into a room and someone dialed into the meeting via teleconference. Folks are sitting around the meeting, looking at one another and wondering what's going on. Then a voice comes on and gives everyone in the room the bad news. All the people look at each other in bewilderment. This doesn't sound feasible and it lacks discretion. How would you get your "walking papers"?
Alternative 2: They were invited to a remote online meeting, and all were BCC'd. No one knew who else would be on the line. Each participant dialed in, and when it was time, the automated prompt said "Sorry, but the company has eliminated your position. You will receive instructions at the end of this call. " This has some discretion, and actually sounds plausible, at least to me. But what about the meeting with HR and management notification? I guess those are details arranged after the call?
Both those examples were made up, so probably neither happened.
I heard that the testers that were let go were informed by a recording akin to a robocall. They all got 10AM meeting request at 9PM the day before and when they went to the meeting it was a recording and their direct managers had no knowledge of what was happening. This sounds awful. Can anybody confirm this sequence of events? I find it hard to believe.
"These same employees that built SAS needed help with version control with the command line."
The sad thing is, these are the sort of skills that can even someone with 25 years experience using SAS-specific/homegrown UXs, macros and scripts can become fluent in after a few evenings or a weekend of serious study -- followed by consistent use at work.
Many of us had to continually learn new things to stay current and/or advance.
I am aware of at least a few employees who are test engineers that have not been able to pick up the development aspect and write test automation. These are older folks who have been at SAS as long as 25 years. It was confirmed earlier that the layoffs in R&D are targeting test engineers who haven't been able to learn the skills necessary to be a software development engineer in test.
These same employees that built SAS needed help with version control with the command line.
LMAO — no but enough for for a West Coast tech company to proffer a 2 comma compensation package.
With your decades of experience, you must be the smartest person in every room enter. You must be quite knowledgeable, with knowledge rivaling the Creator themself.
what I heard is people who were let go were given a chance to change the stream of work from manual test to more towards development. some did not choose that, is this true at all?
100% agree. Historically, all these factors applied. They all still do.
Well, from decades of experience within SAS R&D, including multiple promotions, I conclude the following:
- it is generally hard to get promoted and the higher up you go the harder you have to negotiate, and longer you must normally wait for the promotion.
- how talented/qualified someone is can be subjective, especially when the person making the assessment is a peer employee and not a manager given strict promotion and salary budget guidelines.
- not every R&D manager at SAS was unable to recognize real talent/productivity. Some may be/have been less than perceptive, others were themselves, highly competent, technically, and more than able to recognize who had the edge, and who was either still developing it, or would never be promotable past Senior Dev no matter how long they worked.
- there was variability across divisions, in terms of who got promoted, especially at the Principal and Distinguished levels.
- life isn't fair. some divisions were run by self-important individuals primarily focused on their own visibility and career advancement. Others were given to developing their employees, and did what they could.
- SAS historically has its own special kind of feudalism. Perhaps becoming more "woke" has helped this some, but being privately held by a decca billionaire, who presides over a sprawling modern tech plantation and basically can do whatever he wants is not a common circumstance in today's tech world. This fact has everything to do with how promotions work.
What you say is all true, except your conclusion. SAS won't raise the standard.
Raising the standard would require management to be able to distinguish levels of development talent. They've never been good at that.
They're good at cost-cutting. That's all this is. The demotions will be as random as the promotions were.
Truth be told as much as a demotion might sting, SAS has had a 10 to 15 year history of “Principal in title only” for many holding the title. At companies like Google, Principal is conferred on individuals who are truly world-class, continue to push themselves/upskill and do highly valuable complex work that drives innovation and is critical to maintaining and increasing revenue.
SAS has a lower level of overall talent density (and of course, corresponding compensation) than Google, so a SAS Principal is not going to be equivalent to the skill/talent necessary to hold the title at places like Google.
Even so, It’s better to be demoted to the actual level you’re functioning at than to be laid off. Good on SAS for raising the standard!
And to have a 'social gathering' the week after they demote and let people go? The social gathering that is supposed to 'inform and inspire' R&D colleagues? Good luck inspiring after last week's events.