Thread regarding SAS Institute layoffs

Not to beat a dead horse -- but for any long-time employees still hoping to get "rewarded" from the IPO, consider how these 44 testers were "rewarded" for their 20+ (in some cases 25+) years at SAS.

I guess it doesn't hurt to dream, but it's unlikely to be anything but just that. (And I'm saying this as someone who continues to be grateful for a nice career at SAS.)

This post, and others in that thread, discuss the reprehensible act performed by reprehensible creatures.

https://www.thelayoff.com/post/@qkdq+1nEDyXdA

"I heard that the testers that were let go were informed by a recording akin to a robocall. They all got 10AM meeting request at 9PM the day before and when they went to the meeting it was a recording and their direct managers had no knowledge of what was happening. This sounds awful. Can anybody confirm this sequence of events? I find it hard to believe."

I have it from a reputable source that this is largely accurate. The meeting was for 9 AM, and the request went out late the previous day. At least half of the 8-minute meeting was clearly recorded, and possibly all of it was. Direct managers found out through the grapevine after their reports were already laid off.

I heard that the testers that were let go were informed by a recording akin to a robocall. They all got 10AM meeting request at 9PM the day before and when they went to the meeting it was a recording and their direct managers had no knowledge of what was happening. This sounds awful. Can anybody confirm this sequence of events? I find it hard to believe.

"... I am disappointed that he made that remark in a recording that is available to all employees and while in front of the entirety of R&D. At best, it seems to be a violation of confidentiality, and I would hope that there is an HR policy against it. At worst, it seems slanderous, especially if it is untrue for even one of those people. None of them are given an equal platform to respond to the accusation ..."

What a great observation! Unfortunately, SAS Executives are not known for their business acumen or discretion. It seems this one is no exception.

@eifg+1nAfoEPz

"I know several of the laid-off testers. They are quite competent to enhance their skills.

The vast majority of testers laid off were either Senior or Principal level."

This. I can't speak for everyone but the ones that I talked to and who were affected by this round of layoffs are some of the most competent people I know at SAS, and spent most of the past ten years on high-performing teams who were critical to the success of SAS 9 and Viya. You'd think that's exactly the kind of talent the company would want to retain.

I suspect the real reason for the layoffs had nothing to do with job skills, and everything to do with seniority. Someone who's been at SAS for 25, 30 years and rewarded for their competence and contribution is probably making pretty good money. Getting rid of 50 or so probably saved the company 10 - 15 million dollars in compensation and benefits.

And, of course, the nepotism and rank favoritism that senior management at SAS bases almost all promotion and other "strategic realignment" decisions on was almost certainly a factor.

I know several of the laid-off testers. They are quite competent to enhance their skills.

The vast majority of testers laid off were either Senior or Principal level.

"It would have been better handled by saying 'the layoffs were made for business reasons.'" That statement would have been not only better handling, but also true.

"Bryan mentioned during the R&D town hall today that 44 were let go last week. Essentially said in 2019 everyone in R&D went through a training series to widen and enhance skills, and those that were let go didn’t enhance their skills over that time period…"

I am disappointed that he made that remark in a recording that is available to all employees and while in front of the entirety of R&D. At best, it seems to be a violation of confidentiality, and I would hope that there is an HR policy against it. At worst, it seems slanderous, especially if it is untrue for even one of those people. None of them are given an equal platform to respond to the accusation.

It would have been better handled by saying "the layoffs were made for business reasons that cannot be detailed due to privacy - come and speak to me or your manager if you have concerns about your personal future at SAS".

"Can someone elaborate on the comment made by BH at the end of the townhall saying the layoffs were a result of some training that wasn’t completed a few years ago?"

Maybe this, posted earlier in this thread?

@5lja+1nAfoEPz

https://www.thelayoff.com/post/@5lja+1nAfoEPz

Can someone elaborate on the comment made by BH at the end of the townhall saying the layoffs were a result of some training that wasn’t completed a few years ago? What training? And was the training literally not completed or was the knowledge just not being demonstrated in their work?

I was hoping that this layoff would have an explanation like the 2% layoff in May. In that one, SAS announced that it would maintain the function of the laid-off sales and support staff, by using channel partners.

This layoff does not seem to include any plan to maintain the function of the laid-off testers. So indeed it looks like simple cost-cutting:
"the company needs money and needs to lower the average age of its employees"

As the previous poster suggested, this would make sense if it is part of a larger plan that includes "elimination of legacy/low margin products". If I were working on such a product, I'd be making my own plans now.

