Thread regarding SAS Institute layoffs

"But I worked closely with a couple of the folks recently let go, and to see the impact of how they were treated is really sobering. It just doesn't seem consistent with the culture Dr. G spent 40+ years cultivating;"

I agree with you completely.

I wrote important code much more recently than 30 years ago 😉

What I see with woke trends within SAS (and this includes the external facing social media coverage, etc.) is an expenditure of effort and financial resources that could be better invested in building better products. If it were possible for JG to have an absolute say in this, he would likely agree. But it's 2023 in SAS has to play the game just like every other company.

It's also true that a significant number of SAS employees (at least historically, lean conservative, libertarian or classically liberal) and have the intellect and critical thinking abilities to see that SAS culture has and continues to change in ways that are antithetical to its DNA which is highly focused R&D driven innovation. The woke agenda as I see. It doesn't really understand this.

So there's more to it than a few DEI initiatives here or there.

Work ethic, continuing to develop an authentic technical, business , etc. skill sets are timeless virtues. My concern is the internal posturing and gerrymandering that emphasizes other (woke, "Agile", etc.) values over these.

Truth is, if we were ever to somehow accidentally meet, we might agree more than is apparent in our exchange here.

By the way, I didn't censor anything with the word you mentioned. This platform does it for us when it parses for expletives. I'm not happy about this because I certainly do not believe that being g-y, le----n, or trans is an expletive.

(I take that back, it turns out the forum does censor g-y and le----n automatically, but not trans. That's silly on its own, but so was my aside)

"If you care at all, I was one of the core long-term employees who helped build SAS and very likely (if you’re in your 30s or 40s) was instrumental in laying groundwork for you to have a job there."

My comment was not about code you wrote 30 years ago. It was about blaming the current state of the company on policies around minorities, or as you put it, the company being "too woke." People being successful at a company while happening to be g-y, le----n, or trans (which you don't have to censor, BTW) does not a woke company make.

You keep saying the company is too woke. How do you see the company's "woke policies" as somehow ruining the intellectual purity of the olden years? We don't even give proper coding interviews to most new hires, but you're blaming it on marginal increases in minority populations at the company, or policies that might celebrate them a few days a year.

I just don't get it, nor do I get why people like you can't engage with this topic without jumping to positions of presumed authority or being like "oh so triggered!" while being bothered by... what, a pride party with cake and balloons? Being asked to rename "master/slave" to "primary/secondary?" It's just so silly to think this is causing the company's downfall. It also attempts to create a harmful scapegoat while missing that your code or the company's innovation might be the actual cause for its current state.

Clearly we have different perspectives about SAS. Perhaps you should not get triggered and righteously indignant so easily.

Allow me to briefly addressed your concerns a few points:

• It’s never OK to call female coworkers names. The commenter you’re speaking of never said or agreed that it is.
• Not dissing trans folks either — just pointing out that some of us just don’t (yet) get it. The emphasis on this issue in society at large in particular the corporate world is fairly recent. Some of us are still working to digest and understand it
• SAS has a long history of successful g-y and le----n employees. I’ve known and worked with many of them.
• Some of the finest professionals at SAS are black men and women. I know this firsthand and agree they likely face challenges that I do not.
• This commenter has heard millennial women at SAS subtly disparage highly-skilled and productive male co-workers with an attitude of self righteousness and superiority. This is misandry and if a man did it to a woman at work, HR would likely be involved in short order. Yet men mostly have to “su-k it up”.
• The commenter you are speaking of accepts that millennials often see the world, work, Agile, etc. differently than their parent’s generation. Fact, Agile has not delivered on making SAS more profitable and certainly not more innovative.

If you care at all, I was one of the core long-term employees who helped build SAS and very likely (if you’re in your 30s or 40s) was instrumental in laying groundwork for you to have a job there.

The fact that you may not/don’t take me and others like me seriously is of no consequence to me. I know very well my/their contributions to the company and believe SAS would be in much better shape if more current employees were capable of the nuanced, critical thinking and productive actions that my peer group exercised. We love SAS and lament its decline.

Who care's what the SAS legacy is? The owners of SAS pumped up the mythology of SAS and placed it on this pedestal for all to worship. The employees and public worshipped it for many decades. Pull back the curtain, and you realize it's just a company, like any other company - nothing more.

I don't understand the claim that SAS is "woke". Since the most recent purge (when the current CTO was promoted), there are no women or minorities in senior leadership positions at SAS, and certainly none of them are g-y, le----n, or trans for that matter. And there are none in the pipeline. The head of HR doesn't count since she's basically a token figurehead at this point.

The senior leadership of SAS consists exclusively of white males, and the "heir apparent" has only ever been a tall (6'2"+) white male. Someone Goodnight can see eye-to-eye with, so to speak.

Current HR/CorpCom/DEI attitudes and initiatives take “woke” to a whole new power dynamic.

But SAS has always been "woke". It wasn't openly stated directly decades ago, but indirectly through the belief systems of those they hired. Many were far left apparatchiks.

His child -- legitimate, Susan Ellis, look her up -- and wokeness most certainly do have to do with it. They're just the latest nails in the coffin of this once somewhat respected company. It was only ever legendary in the RDU area. Yeah, Google and others ripped off the campus culture idea and got famous for it. But at least their brands are recognizable, which insures those companies will survive. After 40something years, still almost noone outside the RDU area would know what SAS is. Shoes, maybe?

