SAS Cloud seems to run entirely on project managers.
No actual SAS experience in sight, yet somehow they manage to present themselves as experts on absolutely everything.
No wonder the whole place looks like it’s permanently waiting on a meeting about a meeting.
@151 they aren’t exactly ‘ secret’
@3hh
“I had a senior leader in Cloud Services state to me “Our software is not cloud native, we are not Google or AWS”.”
Precisely why I refuse to let those Dunning-Kruger poster children anywhere near my customers
I had a senior leader in Cloud Services state to me “Our software is not cloud native, we are not Google or AWS”.
From the SAS website “SAS Viya is a cloud-native, end-to-end data and AI platform that makes development easier and boosts productivity with tools that are friendly for everyone on your team”
@18m How do you know they could have bought SAS? You must be in an executive to know SAS is actively courting buyers
@18j This will be my last post on this subject.
I did not say that SAS was “unsuccessful”. I said that its first ~35 years were successful, and its last ~15 years unsuccessful.
You offered a false choice between a $100M company and a $3B company. In the real world, that choice never happens.
I offered a real-world choice. For ~$20B, investors could have bought SAS, or Splunk, or Confluent. They bought the two that are successfully growing.
@18f you would absolutely not always choose the most valuable company. If one was losing money and flat growth then you may very well go with the smaller company that is growing and profitable.
The fact that option 1 is your clear choice means you don’t truly consider the company unsuccessful no matter how many times you say it.
Success at making you choose it at the bare minimum.
@183 My answer was clear. The way you set up the choice, one company must be worth about 10X the other. Anyone would choose the more valuable company.
But a choice between 10X and 1X, for a price of zero, is a false choice: it never happens in the real world.
In the real world, companies selling for around SAS’s asking price include Splunk and Confluent. The market views those companies as successful, because they are growing. That’s why they sold, and SAS has not.
@17s I knew you wouldn’t answer the question
@15f Under the stated conditions, the larger company might sell for about 10X the price of the smaller one. The money would not be equal, so in the real world, no one would choose between the two.
In the real world, Splunk, with $4B ARR and ~15% growth, sold for $28B. Confluent, with $1B ARR and ~20% growth, sold for $11B. SAS, with an asking price of $15-20B, has not sold.
@15c If I’m giving you a company and you get to choose between
Which one you taking? Simple answer. Don’t change the question.
Surely you won’t pick the unsuccessful one.
@15b We were discussing the success of the company, not the owner. The 1,000+ folks who got laid off don't consider shrinkage to be success.
@14y “ It’s clear that previous posts are not categorizing as “unsuccessful” the ~35 years of growth, but the ~15 years of shrinkage.”
And I would take that “unsuccessful” 15 years in a New York minute. So would you.
You think Dr G hasn’t made serious serious bank for the past 15 years? You would be wrong.
@14p It reconciles fine. You honestly don’t think the vast majority of companies in the world wouldn’t trade places, flat growth and all, in a heartbeat?
We can also agree that regardless of the slope of revenue growth, the secret love children have jobs in perpetuity. An excellent example of flipping the price-to-value relationship.
Queue up a parody song titled “Failin’ On Up’ based on the theme from “The Jeffersons”. Use your imagination and write your own lyrics.
We can all agree that SAS grew from $0 to $3B ARR in ~35 years, and that that was a brilliant success.
We can also agree that in the last ~15 years the amount of data in the world has grown 1,000-fold, and that SAS did not get even a small piece of that growth, but in fact shrank the company.
It’s clear that previous posts are not categorizing as “unsuccessful” the ~35 years of growth, but the ~15 years of shrinkage.
"90+% of companies in the world would trade places with SAS in an instant."
And how does this reconcile with:
"SAS has been flat for 15 years. Let me state that again, SAS has been flat for 15 years..."
????
90+% of companies in the world would trade places with SAS in an instant.