From a senior manager, you must realize what position the company is at this moment. Sales could be better and there will be an IPO next year. plain and simple, the company needs money and needs to lower the average age of its employees to be a more attractive IPO.

That's true. But is this being explained to employees as a change in practice, such as you describe?

If so, it's a reasonable change. But otherwise, if I'm a developer who just lost my tester, I've got all sorts of morale problems :-(

"Yes, we paid these people for 20 years -- but that was a mistake; we've suddenly realized that our software doesn't need testing"?"

Some of the testing mentality at SAS evolved from their old QA model. I suspect remnants of this thinking remain though even after moving to SDET titles, etc..

There is a model of software engineering that doesn't use testers as a formal job title. This occurs mostly with infrastructure like operating systems components, network, communications software and database internals. The level of knowledge required to do testing is sufficiently deep that engineering teans cover it themselves. A lot of the most profitable parts of SAS are like this. Have any viable CI/CD pipeline makes this even more attractive.

The engineers are expected to write tests that validate every aspect of their code prior to checking the code in -- it's literally part of their job. There are rigorous iterative peer/team code reviews. When code is a git branch commits the new tests must be present. The branch then goes through a full set of integration tests (part of CI/CD) prior to being merged onto the main branch.

SAS R&D is already doing a lot of this, and maybe a decision was made to reduce formal testing positions in favor of putting more of the direct testing burden on developers. This kind of makes sense if your whole organization is going to a retrenchment mode, where there will be elimination of legacy/low margin products, consolidation on strategic products that are making money and fewer features added overall.

I know half a dozen of the testers laid off. All had been at SAS 20+ years. All were competent -- certainly competent to write automated tests, if that were the issue.

There are no open testing positions. So how is this being explained to the employees?

"Yes, we paid these people for 20 years -- but that was a mistake; we've suddenly realized that our software doesn't need testing"?

"I believe you mean to say that the management that actually had any clue as to the skills and value of the tester had no say in it."

Yes, correct. The testers' direct managers and at least 1 or 2 levels above that weren't consulted. And I'm sure some of you will assume this must be coming from a disgruntled and "old" tester, but nope. Instead, this is coming from a developer who works with these people every day. Maybe some of the people in R&D who were let go were under-performers, I don't know. But I do know some were not!

"Definitely many more than the 25 the original poster mentioned, and the numbers continue to grow even today. In my department, the most valuable tester was let go. And by far the least valuable tester was not. Management had no say in it."

I believe you mean to say that the management that actually had any clue as to the skills and value of the tester had no say in it.

I'm not saying that hard decisions don't sometimes have to be made ... but we are seeing a lot of very good folks being let go based on decisions from people who don't have the first clue about their value to the company.

I heard ~40 testers, plus a few in other departments.

All of the laid off testers that I know were Senior or Principal level.

Definitely many more than the 25 the original poster mentioned, and the numbers continue to grow even today. In my department, the most valuable tester was let go. And by far the least valuable tester was not. Management had no say in it.

From @6thg+1nAfoEPz

"What a demeaning term... you doofuses DO realize that before you can automate a test for a UI you have to know how it works - right???"
_________
So does one demeaning term deserve another?

Many of us observed a lot of ineffective testing across multiple releases for years and years. Some testers were not skilled enough to even ask the correct questions to get started on relatively simple problems.

We are talking about an R&D organization, working with highly educated (PhD/post docs in math or computer science) or otherwise highly skilled (based on a combination of education, talent and experience) Developers and more senior Testers spent a lot of time, handholding these folks and even doing their work for them.

From what I understand most of the folks who were let go last week were among these more senior Testers, who are highly skilled and often helped out. Maybe the truly underskilled who seemed to consistently need handholding were already winnowed?

But you are correct pointing out that this was/is a management problem. SAS gets what it pays for -- true of UI/UX testing frameworks, testing staff in general and certainly Developers.

@5lja+1nAfoEPz - Thanks so much for posting this. I came here to try and say the same thing, but there is no need to because you said it accurately and completely! I know for a fact that several of those let go WERE doing SDET work along with Test Engineer work - as their management asked them to do. They were doing the EXACT SAME work at the EXACT SAME LEVEL as those beside them who are still employed.

Senior management has failed to define and direct the middle-management as to how to implement their goals of automated testing. Yes there are some areas and some teams who have gone deeply into that methodology. But others - particularly app groups where there applications are largely UI based - there has been NO direction and NO clear implementation of automated testing. In fact, at least one year into this initiative, the company ditched the UI test automation software it had been using in favor of a cheaper product - resulting in teams having to start over from scratch to learn and re-write all the tests they had already produced. This is after years of frustration when attempting to do automated UI testing, because the UI applications were not written with the correct sort of tags for UI elements required by the UI testing software. And all this time software was still going out the door and still had to be tested - and the only way to do it was for "button pushers" to test. What a demeaning term... you doofuses DO realize that before you can automate a test for a UI you have to know how it works - right???

