This site is often filled with responses from the jilted and jaded. Does anyone still believe the company has a viable path forward? Are the right people still in place to execute that turnaround, or is it time for employees to start planning their exit?
There is a lot of complacency abounds with people openly stating they are just hanging around for the paycheck. Does anyone have faith? I'm by no means the "Company Man", but I would like to still believe that there is a path forward.
I see the SAS lifers have found this thread and are downvoting all the honest and truthful comments about SAS’ future. A little homework for you all, leave Cary and ask someone about SAS, or even better someone under 40. You will then understand via their blank looks that SAS is in serious trouble.
We will be late to market -- again. Not jaded, just honest.
To the OP.. nope, we won't have a fighting chance.
Perhaps you meant to write "you continue to get paid for doing your job, while you use your free time to learn, in preparation for your next job"?
Whether or not that's what they meant, that's the fact Jack. One of the biggest mistakes SAS has made since Viya moved off v9 is trying to hire expertise. SAS can't pay competitive salaries for those people (and they aren't in the budget in any case), and isn't growing its bench. Rather than teach someone who knows high-performance computing to "do in cloud", SAS division heads expected to hire someone who knows how to do in cloud but doesn't understand high-performance computing, have any history with the company, or even know how to use its software.
"SAS pays people while they learn marketable skills — on your own time and your own dime, probably — but still, you get paid to learn."
Perhaps you meant to write "you continue to get paid for doing your job, while you use your free time to learn, in preparation for your next job"?
@kj No one cares whether you are grateful.
You compete against third-world countries, grateful or not.
Oh ok. So we should be grateful to not be in a third world country. Eyeroll. Unbelievable.
Getting back to @OP’s question:
Historically, the core competence of SAS was high-performance analytics. That was our market niche.
Now, our market niche is occupied by freeware: R, Python, Spark, etc. Therefore, we need a new market niche.
What is it? If a viable path forward exists, every employee should be able to describe it.
If you can’t describe it, there probably isn’t one.
In that case, every employee should consider SAS a benefactor funding their education.
SAS pays people while they learn marketable skills — on your own time and your own dime, probably — but still, you get paid to learn.
That’s it. That is the deal. It used to be a better deal — but millions of people in third-world countries would love to be in this position.
Those near retirement can wait and hope for a package. Everyone else should be planning their next move.
No executive worth a dollar would ever come to or stay at SAS. When you hear such wisdom from the CEO like “cloud is just a fad” and “open source will never be our competition” you run. Exactly why he has the c-suite team he has, they will just nod their heads and collect the paycheck. Anyone that disagrees with this must have come from Nortel.
A C-team full of yes people - and VPs who are yes people and directors who are yes people - stifles innovation and efficiency. That's true 100x over when said people remain in their roles for decades without being held accountable not only for performance, but for not fixing things that have clearly gone wrong.
Many of us pay for the fact that hard decisions were not made so many times over the previous 10 or so years.
The chickens are coming home to roost as they always do.
@jn I worked at SAS for 18 years and many of them on the 6th floor of C. Any executive that tried to do anything meaningful beyond Goodnight’s rigid view was let go, or more wisely quit. SAS is a dictatorship, and like all dictatorships… they are doomed to fail.
@jm “I see this accusation of Dr. Goodnight thrown around here a lot. But is it really true?”
Not true. But all the anonymous people whom have never been in a room with the man will tell you otherwise.
"none of them will ever have an opinion that differs from him."
I see this accusation of Dr. Goodnight thrown around here a lot. But is it really true?
"no real company would hire any of those hacks."
Now this I readily agree with.
SAS is 100% doomed. I mean look no further than the c-suite under Goodnight, no real company would hire any of those hacks. But he has them because of one reason…. none of them will ever have an opinion that differs from him.
One thing that is rarely mentioned in these discussions is SAS market share.
Stable revenue in a stable industry is one thing, stable revenue in a rapidly growing industry is another, and that has been the case for SAS these past 10 years.
How much has the market grown in the past 10 years? 3x, 5x, 10x? Our market share has dinimished accordingly, which makes doing business much harder, because our voice is (relatively) much smaller. There's a risk we're becoming irrelevant, because of diminishing market and mind share. Potential buyers will recognize that risk, and value us accordingly.
I don’t recall a single person saying that someone was going to buy SAS “and keep it intact to please the founder”.
That last part is ridiculous enough that it doesn’t really need saying. But you do you.
But someone WILL buy SAS. And if you think a profitable 3+b company doesn’t have value other than “the code” then you are truly clueless in how businesses are valued.
The company is only worth what anyone is willing to pay for it. There was a window of several years where things were on the upswing and that window has closed. The only thing that has value now is the code. No company is going to buy SAS and keep it all intact to please the founder and all that. It's just not going to happen.
For a brief shining moment, it was Camelot. Now its best days are behind it and that's how it goes. Critical things were either not kept up with or were kept as is for the wrong reasons and profitability has suffered for it.
@ev Then explain to us exactly how a companies value is determined. I know the answer and I promise you that revenue and profitability are major parts of the equation.
Growth vs Stable vs Contraction are also factors but not the only ones. And stable is not the 2 headed monster you seem to think it is.
@et I didn’t say its revenues declined. Its value surely has.
But you’re right, that guy may miss the distinction 😁.
Queue the "decline to 3+ billion" guy!
Recent articles aside, the talks with Broadcom advertised to the world that the company is for sale. Clearly, no one has offered the desired price.
“too many highly paid people allowed to stay in their roles so no fresh ideas were ever allowed in.”
There lies the root of the oroblem. When a tech company stifles innovation, its value can only decline.
oh yes because there are so many articles about sas these days. right.
@cm stop being obtuse. There have been several articles written about SAS lately. Forbes has been widely shared. Fortune had not (because it doesn't exist). It was a genuine question in seeking knowledge of an article that was mentioned on the thread.
@cm Be nice. Allow for the possibility that N (the number of articles that have been written about SAS) is greater than 1. Therefore, inquiring which of N>1 articles the writer had in mind is a perfectly reasonable question.
Jeez I wonder why the company is in trouble. It was Forbes, not Fortune, and if you're so d-mb you can't even google to find it, you're part of the problem.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/phoebeliu/2026/05/15/billionaire-sas-jim-goodnight-built-an-analytics-profit-machine-ai-forcing-reinvention/
Kodak, is that you calling? Blockbuster...ToysRUs....Nokia...SAS
Share link to Fortune article please
@av Please - which "the Fortune article"?
No. The Fortune article made it very clear that they're shopping the company to be sold. If you didn't read it, then you need to.
What we will see until it's on its last legs is a constant reduction in force. At some point the payout policy will probably change to offer less money.
SAS is done. I'm sorry to tell you that but it is. Too many years without change, too much complacency, too many highly paid people allowed to stay in their roles so no fresh ideas were ever allowed in. It's sad.
With this management? No, it’s just a matter of time.
@OP There is
I got jilted, so I left. I may also be jaded.
But for the sake of friends keft behind, I truly hope the company succeeds.
I’m open to reason. So tell me, what is the viable path forward?