SAS Institute Reviews

Current Employee – been working at SAS Institute full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Company has great benefits and work life balance.

Cons – Not a sales focused organization. Can make more money elsewhere.

Advice to Senior Management – Comp plans are complicated and sales management culture needs to be improved

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at SAS Institute full-time

Pros – Good community, good R&D budget, good chance for development

Cons – Blinded by internal processes
A bit of a cult

Advice to Senior Management – Look for more diversity and encourage innovation through mangement levels to employees.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at SAS Institute full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Everyone's skills are put to use. Each employee is given the chance to find a place to contribute and feel like they are valuable to the company's success. The culture at SAS encourages employees to care about their work instead of treating it like just a means to a paycheck which I think contributes to a lot of the company's innovation

Cons – There are a lot of project teams within the company that don't communicate or sometimes even know of each other's existence and so many times work is repeated unnecessarily and many products have heavily overlapping functionality. Also, SAS tends to concede to the customers desires even when the customer's request is vague and fulfilling it can be detrimental to the overall software offering. This is pretty common for a company with fewer large customers but it can be an obstacle to the quality of the products at times.

Advice to Senior Management – There needs to be either a very clear path laid out for employees to follow or there needs to be less concern about about retaliation when voicing concerns about the company direction to higher level management. Having very loose goals and no easy way to clarify or direct those goals leads to a lot of our current inefficiency.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at SAS Institute full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Amazing workplace culture, flexible work environment, challenging/stimulating work, customer-focused. The formula works.

Cons – none that I have experienced.

Advice to Senior Management – Keep doing what you're doing. Flexible management, not micro-managers (in my experience), encourage opportunities for growth.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at SAS Institute full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – Benefits are very good although I do not partake of all. Flexible work schedule.

Cons – Job transfers and promotions limited.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at SAS Institute full-time for more than a year

Pros – great benefits, great environment (most people get their own offices), 35 hour work week.

Cons – -Not a great place for young people. Entry level positions are rarely posted, it's hard to move around.
-Many of the benefits are geared towards middle-aged to older. (ie daycare).
-Pay is below average.

Advice to Senior Management – Create newer programs and opportunities for younger people...and hire more of them!

Current Employee – been working at SAS Institute as an intern for more than a year

Pros – - Friendly people, hands-off management
- Low pressure environment, good for less experienced interns
- Great work life balance, managers are understanding of the need for flexible schedules
- Opportunities to upgrade summer internship to year-round

Cons – - Work is not as challenging as other areas; interns don't really get as interesting projects

Former Employee – worked at SAS Institute full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Absolutely has great benefits, which I appreciate more now after I've left. Generally really good people and interesting problems.

Cons – Slow salary growth - you'll never see your core salary grow much even when you're promoted. There's little collaberation across departments and it can be near impossible to get the support you need from others unless you have a really good network. It's a long process to learn the company and start to have any significant influence.

Advice to Senior Management – You are losing a ton of young, promising leaders because they do not get an opportunity to advance quickly. Give people big projects that demand performance and reward those who do!

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at SAS Institute

Pros – Work-life Balance. I worked out at lunch every day!

Cons – Hard to move a round

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at SAS Institute full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Campus-like environment with many on-site services: gym, day care, cafeterias, etc.
Very low employee turn-over
Good internal resources for self-motivated people
Private offices for employees (not cubicles)
Good work/life balance

Cons – Very complex software with a lot of history
Lower than industry-standard salaries
Very slow to make decisions

Advice to Senior Management – Become more agile and allow innovation to happen more quickly. It seems that many decisions are made for non-technical, non-business reasons. That is, many decisions are made for so-called political reasons. This makes SAS seem to be a place where employees need to "learn their place" in the pack and fear making suggestions that are technically good or are good business thoughts, but go against old-time employees who want to continue doing things their way. SAS is a remarkable place to work, but it would be better if technical/business merit trumped political capital.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company