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SAS Still Rocks
Everyone loves to be number one. According to Fortune mag, SAS is the Best Company to Work For in 2010. This rare gem of a company has been on my list of faves for many years and it amazingly continues to thrive in a rapidly moving industry that’s under constant pressure from competitors like Google, IBM, Microsoft, and open source software organizations.
SAS (pronounced sass) has been on Fortune’s list of Best Companies to Work For every one of the 13 years we’ve been keeping score. But this is the first time SAS is in the No. 1 slot.
CEO Jim Goodnight’s motives aren’t charitable but entirely utilitarian, even a bit Machiavellian. The average tenure at SAS is 10 years; 300 employees have worked 25 or more. Annual turnover was 2% in 2009, compared with the average in the software industry of about 22%. Women make up 45% of its U.S. workforce, which has an average age of 45.
Goodnight says the “wonder” isn’t that his company is so generous, but why other presumably rational corporations are not. Academicians confirm that his policies augment creativity, reduce distraction, and foster intense loyalty — even though SAS isn’t known for paying the highest salaries in its field and even though there are no stock options.
The notion of easy living frustrates those on the inside. “Some may think that because SAS is family-friendly and has great benefits that we don’t work hard,” says Bev Brown, who’s in external communications. “But people do work hard here, because they’re motivated to take care of a company that takes care of them.”
With a “billion dollars in the bank” and another big building going up on campus, Goodnight is continuing to invest. In a company of elite quantitative analysts, he devotes more than a fifth of revenue to R&D. For 33 straight years, SAS’s revenues have gone up — reaching $2.3 billion in 2009, nearly doubling in seven years.
The company that I work for, Sensis Inc., is pretty damn good to its employees too. Just because I’m on a diet doesn’t mean I can’t look at the menu.
Sassy!
The SAS Institute has been one of my favorite software companies to watch over the years. They were like Google before Google. The reason that I’m mentioning SAS is because while I was browsing through my notes, I stumbled upon this quote from a SAS manager:
Nothing corrodes respect between a boss and an employee more quickly than the sense that the boss has no idea what the employee is doing. Managers who understand the work that they oversee can make sure that details don’t slide. At SAS, groups agree on deadlines, and managers understand what their groups do — so unrealistically optimistic promises about time-tables and completion dates are relatively rare.
The quote came from this 2004 article in Fast Company magazine: Sanity Inc. The quote struck a chord with me back then, and it still does now. In my case, I don’t necessarily disrespect a manager that doesn’t know what I’m doing. I disrespect managers who:
- Are apathetic and show no interest in what I’m doing, regardless of whether they know the subject matter or not.
- Don’t ask me how I’m doing, and how they can help me do my job better, regardless of whether they know the subject matter or not.
- Just stop by only when they need to collect status, without wanting to hear about any bureaucratic procedural roadblocks that are, or specific people who are, hindering my progress.
- Pretend to know what I’m doing and make suggestions on what to do next, even though we both know (or, at least I know) that the manager has no clue.
How about you? What causes you to lose respect for your manager(s)?
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D'oh!
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