Thread regarding SAS Institute layoffs

@1an are they secret? We all know they are here.

@pp "No one knows the profit margin except the owners."

Are you forgetting that an an entire finance department exists

@194

Anyone maintaining any amount of code needs basic DSA knowledge.

There's a reason the Viya 'platform' is so unwieldly, and this is part of the reason why. There's a lot of hilariously inefficient code being pushed.

The other half of that coin is a lack of systems design knowledge at this company.

I think that the hosting division in CIS should have never been created, or should have been created as a subsidiary with completely different management. I don't believe that the resources (money, people, infrastructure) dedicated to it have had the RIO that they had hoped for.

@23b We are undergoing a sea change in the software industry. For decades, at SAS and the industry in general, if you didn't like your job, you could always find another one.

The American software industry was always expanding. Now, because of outsourcing, AI, and the end of pandemic stimulus, we don't need as many people.

We still need the top 50% or so. The best, the ones who chose this industry because they loved it, will survive. Those with fewer skills, who were only it for the money, will have to find another profession.

The whole neighborhood has gone downhill.

https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1e8jnGd0

They should let the secret love children run it (further into the ground). They earned it!

YES Brothers and sisters, NOT all of are, or should be required to compete in the FAANG DSA ego olympics🙈

@18r As will any semi competent employee in our field at any company (including SAS). And that is largely true.

Learning something autonomously doesn’t mean going out and learning it just for the h*ll of it. It means going and learning it as needed.

Not a single one of us regardless of whether they work at FAANG are able to know all things in detail. Not possible. You pick and choose based on what interests you or what the job demands on any given day.

Whether you think someone needs to understand DSA doesn’t matter. Some do need to understand. Some don’t.

@b4 yes this was my point. Interns at any FAANG will know basic DSA and will possess the ability to improve their skills autonomously.

There are good and talented managers still at SAS. But they are a minority, coexisting with sycophants and incompetents. Managers must compromise with other managers, so the result has been mediocre products.

SAS management was competent to maintain a revenue stream that others had built. That was sufficient -- until SAS needed to build new revenue streams. That, they could not do.

The best talent was neither promoted nor rewarded. Many left. Now, the chickens have come home to roost. For the past decade, SAS has reduced headcount by 2-3% each year. A recession or AI or other risks could increase that number to 4-5%.

Current ownership will do all they can to minimize layoffs -- because they are loyal, and not greedy. But the next owners will likely do a mass layoff, because that's how capitalism usually works.

I'm as loyal to the company as anyone; I'd love to be proven wrong. But someone would have to make a strong argument to convince me.

@rc he/she is the least favorite of the love childen. That is how they know

@f3 You keep harping on the secret love children. Who are they and how do you know?

@pp “If they want a growing company, wouldn't they buy a hot AI startup instead?”

Haven’t you read the latest marketing materials? SAS is a leader in AI. /s

The owners probably will put their shares of the company into a trust, if it is not sold or IPO'd in their lifetimes. This prevents heirs being forced into a quick sale to pay estate taxes.

But the owners won't designate trustees who would lay off 60%. SAS is their life's work, and they have some loyalty to their employees, so they are not going to destroy so many careers.

SAS had a great business model until we faced competition. But we had no accountability, and no particular rewards for hard work. That bred a culture of complacency, entitlement, and incompetence. Now, a layoff of the bottom 60% is needed to restore SAS as a growing company.

If I had the run of the company, that's what I'd do. But would anyone else do that?
If they want a growing company, wouldn't they buy a hot AI startup instead?

Hence SAS is cooked. They only people who will buy it are the vulture capitalists, those who buy declining software companies, strip them bare, then milk the profits until the company dies. Someone like this will buy SAS, either in a private sale, after an IPO, or through a trust.

No one knows the profit margin except the owners. But they would not be laying off unless they had to. If revenues continue flat, and expenses rise with inflation, SAS faces ~3% headcount reductions each year, until the vulture capitalists lay off 60%.

If you can find a place where the axe isn't swinging every year, you can try to go there. But the tech job market is brutal, with hundreds of applicants for every good position. So for many at SAS, the best choice is to stay and hope to get a few more years.

It was a good ride while it lasted. It is now a relatively gentle decline until the end. Good luck to all.

@me 3.3 billion, 10% net profit.

SAS isn’t the end all be all and there are certainly imminent changes. But you are living in fantasy if you classify that as cooked. Cook me all day long.

Truth is SAS is cooked. The only option is to be acquired by a vulture capitalist who will strip the company bare and squeeze out as much revenue as they can until the company dies. For too long SAS never held employees accountable, promoted based on tenure (not talent) and failed to adapt quickly enough to changes in the market. It’s bloated in most departments due to “no layoffs policy”. What made the company attractive for employees is ultimately what ki-led it. A place to chill. Why work hard if you aren’t held accountable and don’t have to worry about job security? It was a great model until it wasn’t. Competitors were hungrier and more innovative, had more talent and resources and were constantly pressured by Wall St to perform. Everything SAS wasn’t. This is what happens.

But what about the secret love children?!?!

Radical reinvention of the entire company. JG retires and takes his hands completely off. All relatives depart. Some kind of legally defined trust hires a progressive CEO in her/his 40s — having enough enterprise software/technology experience to understand SAS yet firmly rooted in 2026-level AI-centric computing paradigms and vision. Goes without saying all new top executive cabinet.

Here’s the brutal part. Massive layoffs and restructuring. Complete flattening of the management hierarchy. When all of a sudden and done probably 60% of the current employees are gone. A skeleton crew of the very best is kept to maintain the V9 revenue stream. Ki-l all current product initiatives that aren’t profitable and have no hope of ever been. Focus only on maintaining the legacy revenue stream. Maintain a reasonable fund and have a small crack legal and customer negotiation team to handle exiting contracts for loser products currently licensed by customers.

Once the dust and severance $$’s settle out, the remaining positive cash flow is carefully reinvested in a small member of highly focused niche AI driven initiatives. The best experts and straight outta graduate school hires that SAS (or whatever the company representing the new initiative is called) can afford are onboarded. Currently only the top 5% of AI experts are being hired by the most elite AI frontier movers. That still leaves a lot of talent on the table. Even if this new SAS funded concern could only hire in the 80th to 80th 5th percentile range they would still be getting excellent talent they could build profitable niche products ASSUMING STRICT CONSTRAINTS — relatively flat organization, no stogy management, minimal pandering corporate virtue signaling on social media, strong salaries and equity based on performance.

From where I sit that’s the only future SAS has as a growing concern. Otherwise they are headed for the dustbin of his historical legacy software— and the acceleration of AI is bringing this on faster than anyone could’ve comprehended.

@b5 especially now with AI

OP selling to your best customers is almost always your best move even if you are in the innovator's dilemma. the more software commoditizes, the more the value there is in those human relationships. the bottom of the barrel doesn't matter. LLM can handle those cases (for free?).

@b4 You can’t know everything. When you run into something you don’t know you learn it.

@av DFS is just an example. The @OP's point is that people are not learning, not "expected to improve their technical acumen" but "rewarded simply for staying".

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

That never happened before. For it to happen now requires a cultural change I don't expect.

@OP You lost me at “ 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.”

I do know what it is but could care less whether other software developers know what it is. It is largely irrelevant. You can’t know everything. When you run into something you don’t know you learn it.