I gotta go let my blood pressure go down. But thanks to @5lja+1nAfoEPz for your post!

“wow, internally SAS is so much like IBM” … a long-term (in multiple installments) IBMer who eventually did a tour working for SAS.

There are many comments about training, and either taking it or not taking it, being more attractive to other employers, etc. This post won't make you feel any better, but it may help you look at things from a different perspective so you understand the game.

Keep a close watch on IBM so you can understand what new game will be foisted upon you. From what I've seen over my career, IBM comes up with these new work transformation schemes, then hits the conference circuit to tout their grand achievement. The garden variety power players at SAS see these presentations and then work to apply the same transformation at SAS so they can build their own little kingdoms (and cover their incompetence). This is my opinion after seeing a department carefully built over 20 years become quickly decimated by political second-handers introducing one of these schemes.

There's a presentation by Diane Gherson of IBM HR that talks about the changing roles of analytics and HR Business Partners. It's out on YouTube and its worth a watch. In that video, Ms. Gherson talks about how IBM is using analytics internally to track employee training and development so that HR can "score" employees on their "freshness" and marketability outside the organization. In addition, they also score employees on a variety of other features, such as collaboration, contact breadth, helpfulness in written correspondence, and skill development. The particular video I watched focused on skill development, learning, and competitiveness with external competitors.

The bright folks at IBM are asking employees to gain skills on their own time, and not expect any training from IBM. Those who do so, and update the HR database (Workday, for example), are rescored on their "freshness", and competitiveness. If the outside market wants these skills, then these skills must be valuable, the thinking goes. It doesn't matter if the skills are relevant to your current job, as long as they are relevant in the same sector. This increases your "freshness" score. Not retraining risks becoming "spoiled goods" to be thrown out in the next cleaning cycle.

It seems a cleaning cycle just occurred. Unfortunately, this is the new game that the modern world is in.

Historically, SAS funded little or no education. As another poster has written, most of us trained ourselves "on our own dime and our own time".

“ I would've benefited much more taking Udemy courses going deeper in Kubernetes, git, advanced Linux shell and system cmds, etc."

What stopped you? If that would have benefited you more... Did you go consume that content as well?”

Yes, did Udemy/books/blogs, etc. on my own time/dime. Just saying the time doing SAS-mandated CA/internal training would’ve been better spent on courses specific to my professional needs, scheduled in increments so the learning could be applied in my day-to-day work. Suspect this is true for most employees. However, that doesn’t appease the corporate game of appearances.

My post-SAS employer provides Enterprise Udemy and I did more there.

"I would've benefited much more taking Udemy courses going deeper in Kubernetes, git, advanced Linux shell and system cmds, etc."

What stopped you? If that would have benefited you more... Did you go consume that content as well?

@5lja+1nAfoEPz - You are spot on with respect to the training. 90+ percent worthless with no opportunities for many folks to put into practice.

SAS has given me a great career, but I have to say, blaming the people (at least the 2 that I knew professionally working with at SAS for 20+ years) for not taking advantage of training opportunities offered is complete bull-cr-p.

And to do so in front of their colleagues days after being laid off was outrageous. And to have a party after just leaves me speechless. I've always been proud of SAS. Not proud of this episode.

"The whole "they're SDETs that can't SDET" thing is cover for management failure: not being able to determine what knowledge, skills, and abilities it needs to accomplish its objectives, inflexibility and inability to respond to change, and failure to actively engage employees with training and growth opportunities directly relevant to their work for the company."

Spot on conclusion to a realistic assessment of the facts. Much of that training was irrelevant and the time window management set to complete it made most of the training a waste of time.

The rationalization was "give all of R&D broad exposure to how modern Tech outside SAS does things, even if they never use it". The problem is most of us needed very focused training modules spread over time so that we could integrate what was learned into our work. Many of us we're already doing this on our own (often on our own time and our own dime).

Employee should've been able to customize training to THEIR needs. Most of the courses I've seen on Udemy are better quality than Cloud Academy (my guess is CA was cheaper than enterprise Udemy). The "hodgepodge" of internally developed materials had a few decent nuggets in it, but not sure if most was relevant to the majority of R&D.

I would've benefited much more taking Udemy courses going deeper in Kubernetes, git, advanced Linux shell and system cmds, etc.

