Thread regarding SAS Institute layoffs

A whole bunch of manager and director level Tech Support jobs were just posted. They look global/international. I guess they are laying the groundwork for 2024's changes.

The objective of Support reorg is surely to get rid of Tech Support in local offices, and reallocate the budget elsewhere, probably where workforce is cheaper, but also maybe in one or two places, to have all employees under control

If you get a meeting request from your director titled "Organizational Update..." be very wary. That was the title of the "bye bye" meetings the Test Engineers got.

Been there, been gaslighted. SAS tolerates abusive managers who should never be allowed to manage anything.

Somewhere in Tech Support, there must be one good manager who cares enough about their people to give them this warning.

At least they are being up front about what's going on instead of this "We never had a layoff" nonsense. As someone laid off by a company that "never had a layoff", I can tell you that the former policy of gaslighting employees up to the "never had a layoff" event was psychologically destructive, especially with all the erratic and unprofessional behavior I witnessed there.

This is probably at least partially related to the ending of SAS subsidiaries in 15 or so foreign countries. That in itself is a move away from a 'geography' model and would probably necessitate at least some changes in tech support.

Global redistribution of technical support talent is necessary, especially with international adoption of Viya likely occurring at a greater rate than within USA.

Viya POCs and launch handholding can get technically very deep. Many of these countries are not likely getting the support they need from SASHQ ... in some cases remote SAS outposts even develop their own "miniature R&D" (what historically would be called 4th-level tech support) skill sets to diagnose hard problems locally rather than depend on a cycle through US tech-support and ultimately R&D and back to US tech-support, etc.

This can really frustrate the customer and slow deals down.

This is likely a straight cut of headcount and not a shuffle.

Interesting email. I wonder what they're trying to tell us. Let's see ... (counting on my fingers):

• All of August, September, October, November, December = 5 months.

With 5 work days / week * 4 weeks / month = 20 work days / month.

20 * 5 = 100. Subtract 100 - 2 (Thanksgiving break) - 5 (Christmas break) = 93.
WARN layoff notices are supposed to be 90 days. 93 is greater than, but close to 90.

Could this qualify as THE WARN notice of pending layoff? I hope not. If I worked in Tech Support though, I would interpret it as such and get my house in order.

"January 1, 2024" fits neatly with SAS' public statement of "approximately 1%" for 2023. Next year looks rougher.

https://wraltechwire.com/2023/07/17/sas-disputes-layoff-numbers-and-speculations-says-are-not-accurate/

Yes, reading between the lines suggests exactly that. It would be difficult to "provide opportunities for our global team" without laying off in the US.

Its posted on inside.sas.com

What's the source of this please? internal email?

yep. everything is about cutting costs now... except for the bloated salaries of useless executives...