I’m 57 and ready for a layoff or vrbo package. Come get me! Or invite me to come partake.
Could financially retire but feel like I’m a self made prisoner of the golden shackles.
Will 57 year olds ever be eligible for a vrbo given decades of service?
@14f It's a difficult job market for tech folks. Unless I was in a toxic situation, I wouldn't jump.
But I would mitigate my risk of getting laid off / bought out / pushed out.
I would a) reduce my expenses and build a nice cushion of savings, and b) consider SAS a place that pays me while I learn marketable skills -- in my spare time if necessary.
Where are you hoping to jump to given the prognosis?
"most developers at SAS couldn't even tell you the asymptotic runtime of a function"
I knew many like that, and it wasn't just older folks. We hired young people who were equally incompetent.
Most older folks want to be helpful. But if they're trying to do their jobs, they have limited time.
It doesn't take much time to mentor "A" and "B" players. "C" players, on the other hand, cannot be successfully mentored. You can spend quite a lot of time and never make them into "A"s or "B"s.
And in the SAS culture, if you "don't want to mentor" the "C" players, you are likely to get blamed -- accused of "not getting along", "not being a team player", etc.
Kent Beck's article says that companies should filter out their "C" players. But SAS did not filter. We retained our "C"s along with our "B"s and "A"s.
As long as SAS had a strong competitive moat, this didn't matter. Once Open Source destroyed our moat, it mattered a lot.
With a mix of talent, the best one can do is collect all the remaining "A"s and "B"s together to build something marketable. That's what the Big German tried to do.
I don't think it will be tried again. The business goal is no longer to grow the company, but to sell it. If the current owners don't sell, their heirs will.
The problem with selling is that SAS software no longer has marketable parts. No one wants to integrate their software with ours. So it's difficult to sell to Microsoft, Google, or SalesForce, because SAS doesn't fit their business.
The only marketable feature of SAS is its profitable revenue stream. That can be sold to private equity, or to a company like Broadcom that acts like private equity. Or it could be IPO'd, though as time goes on ownership seems less serious about that.
Either way, to sell the company, SAS must maintain its most marketable feature, its profitability.
To meet that goal, SAS will continue cutting costs, laying off, buying out, and pushing out people, until the company is sold.
Absolutely not. SAS has the most coddled workforce on the planet. People are taking 3 hour lunches, playing soccer, coming in at 10 and leaving at 3. There is an abundance of time.
You're right that it's not an encouraged priority, it should be. It's why we have a staggering dearth of talent.
The oldtimers don't want mentor others like they were mentored. It takes effort and time.
Could it be the case that it isn’t a matter of want but of time? Is that time available? It mentoring a supported priority?
Now, if you’re just talking about babysitting then: https://newsletter.kentbeck.com/p/hey-n00b-we-didnt-hire-you-to-complete
Same boat. For years pleaded for a layoff package but no avail. It was structured to 60 and up with 10 years service and I had 25 years but no where near 60. It just didn’t seam “fair” being old was the bigger priority than time in service for voluntary separation. Finally the toxic environment got to the point I said F it and life is too short. Is 8 months severance payout worth another 10 years of my life. Heck no. I early retired and haven’t looked back. Was there when SAS was at its best. The last decade has been better than most but trailing downward. Let those who want the job have it. They need to open voluntary separation to a wider audience than people who already have one foot out the door.
@OP Call HR they’ll help you
Chicken and egg. The oldtimers don't want mentor others like they were mentored. It takes effort and time.
The young developers at Google/etc. blow the doors off of many of the seniors here. Sh-t, most developers at SAS couldn't even tell you the asymptotic runtime of a function.
Posts and comments here that name names even in a coded way get deleted. The company calls and complains and they're taken down. Have seen it happen many times in the past.
Here I am talking about being “ready” while in another post there are people who aren’t ready being layed off.
The unfortunate truth I will likely never be a layoff candidate off despite welcoming a package.
@qp I desperately want to hear your top 20 list of toxic, lazy old old timers (R&D).