Curious, the number of randos hired in the past few years with made up job titles no one else has, with unclear duties, no observable skills, but they travel the world and get paid huge $$$ and produce no work product. Hmmm.

SAS and JHG were indeed good to us, and the decline is heartbreaking to watch. I don't believe that the children, or wokeness, had anything to do with it, but the incompetents and the sycophants surely did. They weren't promoted for their ability to manage, but to say "yes".

They sometimes treated people unprofessionally, even inhumanely. I knew victims of this back in the '90s. At that time it was relatively rare, so it did not hurt the SAS legacy. It is more common now because the money is tighter.

Those incompetents and sycophants were also unable to innovate. When the business school case study is written, it will say that the poor treatment of employees and the lack of innovation both had the same cause.

On top of a web of historically tolerated incompetence, nepotism and bad business/product strategy, it seems the more WOKE SAS gets, the further the technology falls behind!

It’s like a certain contingent of people think that a magic woke unicorn will fly through and sprinkle success fairy dust on everything. Wokeness, E.S.G., DEI, etc. go hand-in-hand. SAS was a leader in these things before it became socio-politically expedient to trumpet every little environmentally friendly or diversity-oriented thing that your company does.

Now they spent millions more per year on this while laying off veteran testing staff who were helping them ship quality products. I doubt a new legion of woke-thumping gen-Z engineers will turn things around.

SAS and JHG was very good to many of us for decades. It's heartbreaking that over the past decade, SAS has undergone a steep decline, transforming it into the heartless and dysfunctional company we see today.

@1tft+1nZ7UlN0 you seem bit angry and it’s everyone’s fault with no accountability of your own. You’ve never had a leadership role and now your that gravy has dried up you’re helpless. A common pattern here. Seems to me his children are standup people and no one needs your whiney a-s judgement.

Is this post a joke? There's no "legacy" here. Only layers and layers and layers of incompetence and gravy train riders. for there to be a legacy, people would have to actually know what SAS is or what it was. Or know what it hasn't been for at least the past decade. The only people who know that are the people who work here or have in the past. It's all smoke and mirrors now.

The company has spent millions of dollars over the past few years paying a NYC advertising agency to create branding -- and has spent god knows how much more paying Goodnight's daughter and her bestie (individual contributor magically turned director with no direct reports of course) to give their opinions on this agency's work. And still awareness of what SAS is or does hasn't increased even a little bit.

Legacy? This is the legacy. Nepotism. Waste. Incompetence. Sycophants. Some legacy.

Years ago, SAS was considered such a unique tech organization the way it was run, the Harvard Business School used it as a case study in one of their courses.

The way things are going on now, it seems like SAS may be considered for a different kind of case study, how SAS failed due to lack of innovation and unable to adapt to the competitive landscape, and the SAS story may be used a cautionary tale for future business owners.

"... Its last 20 years were dominated by politics and incompetence. That, I am grateful to leave. The legacy SAS where we were all proud to work died a long time ago ..."
Powerful statement.

"When fealty is valued more than competence and productivity, you are in a sick organization and it's time to leave. When the workdays of many employees are consumed with off-task behaviors (gossip, politics, etc.), you are in a sick organization and it's time to leave." - Wisdom from a personal advisor.

I experienced the second half of SAS' mythic culture when each successive reorg chipped away at the "kumbaya" culture. SAS will always remain in the history books as a once-upon-a-time company that dominated the world of statistical analysis solving a cacophony of business problems and enjoying a world-class reputation.

Like @reo+1nZ7UlN0, I saw many talented long-term employees pushed out “for no reason other than poor management.” The SAS legacy is tarnished by the way those people were treated, and by the recent layoffs

I’m grateful for a long career at SAS. “SAS never was the real world”, but in its first 20 years, it was idyllic.

Its last 20 years were dominated by politics and incompetence. That, I am grateful to leave. The legacy SAS where we were all proud to work died a long time ago.

For an IPO — or a private sale — it’s desirable to be profitable. At this point, profitability may require layoffs. If they tarnish the legacy, but facilitate a sale, we’ll see more.

@OP+1nZ7UlN0 "Will this hurt the SAS legacy?"

Please clarify - what specifically is the 'this'?

It will take lots of sodium hydroxide and a wire brush to scrub the taint of SAS off my career.

SAS never was the real world.

SO glad I was able to leave on my own terms after the first early retirement offering at the end of 2018. I watched way too many really good and loyal SAS employees be walked to the door and or let go for no good reason other than poor management. For decades SAS was an awesome place to work. Not so much now. All the years Dr. G said his most valuable assets drive out the front gate every day - hard to believe it now the way some long term employees were treated. They helped enrich him, and in the end were treated really badly.

I worked with some really great people over the decades. I miss some of them, but other than that, I don't miss the place.

SAS never really felt like a tech company in the modern sense. It had a nice campus, decent benefits, etc., but all the wealth remained in the hands of the founders. With no stock, proprietary technology, and long tenured employees working for a wage, I doubt we will ever see another company technology company like SAS, for better or worse.

Wondering the same thing. I am one who remains very appreciative of Dr. Goodnight for providing me a great place to work for over 25 years.

But I worked closely with a couple of the folks recently let go, and to see the impact of how they were treated is really sobering. It just doesn't seem consistent with the culture Dr. G spent 40+ years cultivating; and surprised that this is how he wants things to go at the tail end of his life. I fear his current advisors have no sense of SAS culture or SAS loyalty and will end up tarnishing his legacy.