I’m not saying there aren’t many areas that need improvement. Not saying SAS has come close to realising full potential.
But for all of you to constantly hack away and think SAS isn’t successful is ridiculous.
Hate the game, not the player...
If you’ve ever tried to keep all the flavours of SAS ticking over at scale, you’d have a bit more empathy for the hiding to nothing that team is on.
The model is properly broken, no doubt. But it isn't the staff... it’s the lack of joined-up thinking from the top—pushing offers that shouldn't even exist. The top brass will nod along and say there are issues, but point out that Cloud makes us $x00m a year. And they aren't wrong, unless they finish the sentence... it makes SAS hundres of millions but it should be making us billions.
SAS has been flat for 15 years. Let me state that again, SAS has been flat for 15 years... because the mentality you have is shared by the ELT... who don't get any steer or love from Dad. The cloud offer here is a shambles of execution... across the whole company, not just the division. Let me state that again, SAS has been flat for 15 years...
With that in mind, no need to stick the boot in. We should at least be decent to one another as we shift the deck chairs around... makes the time on a sinking ship a bit more bearable.
SAS could be very successful today if it had eliminated under performing employees, redundancy of effort and ineffective management 15 to 20 years ago. The management hierarchy should’ve been flattened and staff paired down to the talent necessary to support renewables and innovate/succeed in the next wave. Many recognized that as much as 30% of the staff were incompetent, redundant or otherwise ineffective.
JG’s personal identity and ego was (is?) wrapped up in the SAS language and its quirky computational paradigm. He and OS worked together on the original high performance parallel analytics going back to around 2007. In that timeframe Jim did not seem to believe open source data management and analytics was much of a threat. He expressed public disdain for R and at that point Python had not gained a significant foothold and was not yet a threat.
Because SAS had some success with it’s early efforts in parallel computing via the embedded process HP* staff staff, and then LASR, JG was already involved in and primed to continue the SAS Legacy of proprietary closed source development. That paved the way for developing CAS, the core engine of what was ultimately branded as SAS’ new architecture; Viya. Much of this was an effort to integrate with open source clients while still retaining innovative control of the core data management infrastructure and analytical algorithms — the so-called “crown jewels“ of SAS.
Any discussion of where the company is today should at least recognize this evolution and that it is deeply embedded in the founder’s personal identity and the trust he placed in his right hand man at the time. Those intimately involved in the long history of SAS understand this very well. Fifteen years ago, the probability that SAS would have embraced open source as the foundational technology for its “next big thing” approached zero.
Building out a new architectural platform is a massive undertaking and once underway is very difficult to radically change. Viya is running in several major SAS customer sites and there’s no going back. SAS9 is it a long slow death and a decade from now will not even be a consideration.
@10g I’ll take that as a no…
I got very tired of repeating myself, and being ignored, while I worked at SAS. We all wanted to help the company, but they did not want our help.
Now I don't feel tired, but only feel regret. We worked hard, and it’s human nature to regret the decline of all we worked to build.
SAS was a great company in its day. Good times don’t last forever, but I'll always believe its decline did not have to occur so soon.
Do you people not get tired of repeating yourselves over and over?
"This is clearly not a plan for growth, but a plan to cut costs by eliminating the most expensive employees"
SAS has not demontrated growth in over a decade. Therefore, the plan to cut costs by elimination of the most expensive is the only sensible plan for SAS. The decade long big bet on Viya has proven to be a poison pill for SAS. Poisoned by proprietary software in a world that has moved on to open source.
Those that mattered were living in an incubator called bunny land and cared only about their big bet. Those that cared did not matter.
https://www.thelayoff.com/post/@rx+1kbs1bh75
Seems apropos.
“It is very difficult to prune the necessary problem employees en masse… The future cannot prove to be as merciful if SAS is going to survive.”
Rather than pruning problem employees, current policies achieve the opposite. SAS has bought out or laid off hundreds of its most experienced employees. SAS incentivized hundreds more to leave by attrition — some of its most capable, by definition: capable of finding a better job.
