Did everyone enjoy the training on employee disengagement?
How can SAS expect people to be highly engaged when it's clear company goals won't be met which means smaller or no bonuses, fewer or no promotions or raises.... more money for the big cheeses and endless building up of interns and enthusiasm for hiring young people but none of either for anyone else.
Yay SAS.
@1ms this is accurate.
I worked myself into the ground for my first 13 years here. But I could not advance because practically all the same people who were in charge of my area are still in charge today. Same managers and directors for 20 plus years.
The flip side of "stability" for 30, 40, 50 years is lack of opportunity for advancement. It's so demotivating for high performers and you end up feeling like a su---r working harder to carry your less capable teammates. I sure did.
Also demotivating is the recent effort to reduce the number of employees at principal level and higher. Try to make a lateral move to escape gridlock or a bad situation and you lose a level or two but they still expect principal level work from a senior or even a base level employee.
Only here would this be acceptable or accepted. Employees at Cisco or SAP or Databricks or wherever would never stand for it. I wish I had left when I still could have left.
Watching the rules be bent for well connected people over the years has been tough. I do my job but I don't run myself ragged anymore. Why would I? I'm apparently too old to ever advance.
Stay here long enough and it seems a person can actually become furniture.
@1re Holy sh-t. We probably agree on almost all those points. But the delivery by the extremes (on both sides) is horrible. You sound like a truly horrible person no matter how “right” you might be.
This isn’t the forum in any case. People should stop injecting this sh-t into every possible topic of conversation.
@1qm ah, the maggot has arrived!
What r u paying for gas these days? How’s your grocery bill? Deficit is what now, or doesn’t that matter now? Getting tired of all this winning on the economy yet?
I am out of the loop, please do reply with whatever your favorite propaganda source defining your reality is telling u. Is it still “short term pain, long term gains”, blah blah blah?
"About 700,000 people died as a result of Elon’s foreign aid cuts."
Someone needs to branch out from consuming only Fake News.
@1ms Then why bring up Elon in SAS Layoffs forum?
@1mp Agreed. SAS is not comparable to Elon. SAS never caused deaths.
SAS offered a fair deal: 35-hour weeks, good benefits, salaries not competitive, but enough to raise kids and make it to retirement. I never blamed the 35-hour-a-week people for taking a good deal.
However, there were plenty of 45-hour-a-week people who deserved promotion and did not get it. The company declined because it stifled innovation and did not reward hard work.
@1ma And what exactly does this have to do with this conversation? Doesn’t really seem like the right forum.
About 700,000 people died as a result of Elon’s foreign aid cuts.
These funds could have been phased out. But he made his cuts without allowing time to find other sources of food and medicine. So the people died.
@1fv surf,serf,smurf?
The fact thst your pay would be “embarrassing” for 45 is probably reflective of your work ethic. My pay would most certainly not be embarrassing for 45. Weird how that works.
And @1fs is right that you sound like an entitled brat. AD HOMINEM ATTACK!!!
What % of US population happily work 60 hours for your salary/benefits? What % of world population?
Maybe be grateful and don’t take things for granted. Most have it far worse than you….
As for whether I’m “a fan of Elon” that is a bizarre question with no bearing on anything being discussed here. But I’ll say I’m a huge fan of some of the improbable things he has accomplished (tesla, starlink, spacex). Not a fan of his foray into politics and who he showed himself to be. But at the end of the day his net effect on humanity is a positive.
I am saddened by @1fv's cynicism, as it does not describe the company I loved. Back in the day, we were happy to arrive at SAS, and happy to work over 40 hours per week.
There is nobility in good work for a good purpose. SAS built a good product; that's why it lasted 50+ years. And some SAS customers are working to cure cancer.
Rational management would lay off 35-hour people and promote 45-hour people. But I would not bet money on that happening.
Nobody should blame people for taking a deal that was offered. SAS offered 35-hour weeks, plus other benefits, in compensation for lower salaries. It was a fair deal.
However, it is one reason for the company's decline. People don't work as hard, so development and sales move more slowly that at competing companies. Hence SAS has layoffs
@1fs “You sound rather like a spoiled and entitled brat”
Not entitled, you must have missed “That was the agreement when I started at the company”. We’re not curing cancer here (at least I’m not), there is nothing noble in what we produce. In many, many cases it’s the opposite.
You’d of been a great surf.
"Compensation is “adequate” for 35, would be down right embarrassing for 45. I have better things to do with my time than donate to a billionaire."
You sound rather like a spoiled and entitled brat. There have been a lot people way smarter and way more capable than you down through the centuries who simply haven't had the opportunities you have. At some point you might consider feeling gratitude rather than arrogance.
@170 “ I work 45 hours a week regularly in R&D”
I work 35. That was the agreement when I started at the company. Compensation is “adequate” for 35, would be down right embarrassing for 45. I have better things to do with my time than donate to a billionaire. You do you and I’ll do me.
