Today I am thankful to work at a company that has and continues to help me provide for my family in a lucrative and very stable fashion for 25+ years.
36 replies (most recent on top)
We’ve reviewed the secret numbers. This year’s revenue is higher than ever. Viya is a smashing success.
Affected by a layoff in the new year?
You were a lousy employee. Only True Believers can excel. You were not a True Believer.
Happy Holidays!
Now who’s ready for some cake?
@18j “Don’t try to affect change, they don’t want that. Keep your head down and make the features exactly as they prescribe. Smile, laugh, and work on plans B, C, and D.”
“Really good advice.”
Terrible advice. Sad advice.
After reading this forum for a while I’m actually starting to want big layoffs.
@14a Life is not necessarily banal. Some Americans right now have left their jobs and families to feed children in Africa, or fight in Ukraine. But most of us don’t make those choices.
Many of us realized that SAS had developed a culture of mediocrity, and that we were never going to build great software there. We stayed, and stayed frustrated, because that was best for our families. It was a banal career, but an honorable choice.
“Don’t try to affect change, they don’t want that. Keep your head down and make the features exactly as they prescribe. Smile, laugh, and work on plans B, C, and D.”
Really good advice.
@151 Ah, but the end of the quoted passage is the most telling—“But it is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.” When a person wisely makes good decisions—especially in response to the decisions and actions of others—desperation should not be the expected or eventual result. Find satisfaction in your career where you are, find a more immediate off-ramp to career satisfaction elsewhere, or find other avenues of satisfaction while you continue on. Any of those options should reduce negativity and increase thankfulness and an overarching sense of well-being. Over the years, I’ve done all three here or there, and they’ve served me well. It is really not rocket science.
@14a+1kb3c1fzg
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called a good success is but a kind of distraction."
"Live your life of quiet desperation and be thankful for it" seems to be the order of the day here.
Hey, non-boomer: Succumb to your feature factory fugue and learn to love it!
In all seriousness, life is banal. Learn to embrace banality, especially if it pays well. Go to graduate school while working, if you can. Don’t try to affect change, they don’t want that. Keep your head down and make the features exactly as they prescribe. Smile, laugh, and work on plans B, C, and D.
NOT a boomer. Just a general observation. Anyone who puts in 20 years for almost any tech/IT company at any point since 2000 should be able to walk away afterwards on their own terms—whether early retirement, part-time work, or hobby job. If you’re not able to do that, there were either a lot of unfortunate external factors (major medical for your or yours, costly divorce, etc), or you’ve made some bad decisions/habits along the way. The “job/company” was not at fault, SAS or otherwise. To argue about the % differences at that point is just first world problems. Sorry. Get some perspective and be thankful for the opportunity that most will never have.
@122 We understand your resentment. We were lucky to join SAS when we were young..
'But you younger folks could have joined Nvidia. Then you’d have more money than we do.
@122 You aren’t stuck in anything. You have all the choices in the world.
Boomers gonna bo-m! You got yours and now the people left here who are slightly younger than you are stuck in roles they have long since grown out of. But hey you got yours right? Yeahhhh BO-M.
@pq Gratitude seems like a quiet activity. Why come on the anonymous flame net to announce it?
Uh, because it is Thanksgiving?
@vt Long ago, they would have cared. But for most of the past decade, SAS has wanted people to leave. Attrition, and replacing seniors with juniors, is part of the plan.
@v2 If this is the same Longsticking I am thinking of, I wonder why SAS was so quick to agree to the depature of those underneath L's management. One after the other.
I'd guess someone in within the SAS ranks would have observed a pattern indicating that Longsticking should not to be in such a position.
@v2 crystal
pe---e Longsticking, the manager frozen in amber, was lucky. Difficult and closed minded, they drove everyone away. No one was left to service an esoteric product but pe---e.
It could have swung the other way, where pe---e was sacked and progress moved forward. But it didn’t. Bad luck for others. Good luck for pe---e.
@rb I also was the victim of a random reorg by a poor manager.
Our team was treated better than yours, in that no one was forced out. However, over the next two years, we all decided to leave.
Like yours, our replacements were people with lower skills and qualifications. HR required our manager to replace seniors with juniors. That was SAS policy at the time, to cut costs; it may still be.
That manager caused 100% turnover on our small team, and replaced experienced talent with less qualified people. But he remains in his position.
I was able to find a better job (at a different company) and I hope you did. Your story makes me wonder how many times this sort of thing has happened at SAS.
You do not want to believe that you were lucky.
You continue to believe you live in a universe where you have free will but you do not. I get it.
You do not want to believe that you were lucky. I get it. It’s painful as it takes away your sense of agency and challenges your beliefs of your own superiority and that of this environment. It’s a hard pill to swallow.
