Pros
SAS provides a lot of resources to get you up to speed at your job and in my experience sets realistic expectations of their employees based on how long you have been in the job. I entered through an academy program which consisted of 4 months of in-class training with very little outside knowledge required. This gave a great foundational knowledge of the different SAS technologies, and while I don't use all of it in my day to day, it is a great way to get introduced to the vast amounts of knowledge within the company and start your network. Your are paid your full salary during this entire time. Work Life balance is great. I have never spent long nights or weekends trying to meet unrealistic deadlines. 40hr work weeks are absolutely the norm for entry level workers, and it seems like more than 40hrs is still fairly rare in mid-level positions. High level responsibility jobs may require some more hours, but doesn't seem to be crazy. The main campus is pristine and everyone gets their own office. The amenities are top notch with 6 cafeterias providing subsidized food. Most lunches cost me $4-$7 dollars and can be anything from a decent salad bar to steak and mashed potatoes. The different cafeteria menus are posted online daily so you have plenty of choices. On-site health care, child care services, and gym are also amazing to have. Healthcare is very good and cheap, my costs are around $80/month for top notch health, dental, and eye care. These benefits are also great for families. The 401(k) match is 6% and offers a lot of investment options. The work culture is laid back so if you want to take over an hour to go to the gym at lunch nobody will be checking your desk right at 1pm to make sure you are back to work. Also, there is no official dress code. Most people do still wear business casual, in my case khakis and a polo most days, but shorts and t-shirts are not frowned upon, especially if you are in a non-client facing role. Job security is almost 100% assured, even in the middle of a pandemic and rescission our CEO has promised no layoffs. This is one of the benefits of being a private company with no debt and lots of cash on hand.
Cons
Salary appears to be average or a little lagging behind competitors. All the amenities and benefits should be considered when looking at SAS's compensation, but if your only goal is to earn a lot and you don't care how you are treated SAS might not be right for you. The biggest downside to salary is that raises are sparse and small. I did not get any raise after my first year. The next year I got a nice 8% bump, but most of my peers only got around 2%. That seems to be the average unless you get a large promotion which generally take several years to achieve. I would warn people to only come to SAS if you are happy with the starting salary, don't expect drastic raises. Vacation time is also just OK. You get 16 days per year, which increases to 21 days after you have been at SAS for 10 years. You do thankfully get the week from Christmas to New Years off, so really I'd compare the vacation time to 20 days at most companies. I would love to see that threshold for more vacation brought down, maybe increasing a day per year up to a maximum of 25 or something like that. One downside to the culture and having your own office is that you can be socially isolated very easily. People stay at SAS a long time and the average age is probably in the mid-40s. So, as a young professional it can be hard to make workplace friends. Also the majority of meetings happen online so you sit in your office most of the time without seeing anyone face to face. Without getting too technical, I also believe SAS's core technology is lagging behind competitors and even open source options. Management has been preaching the transition to cloud for years, but our offerings still seem half baked and difficult to manage. There is so much legacy code at SAS that they are trying to support that it seems like we can not move forward into the modern age of cloud and containers. SAS's strength is really in niche areas that they have developed specific solutions within. They also have a lot of long time clients that have used SAS since they were top dogs in the analytics space 20 years ago. I don't think SAS is in a death spiral or anything, but growth will be hard to come by in the future.