Mostly to see if they match some of mine. But also to see if I made your list ;)
This is not news. Most young people have no desire to learn and no curiosity anymore. AI will do everything for them so why bother learning?
Entitlement is common in many longtime SAS employees and I am a longtimer, though not an entitled one. I know many many oldtimers here who have not done any real work in 10 or 20 years. They're some of the biggest complainers. Wish we could nominate people for layoffs. Such people are toxic.
Of course they are serious about customers mattering
What does that support look like, these days, given the layoffs in technical support, documentation, education, and development?
Does it look like a chat-bot? If so, how's that going?
Does it look like consulting, sales, or R&D making promises not kept, like @q7 mentions?
I thought customer input and support took a backseat once the ballot was shelved and we started telling customers that they would be migrating away from SAS to Viya because classic SAS was going away.
For real. I know so many people at this company who are categorically incurious, lazy, and petulant.
I've been in meetings where literally half of the meeting time was spent whining about starbucks and 2 days RTO.
Now, I'd get it if these folks were even halfway decent at their jobs, but man, this company is cooked if these are the "senior" and "principal" engineers. We've got "senior principal software engineers" who literally don't know:
what a CPU register is
how to create and traverse a dependency graph
the absolute basics of TLS
why you might choose a columnar data model over a row oriented one
OS basics
etc. etc. these are just recent examples that spring to mind. The list goes on.
And lack of specific knowledge isn't a problem in and of itself, the problem is these people do not want to learn. So many people think they're hot sh-t and literally throw tantrums when you ask them to perform the job of a software engineer and keep abreast of the current state of technology.
Like, we've just figured out that columnar store databases (DuckDB/PG cstore extension/Clickhouse/etc) have useful properties while claiming to be "the leader in Data and AI".
I think the ongoing tenancy debacle is a microcosm of this problem:
Platform has said they'd deliver multi-tenancy "soon" for 7 years now (and amazingly they all have jobs despite this massive failure to deliver)
Platform told people they'd use a schema-per-tenant or DB-per-tenant model (written promises were made to a customer)
Platform backtracked, claimed they never made the promises they did, and are going with row-level-security
Engineers from MSFT, AWS, and RedHat have told JP and platform this was a bad idea for a laundry list of reasons
They're doing it anyway. Yikes. Clown show.
@je I’m not bored at all. Just ready…
I Cannes understand how you feel.
You are bored. You are tired. I get it. There are some real sh-t jobs out there. Yours isn’t one of them. You don’t want to be out there scratching for them like some of the rest of us. Please be grateful you are still employed.
@d8 The only reason we all have jobs is because we sell software to customers
@eh What does layoff’ing get you and how do I accomplish said task?
Just tell them “Daddy, I earned it!” That should set you up for success.
The advantage of waiting for the VRBP, at least in the past, has been that you get some health insurance help until you are 65, along with a bigger payout for your salary. Normal retiring gets you $100 / year_of_service (IIRC).
@d8 Of course they are serious about customers mattering.
Are you serious about customers not mattering? Yours is the ridiculous take not the other posters.
some of us have to answer to customers
I hate to ask but are you serious? Customers still matter?
If you're ready to leave, just leave with or without VRBP. The best one can hope for nowadays is just 6 months max of compensation under VRBP and they usually reserve it for 60+ years old every 3 years. You can also get laid off anytime and probably get the same compensation as VRBP.
If you're financially able to leave now, even leaving without VRBP is ok too.
Similar circumstances, also ready to gooooooooooooooooo……..
I hear you OP. I was in that position a few years ago. The VRBP's have successively gotten leaner and leaner, enticing fewer and fewer to bite. It wouldn't surprise me to see them doing an "age + years of service" offer soon.
@a5 Generally speaking I agree with you. If someone doesn’t want to work and isn’t doing the job then leave!
However I as the @OP never indicated any such thing. I do the work, put in the effort and make a difference. I can do those things and still be ready…
Plenty of people who aren’t ready to retire who do sh-t jobs with no effort or impact.
I so wish everyone in this bucket would just retire already. It's exhausting working with people who don't want to work and aren't held accountable. Meanwhile, some of us have to answer to customers.