
At a Software Powerhouse, the Good Life Is Under Siege - peter123
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/business/22sas.html?_r=1
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hyperbovine
I think the article misses an important point: SAS is a generational thing,
and the influence of generation that cut their teeth on SAS and VAX mainframes
in the 1980s is waning. There's a reason why the SAS ads you see in the
airports are all targeted at management--because that's where all those people
work now. And soon they will retire.

They would never dare advertise to the poor analysts who are forced to
actually _use_ SAS to get work done, because we know what turd it is. I do not
think I exaggerate when I say that not a single up-and-coming statistician in
this day and age chooses expensive, obfuscated SAS as the language with which
to hone their skills. It is truly the worst language I have ever had the
misfortune of being forced to learn (by an old professor, who knew SAS and
refused to learn anything else.) Somebody back me up here.

There are a few areas where SAS is unrivaled--it can crunch huge data and
exploit parallel processing better than other off-the-shelf solutions. That
feature gap will close over time as R and other open tools rise in popularity.
And there will always be a niche market for SAS programmers because many
companies have huge libraries of SAS code which run their credit card/oil
rig/whatever analytics, and starting from scratch is not an option. But SAS's
dominance is unquestionably on the decline, and a lot of it has to do with the
fact that next generation a) isn't being trained on SAS and b) doesn't want to
be.

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physcab
I haven't seen SAS code before. I'll take your word that it's ugly. However,
if SAS can adopt new standards, I hardly see them waning. Companies will
always be thirsty for better ways to understand their customers, and now with
the ease at which new internet companies are started and more people become
connected, the demand for those services is only going to increase. If SAS can
continue to outperform by investing in R&D and adopt new ways to bring in
fresh talent (ie use more open-source tools) to keep them ahead of the curve,
they'll do just fine.

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zzleeper
It's not ugly. It's hideous. I use Stata (commercial) and R (free), and both
have a much better language.

The only reason why people I know use SAS is to deal with very-big datasets
directly, instead of having to partition the data by hand.

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earl
To be fair, SAS for stats has been dead for a decade. Their "state of the art"
lags R by at least that much...

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physcab
I really enjoyed that article. The active M&A in business intelligence
software companies shows just how big Big Data is for business, and how big
the market is for new startups to tailor specific techniques for niche
industries. However, now that the secret is out, its going to be more
difficult to prove that your secret sauce is superior than your competitors.
The winners in this market will be those who can deliver results fast, and be
nimble enough to account for the elastic nature of Big datasets.

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tom_b
BI software and enterprise software in general is a huge opportunity for
startups - I know PG and YC had it as one of the RFS listings at one point.

I'm not sure that the winners will be those can deliver results fast and
exhibit quick adaptability. In general, I agree that the Hacker News community
is more than technically capable enough to do better than the big BI
offerings. But I've been surprised (or shown my naivete if you prefer) at how
much "old school" networking still accounts for sales in this space. To
succeed, you are aiming at mid-level and higher execs who are used to
(seriously) being wined and dined in a way that I think most hardcore tech
companies would be surprised at.

Figuring out how to circumvent the normal sales channels is probably at least
as important as whatever tech you put in front of people for enterprise
software. I've seen how successful some companies are at simply pushing
software out to their existing customer channel and making $$ off of that.

All that said, and I still have my eye on a little slice of that pie chart . .
.

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utnick
can someone who knows explain what SAS is and why it is useful( without
buzzwords )

Is it a scripting language that deals with data? How is it better than SQL?

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tectonic
I think it's closer to a language for easily expressing and computing
statistics, like R, with a very powerful set of existing methods. Anyone?

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zzleeper
"SPSS, a maker of predictive modeling software"

AFAIK, SPSS mostly runs regressions.. linear, logit, clusters.. and same for
SAS. Calling them "Business Intelligence" appears to me as some BS name to
sound more impressive to mgmt in big firms.

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joe_the_user
One thing that's not mention prominently in the article is that while SAS
provides many perks to its employees, it actually has a history of paying
salaries significantly below industry standards.

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JMiao
could that be a result of a lower cost of living in cary, north carolina?

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tom_b
Not really. IBM has a huge presence, still over 8500+ employees I think and
has traditionally paid at the higher end of software developer salaries on
average. And until Nortel imploded this decade, they were also in the mix as a
top-paying, always-hiring type of place here.

Basically, SAS has always paid significantly less than others in the park
(RTP). I think it's always been pushed as more of a lifestyle place - SAS is
still privately held, so it was supposed to be a little more "sane" than big,
quarterly focused IT companies.

I do know folks who have worked there and have enjoyed significant work
flexibility (eg, working from home from other states) but also have worked
with ex-SAS'ers who left because of what I understand to be a laid-back to the
point of not getting work done atmosphere.

While cost of living is good in NC, here in the Raleigh/Durham/Cary/Chapel
Hill area, it's definitely significantly higher than other places in NC. It's
much cheaper than the biggest metro areas (SV, Boston, NY, DC) but after that
it tends to run higher than you might think, particularly if you are shopping
for homes in areas with "good" school districts.

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ramanujan
The amazing thing about SAS is that it makes R look like a beautifully
designed language. (R is great, but has a LOT of idiosyncracies related to
silly type conversion defaults.)

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10ren
single page please
[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/business/22sas.html?_r=2&#...</a>

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msort
My take-away is that even a great company with great culture to foster
creativity can have serious problem when it grows to a big organization.

It seems creativity happens mostly in little start-ups.

