Thread regarding SAS Institute layoffs

@805
As admitted “dead weight” I fully endorse your proposal. Offer a buy out or lay off the geezers.

@7wq "This will require... us to retain top talent, and purge dead weight."


Well said, but SAS has never done that. In the buyouts and the layoffs, they treated everyone more or less equally, purging both top talent and dead weight.

During the pandemic stimulus, SAS failed to pay market rates, incentivizing hundreds to leave. Those were people who by definition could find better opportunities. The dead weight stayed.

You're calling for a much-needed cultural change, but I don't think you'll get it.

The beatings will continue until morale improves or the CEO passes.

@2dx

One month later, I think this is the crux of what's wrong at the company.

MGMT isn't held accountable; escape is just a re-org away.

There's zero vision at the top. JP/BH/GD are not the right guys by any metric. Our sales incentives are aligned such that sales will pressure RnD to continue hunting the same 20 banks with the same multi-year projects. That pressure will force RnD to acquiesce.

CIS continues to be a useless rube goldberg SaaS for ticket generation under their current leader.

All while leadership continues to say that we're looking to get leaner, and deliver at a higher volume etc. etc.

Within RnD we have principal developers who don't know how computers work. When I say this I mean the basics of networking, filesystems, algorithms.

I had Sr Principal dev ask me what DFS was.... this by itself is not the issue, but it certainly points to the issue: people are not held accountable for performance, nor are they expected to improve their technical acumen, and inversely, they are rewarded simply for staying.

IMO:

SAS should strive to be (in part) the AWS of data tools. There should have a simple portal such that customers can input their payment info, click on a given tool, and crank it up according to some set of configurable parameters. It should be seamless.

This will require:

• CIS and RnD to merge

• a real SRE program inside of the company (it's insane and an indictment of the company that no one I've spoken to in CIS has heard of the term SRE).

• us to retain top talent, and purge dead weight.

• sas would need to spend cycles reducing service footprint/consolidating services/improving big O performance. several gigs of RAM is insane for a login service. Not to mention the fragmentation of said service.

The same model should be followed for solutions, which means prodman will need to actually learn how to do their job. we have some of the most arrogant, yet ignorant, product managers in the business.

know your domain, know the market, and sell to that market. every solution can't do everything. boutique projects are fine, but that's not gonna move the needle.

there should be pre-configured, highly opinionated, solutions that can be delivered and adding value in under a month.

Anthropic’s Claude can already convert significantly complex SAS programming streams into Python and related libraries. Complex systems of nested macros might require human intervention, but these tools are only going to get better.

IOW, the years are getting shorter for expensive proprietary software like SAS. Recently spoke with someone who is a director at GSK and told me they no longer use SAS in any department she is aware of.

Have we reached a point where it is delusional to think that SAS can recover without coming up with some kind of strong AI-based niche play going forward? Given the acceleration of AI tools that can parse and transform complex programming languages, isn’t it more reasonable to think that SAS has maybe 3 to 5 more years of reliable renewable revenue instead of 8 to 10 more years?

Getting back to the "what will happen" subject, the most likely answer is ...

Currently, the market environment is not being kind to software companies. They're being ignored as stodgy, old-guard relics of the past while AI is the present and future. This situation is not conducive to an IPO for an established software company.

And don't get me started with respect to the mergers and acquisitions environment, given the heavy (but tiny) hands on that scale.

@2y5 We agree, of course, that not all companies are in growth stages. A company can be stable and profitable.

We disagree on whether SAS is stable.

@2y I’ll only post this one time because I’m not a child and I believe in quality over quantity.

“ In a bull market, both large and small companies grow.”

Depends on the company…. And I for a growth company “might” be a measure of success. Not all companies are in growth stages. Tons of stable non growth companies out there that make plenty of money, Could they make more? Sure. Could also make less. Pays your bills I bet.

Company, 2019 revenue, 2024 revenue, 2024 profitability
IBM $77.1B $62.0B ~$6B
HP Inc. $58.8B $53.6B ~$2.8B
Dell. $92.0B $88.4B ~$5.8B
Cisco $51.9B $53.8B ~$10.3B
eBay $10.4B $10.28B ~$2.3B

Getting back to the "what will happen" subject, the most likely answer is simple:

1. No IPO
2. No sale
3. Very limited, if any, revenue growth.
4. Ongoing layoffs.

In summary, same course heading as previous multiple years.

The dogs don’t like the dogfood. They haven’t for a long time.

Do both large and small companies grow in a bull market?

In a bull market, both large and small companies grow.

Revenue... 2019 2024
Alteryx... 0.1B 1.0B
DataBricks 0.2B 3.5B
Splunk.... 2.2B 4.2B
SAS....... 3.0B 3.0B

In a bull market, both large and small companies grow.

2019 Revenue   2024 Revenue Alteryx           0.1B           1.0B DataBricks        0.2B           3.5B Splunk            2.2B           4.2B  SAS               3.0B           3.0B

In a bull market, both large and small companies grow.