I was lucky, too. But I had felt that I had worked hard, did the right things, and I had EARNED it. I was wrong.
A random reorg by some chaotic train wrecks resulted in a series of unfortunate events. Several highly skilled and capable people were forced out. Some careers ended. They were unlucky.
Our replacements were people with lower skills and qualifications. Those people were lucky although they’d never believe it — They were simply in the right place at the right time and in the right circumstances to begin their careers.
If you ask them, they’ll tell their success is because of their awesomeness. It’s a delusion. This environment is big on delusion.
Like @mf, I experienced a number of “managers who were chaotic train wrecks”.
Like @OP, I did not play politics. I worked at SAS long enough to establish a reputation for productivity. For that reason, when I got under a toxic manager, other managers were willing to pick me up.
Of course luck plays a role in all our lives. My luck was that during most of my career, SAS was growing, so it was easy to escape the bad managers. There was always a new project starting up.
It’s not so easy now. I think when people much younger than myself get stuck under a horrible manager, they’re pretty well stuck.
@mf and @OP are coming from different experiences, with understandably different points of view.
Who called that you would rationalise your way to knowing more about me than me.
I never said there is no luck involved. You are lucky to have been born in a place with opportunities to shine.
There is some parts luck in everything in life.
But according to you myself (and people like me) were LUCKY!
Possibly because you need to explain why you perhaps haven’t done as well? It can’t possibly be ability, motivation, drive? I honestly don’t know because I don’t know you and as such can’t know for sure.
If you are in position where you aren’t getting your due then you either bull through it and force change or you change to somewhere else where you don’t feel under-utilised.
Or acknowledge that sometimes you are the problem and it isn’t fair to blame everything around you. Take responsibility.
Again way to dump on positive sentiment that was upvoted by a lot of people who probably feel the same way.
You do not want to believe that luck played a role in your success. That’s okay, that’s an expected and human response.
For those open to the topic of luck and the role it plays in our lives, please see these videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nm75Fz6D5nA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LopI4YeC4I
@pq “ I’m not going to convince you. You played your politics well with no luck involved. Carry on.”
I’m about the least political person you would ever meet at SAS so don’t know where that came from. Actually I do. You made it up just like when you said I (and others) were LUCKY. You form a lot of opinions about someone you don’t even know the identity of.
Carry on. I’m sure you’ll rationalise it such that you know more about me than me.
I’m not going to convince you. You played your politics well with no luck involved. Carry on.
Gratitude seems like a quiet activity. Why come on the anonymous flame net to announce it?
@mf “ You were LUCKY. Lucky to be able to just do your job competently while avoiding managers who were chaotic train wrecks. Not all of us were so lucky.”
It wasn’t bragging. It was expressing thankfulness.
You haven’t the first clue what my career was or was not…
It was certainly not a byproduct of LUCK. Intent, purpose and action go a long way. Plenty of other can attest to it also.
There were bad situations at SAS and one of big companies. In both situations was able to move out of bad situations into good situations.
Does it really chafe you that much to see other who have been successful and are thankful for stable, lucrative opportunities which most people don’t have access to?
The original post was disingenuous performative bragging; like loudly announcing you are adding $500 to the church collection plate.
You had a great career. Great! You were LUCKY. Lucky to be able to just do your job competently while avoiding managers who were chaotic train wrecks. Not all of us were so lucky.
@j0 I wondered how long it would take people to pi-s all over a factual but positive post.
This is why some of you can’t have nice things
Ok Boomer. Run along now to the senior center.
This forum continues to illustrate the variety of experiences people had at SAS Institute.
If your goal was to earn enough to support your family and reach retirement — and if you started early enough — and if you had good managers — then you are truly thankful, with fond memories of SAS as a Great Place to Work.
If you made it to retirement in spite of horrible managers, you may have achieved your goal with mixed feelings about the place.
If your goal was to build great software, the politics would stop you every time. That poor product quality is why the company is laying off now. You may feel more frustration with SAS than thankfulness.
Finally, if you are one of the people who got laid off or pushed out, of course you are not thankful, not at all. All you can do now is move on from your bad experience.
At SAS, the quality of the managers, the technology, and the people varied widely. So of course people’s experiences varied widely. We should all try to have sympathy and understanding for each other’s varying points of view.
Oh so you didnt work at SAS then? LOL!
How exactly can a positive post about a persons positive experience get downvotes? You opposed to the things they were thankful for?
@fh what?
Please include the Executive Management team on your annual Christmas Newsletter. They may be aloof and distant in person, but deep down, they want to feel as if they are a part of your family’s journey through life.
I am likewise thankful
@ar obviously. Literally read the room.
@OP+1kb3c1fzg
Is that company SAS?
🙏🙏🙏