This is clearly not a plan for growth, but a plan to cut costs by eliminating the most expensive employees
If the company is sold, likely buyers are companies like Broadcom or private equity that specialize in acquiring declining software revenue streams. Such buyers always do mass layoffs, retaining just enough staff to milk the declining revenue stream. In that event, SAS will not survive in its current form.
If the company IPOs, that’s a huge cash injection, so in theory, whoever acquires control could invest that cash for growth. Most growth investors would prefer to invest in the latest hot AI startup, not in SAS. But an IPO is probably the best hope for SAS to survive.
In the meantime, SAS owners continue to show loyalty to their employees, retaining many in spite of their poor contributions, incentivizing others to leave by choice, and minimizing the necessary layoffs. For most SAS employees, life would be a lot harsher out in the Real World.
"The Feature Factory anti-pattern is not uncommon at SAS Institute."
That explains lackluster Viya sales.
A very large issue at SAS . . . and many other tech workplaces for that matter, is that the identifiable problems hindering success are wrapped up in a larger dynamic that is much more difficult to act upon.
There are various incompetents, unnecessary overheads (OP and @af nail this), power players and protected stooges embedded in divisions responsible for underperforming products or other company outputs. It is very difficult to prune the necessary problem employees en masse without taking a deeply introspective and ultimately hardline stance from the top down.
History and current modus operandi continue to demonstrate this is not the SAS way given current ownership/leadership. The future cannot prove to be as merciful if SAS is going to survive.
@pr “ Those on the periphery of these displays dissociate into a fugue state while awaiting an end to the performative blather and a decision on direction.”
And you think the ones on the periphery are the good guys here? I’ll take people willing to speak up and talk over people sitting in a fugue state. Why even show up if not willing to contribute?
@km’s satirical post describes how software is built by people who don’t know how to build software.
They develop a feature list, and when all the features are implemented, they declare the product done. But the product may not sell, because a product is more than a simple list of features.
This doesn’t describe the specific problems of SAS Cloud; but it doesn’t contradict them either. The Feature Factory anti-pattern is not uncommon at SAS Institute.
Feature Factory Fugue occurs after multiple exposures to a typical R&D meeting.
In a typical R&D meeting, the attendants with the largest personalities compete with one another in presenting knowledge of problems and domains they haven’t investigated. They banter meaningless drivel back and forth at one another while avoiding commitments to schedules, deliverables, decisions and direction; there’s lots of talking, but little listening and comprehension.
Those on the periphery of these displays dissociate into a fugue state while awaiting an end to the performative blather and a decision on direction.
@km “ A state of psychosis”
A good description of your post also
@km This has what to do with low skilled, low paid offshore technical leads and a gaggle of project managers casting blame on everything but their lack of knowledge?
Feature Factory Fugue - A state of psychosis characterized by working too long at SAS. Clinical characteristics include:
The only effective treatment for Feature Factory Fugue is to move to an environment based on actual business metrics and reliable customer input/review/ measurement processes.
@f1 Business folks can and should educate engineers on which features the market wants. Any competent engineer will value their input.
But a feature list, built with Agile methodology can only create a Feature Factory — not innovation.
This! I for one am tired of them bad mouthing sas software to the customer. One would think this is obviously detrimental however it’s a common trait, even with their management
"So it always worries me when people try to stifle it in the interest of letting the business folks tell you what they want. We absolutely want to know what they want and that feedback is valuable."
Yet, revenue remains flat for the past decade. Wish that was not so.
95% of the cloud employees could be replaced by ChatGPT (or even Copilot) TODAY but the remaining 5% are still to lazy to open the app and type.
@e2 that wasn’t my point but fair enough.
Hate to break this to you, sas cloud pms ain't business folk.
the sas cloud dept is the living embodiment of a linkedin feed.