@170 curious if you are you a fan of Elon?
@170 “ I work 45 hours a week regularly in R&D”.
5 gold stars and an atta boy from your manager.
@11b I work 45 hours a week regularly in R&D. If sh-t needs done then it needs done…. And frankly they pay me enough that I sure am not going to do the bare minimum needed to get by. Even if they weren't paying me very well I would do more than bare minimum. Because…. Work ethic, pride, etc.
Failing is tough, and HR's whole job is making sure nobody has to. It's them trying to close the gap between what we want to be and what we actually are... which, no offence, is pretty much how cults operate too. SAS HR is always cooking up some new solution, and I can't imagine how rough it must be for them, telling everyone to keep smiling while they're getting walked toward the cliff edge. Same deal as the whole 35-hours-a-week debate. The only group consistently going over 35 was JB's hosting team, and in R&D we'd be pretty steamed if somebody asked us to help support a customer over the Christmas shutdown. Like, come on, it's a shutdown. I hear some teams are doing a full 40 a week... is that actually true? I bet the long-timers miss the days when HR was optional at SAS. If you know, you know.
@sh r&d Q3 career conversation “training” talks about engagement.
@nh I still have no idea what you all are talking about.
If you got asked to do a training on being more engaged you should definitely worry about…
.
Yeah it was weird. If it's such a problem that you need to train people not to be disengaged something is wrong.
@bf Databricks does what SAS cannot: they build on top of Open Source.
It is the Innovator's Dilemma. If SAS built on top of Open Source, they'd cannibalize existing sales.
The only way for SAS to compete is to go where Open Source is not, to offer features that Open Source does not.
That requires innovation.
Sycophants and incompetents can't do that. Innovation requires high-end talent.
To attract high-end talent, you must pay for it, and offer equity.
SAS won't, so they don't, so they are where they are.
@gg I’m not denying anything. There have been a lot of layoffs in big tech.
But you seem to be denying the reality that most of you complaining about how bad it is talk about how bad the job market is but you haven’t actually tried your hand at it. Job market was smoking hot just a few years ago.
The vast majority of you just don't try… Easier to complain than own your own destiny.
There have been ~175,000 tech layoffs this year. There were similar numbers in each of the preceding four years.
Does that have the "ring of truth?" It is truth. It's a verifiable fact. The tech industry is not the golden ticket it used to be.
By all means, dissatisfied employees should explore the job market. But to suggest that they can easily leave denies reality.
@ft I’ll take that deflection to mean you haven't actually tried. Shocking.
Downvote this all you want. We all know it has the ring of truth to it.
@f8 Of course you can.
Have you actually tried finding a different job or is this just what you hear?
Action over words
Most people cannot "leave in a heartbeat". For technical folks, the job market stinks.
@et I make an impact. I most certainly do not just “collect a paycheck”.
I take pride in the fact that I care and go above and beyond to improve things where I can.
For the things I can’t change I speak my mind to the folks that can change it and that is all I can do. I don’t let it detract from all the good things.
Again…. If you think it is that much of a shotshow then why stay?
I truly don’t understand that. If I was as miserable as some of you sound I would leave in a heartbeat.
Uh, 'Great' response.
The issue here is that people work at SAS genuinely care both about quality of the products and of the work environment. Both of those objectives have been completely lost in the past ten year by terrible senior leadership, and the software people know it. These leaders spew out their misguided acronyms and hype at every Town Hall gathering trying to whip up enthusiasm for their dead products and ideals. We are losing because of them. Pure and simple
Yes SAS software people do actually care, but apparently you just deserve your status quo where just collect your paycheck while the company continues its slow death into the technology abyss. The management and their direction have not worked for several years. Try to understand and actually make an impact.
Engagement should be entirely self-driven, I suppose.
🥾👅
Engagement? Engagement?! Why, it’s my middle name!
Not related to disengagement but how does anyone on our senior management team still have a job? We are getting crushed in the marketplace, our goals have been set so unrealistically that the sales force (that hasn’t already left), is just laughing at our horrible leadership and the lack of strategy we have in place while trying to blow smoke up our A$$e$ as if we don’t understand what is happening in the industry. Databricks just had a valuation of $190B during their last funding round in July and our (lack of) management team has absolutely no competitive sales strategy and tries to ignore that we are getting crushed! Has JG just given up and going to let these clowns continue on or is someone finally going to step up and start setting a strategy and direction to right the ship or sell off the pieces and get it over with once and for all. It has now become an embarrassment in the marketplace. And please, don’t start with the, “how many $3b companies do you personally own”? This is no longer about the employees but instead about our lack of senior leadership that has failed so miserably!
@OP Sounds like you would be happier elsewhere. Make it happen. Be brave. Take that first step.
@OP maybe they only made disengaged people take it. Never heard of it.
Employee disengagement training? I must not have been paying attention, because I don't remember seeing anything about this.