Pros
Dr. Goodnight has the ultimate respect of employees for his vision in analytics and his utopian family like work environment. It is the place on the face of the earth that has the highest concentration of analytics minded people. To many of those people, I for one, SAS is home.
Cons
Most people, abusing Dr. Goodnight’s kindness and trust, slacks in their work. When a slacking developer’s manager is competent and hard-working, the developer could be curbed and managed. Unfortunately, the manager himself slacks and lacks the morality and authority to manage. So the team has the weekly prolonged gossipy meeting, they go out for two hour lunch break, they complain and agree on the hurdles to do more work, they SLACK together! What’s cancerous about the slacking managers are their effects on the competent and hard-working developers. If your slacking manager constantly take credit for your idea and hard work, if you’re passed over for pay raise and promotion because you don’t want to condescend yourself to get cozy with the slacking manager whom you ultimately despise, you have two options: either leave SAS, or reduce your working hour for SAS and spend your energy on personal projects to get even. A vicious circle results. Ambitious and competent developers are driven out of SAS. What’s left are bunch of mediocre willing or unwilling slackers. Yes I lost trust in senior executives, but not on the analytics or technology front. I lost trust in senior executives for their ability to recognize and willingness to correct the slacking culture here at SAS. Or, being part of the problem, the VP’s are slacking themselves?