         “    2019 Revenue   2024 Revenue 

Alteryx 0.1B 1.0B
DataBricks 0.2B 3.5B
Splunk 2.2B 4.2B
SAS 3.0B 3.0B”

In a bull market, both large and small companies grow.

| | 2019 Revenue | 2024 Revenue |
| Alteryx | 0.1B | 1.0B |
| DataBricks | 0.2B | 3.5B |
| Splunk | 2.2B | 4.2B |
| SAS | 3.0B | 3.0B |

In a bull market, both large and small companies grow.

         |  2019 Revenue  |  2024 Revenue

Alteryx | 0.1B | 1.0B

DataBricks | 0.2B | 3.5B

Splunk | 2.2B | 4.2B

SAS | 3.0B | 3.0B

In a bull market, both large and small companies grow.

2019 Revenue 2024 Revenue

Alteryx 0.1B 1.0B

DataBricks 0.2B 3.5B

Splunk 2.2B 4.2B

SAS 3.0B 3.0B

In a bull market, both large and small companies grow.

2019 Revenue 2024 Revenue
Alteryx 0.1B 1.0B
DataBricks 0.2B 3.5B
Splunk 2.2B 4.2B
SAS 3.0B 3.0B

In a bull market, both large and small companies grow.

              2019 Revenue    2024 Revenue

Alteryx 0.1B 1.0B

DataBricks 0.2B 3.5B

Splunk 2.2B 4.2B

SAS 3.0B 3.0B

In a bull market, both large and small companies grow.

              2019 Revenue    2024 Revenue

Alteryx 0.1B 1.0B
DataBricks 0.2B 3.5B
Splunk 2.2B 4.2B
SAS 3.0B 3.0B

Give it a rest. You two are never going to agree.

@2vb Do you want a list of companies that used to be larger than Microsoft?
It is an immense list. They all start out the same size. Zero dollars.

It would be far easier to reverse the list request and tell you exactly how many companies have kept up. That list is extremely small.

There is no world where that is a reasonable comparison or somehow an indication of successfulness.

@2st It is certainly realistic to compare SAS to Microsoft. In their early days, SAS was larger.

@2sr You don’t have to be Apple, Microsoft or Google to be a successful tech company.

Unrealistic comparison. Do you honestly think those guys are the benchmark by which other companies should be judged?

"Most of our serious postings describe SAS as in decline."

Take a look at very successful "technology" companies and be the judge:

                              2013 Revenue    2024 Revenue
   Alphabet                  55B                       350B
   Apple                      171B                       416B
   Microsoft                 77B                        281B
   SAS                              3B                            3B

But I guess it's better than IBM? 98B vs 63B

Most of our serious postings describe SAS as in decline.

The facts support this. In a bull market, SAS revenues have not kept pace with inflation. SAS has reduced headcount by 2-3% each year. The company is ~20% smaller than it used to be.

The person zeroing votes may feel threatened by these facts, and dislike seeing them confirmed and amplified.

I may be incompetent, but da---t, Daddy, I earned it!

Looks like zero out the votes script kiddie has shown up again 🙄

@2pf And just like that the person who thinks every upvote for something they posted themselves or agree with is valid while at the same time contending that any downvotes on the same post must be conspiracies.

And just like that, the one who gets butthurt about upvotes has returned with his boorishly down voting scheme.

@2my where??

Fealty > Skill > Effectiveness. That’s the lesson to learn here.

"SAS has, for a long time, assumed that someone who is good at the technical side will be good at the management side."

Let's hope that SAS learned their lesson about this with the Big German. He was a genius at making stuff that didn't sell and his role in management led SAS down the path to ruin. A few who REALLY mattered gulped his Koolaid. What a shame.

@2ms

Cool. More layoffs.

One more reason why Microsoft, or any other hyper scaler for that matter, will not buy SAS:

https://youtu.be/9ZseQ-hXcp4

Feel free to debate on new thread.

SAS has, for a long time, assumed that someone who is good at the technical side will be good at the management side. When my manager left, I was a little surprised at how many people thought, as the technical lead for the group, that I would become the manager. I had taken a management role at a previous company, and I was bad at it, so I knew that I wouldn't be taking that role, even if it was offered to me.

This has led to a lot of bad management at SAS, not because the managers were bad people, but because they were a poor fit (which isn't to say that there were a lot of bad managers because they were snakes.

Employment is at will, but a trumped-up charge sheet protects the company. It shows that SAS has a documented process, preparing them to make their case in court if an employee files a lawsuit. That is rarely done of course, as SAS will pay severance; but it is prudent to have a list of charges.

Years ago, our best CTO admitted to me that “We have no accountability.” He recognized a problem he could not fix. SAS weeded out people with trumped-up charges, but never weeded out people unfit for their jobs — at any level. Incompetent employees were protected by incompetent managers.

Even now, when the company is forced to cut costs, giving it every reason to ditch unproductive employees, that’s not what they’re doing. SAS mostly lays off the people with the highest salaries, throwing the babies out with the bathwater.

“If Viya is not the answer, then what is SAS going to do?”

Nothing. They can’t grow revenues, unless they first clean house, establishing accountability and rewarding competence. But SAS will never clean house.

"try some new variation of the same recipe, to breathe life into a dying product stack."

That is a great summation of why revenue at SAS has been flat for over a decade.

I had my sh-t wired tight and was squared away. Gaslight someone else.

"because the legacy SAS architecture and language is ultimately not going to survive the astonishingly fast onslaught of AI."

Very true. But I don't think it was going to survive regardless of AI, given the much cheaper, "cooler" options now available. But AI will likely turbo-charge the demise. I don't envy those at the top trying to come up with ideas to navigate these challenges.