A long-standing problem within SAS R&D is the notion that management has more wisdom on want employees need than the actual Devs and Testers. All the employee surveys in the world don't matter if individuals are not empowered as a result.

The whole fiasco was a management fail for sure.

This site is too public for more details but I believe what was mentioned today was a "skills assessment" not training. Go over to blind and look for a thread called R&D Performance Eval with some good info.

"Bryan mentioned during the R&D town hall today that 44 were let go last week. Essentially said in 2019 everyone in R&D went through a training series to widen and enhance skills, and those that were let go didn’t enhance their skills over that time period…"

And you believed him? He's lying. The "training series" he's referring to was a hodge-podge of Cloud Academy and SAS LMS courses with no immediate or direct relevance to the work being done for either SAS 9 or Viya for, like, 90 percent of R&D. I was there and put in my 168 hours (on 1X even) like everyone else on the team. I had no need to know (for example) anything about Gherkin as a test harness because it wasn't being used anywhere in SAS R&D, and there was no roadmap or mandate to transition to Gherkin as a test harness.

All of the training was like that: no relevance to work, no way to get there from here, and no mandate. When I asked about something relevant, like Azure certification due to the company's sudden focus on "do Azure" after the Microsoft partnership was announced, I was told in no uncertain terms: "No". Why? Because cloud skills are directly relevant and more importantly portable, and make you a more attractive employee for a potential competitor.

The people who were let go had no say in the job family they eventually ended up in, unless they were hired into that job family (unlikely for 25+ year veterans with all the changes recently), or specifically left a position at SAS for another position at SAS in the job family they had on the day they were escorted off campus. If they were just shuffled around during the last n R&D re-orgs, their job family was decided by HR trying to fit everyone into an organizational structure some senior director, vice president, or, yes, CTO said they couldn't succeed without.

The whole "they're SDETs that can't SDET" thing is cover for management failure: not being able to determine what knowledge, skills, and abilities it needs to accomplish its objectives, inflexibility and inability to respond to change, and failure to actively engage employees with training and growth opportunities directly relevant to their work for the company.

"Bryan mentioned during the R&D town hall today that 44 were let go last week. Essentially said in 2019 everyone in R&D went through a training series to widen and enhance skills, and those that were let go didn’t enhance their skills over that time period…"

That's complete BS. We were all asked to complete Cloud Academy training, which we did. The fact is 90% of what was in those courses had absolutely nothing to do with our jobs. We were never told what skills we were supposed to be learning. Brian can peddle his lies all he wants but the people who know what really happened will see him for the liar he is.

Bryan mentioned during the R&D town hall today that 44 were let go last week. Essentially said in 2019 everyone in R&D went through a training series to widen and enhance skills, and those that were let go didn’t enhance their skills over that time period…

Oh wait.....it was a reference to the Big BIrd with the photography sideline, right?
I'm a little slow.

I also know of a guy (different guy!) who was rumored to have been fired for taking photos in inappropriate places and thought for a minute you might have THAT story.

Nevermind....

You never saw the "photos" before they were all taken down?

'the Photographer'

Sounds like a good story. Please tell.

Long enough to remember the time before "the Photographer".

Just curious, how many years were you at SAS experiencing the Potemkin nightmare?

It took about a year after leaving SAS to realize that my role was simply to play a Potemkin villager within a Potemkin state. Trying to be effective was to go against the script. And people wonder why SAS is failing and people are being let go?

Folks, wake up from the Potemkin nightmare. SAS has long passed it's arc of relevance. It will not return. Gotterdammerung and all that. (My guess is that the know-it-all poster experienced Gotterdammerung in the original theater.)

so true, @4oos+1nAfoEPz

I was targeted by a trio of managers (mine, hers, and his) up to the VP level. They made my life h-ll, previous glowing reviews by other managers be d-mned. I thank them now. I left for another position in a completely different industry and could not be happier. I make twice my SAS salary, enjoy the freedom to work where and when I please, and contribute as a consultant to a valuable industry, biopharma. If my experience can teach you anything, it's don't be afraid of change. It comes whether you like it or not.

"Have some decency to recognize that these were real people just like you"

That's right. I always remember, "There but for the grace of God go I". With a simple change in management or "realignment with priorities" you too can be told that your contribution to the company has no value, that the reward for your loyalty and hard work is a cold, corporate calculation, that you did not in fact earn the title the company bestowed upon you, and that 20+ years of positive performance appraisals and feedback from your peers and management is ultimately the foundation for the Big Lie that "your position, regrettably, is one of those which will be eliminated".