Pros
SAS provides good benefits and really respects work life balance. Colleagues on the whole are very supportive and the working environment is very good. Lots of technology to learn and a great place to start your career. Employees are given a lot of autonomy and generally not micromanaged.
Cons
Not so good if you want to grow your career as true growth opportunities are few and far between with most promotions led by an old boy network type ethos. In the time I was at SAS, management structures changed frequently, both in the UK and at Headquarters in Cary. There often seemed no logical reason for the changes other than empire building by those involved and unfortunately this meant that very good managers were replaced by less competent ones purely because either they, or their boss, could play a better political game than the incumbent management team. The UK has especially suffered because of this and has weak management across many areas of the business. SAS employs people with new and different skills because they acknowledge that the world of analytics is changing but are then not prepared to learn from their experiences. HR is not the employees friend and is purely their to protect the interests of the company not the employees. Middle management is generally very ineffective and are primarily administrators rather than people managers.
