What about the dot-commer or software designer who wants to sleep eight hours a night instead of work eighty hours a week? Enter Dr. Jim Goodnight (--no pun intended).

Dr. Jim Goodnight is founder and CEO of SAS Institute, the largest privately held software firm in the world with 17,000 employees. While some top bosses of high tech firms brag about employees who pull all-nighters and work around the clock, Goodnight is proud of the opposite work culture at SAS. In an exclusive interview with Livelyhood, Dr. Goodnight explains why there’s no peer pressure to stay late at SAS:

Q: What kinds of hours do people work?

We encourage people to work seven hours a day. We are basically a nine to five company. We always have been since we started back in 1976. In the early days, we certainly did work more that. But with the speed of computers these days, we can compile and test programs in a matter of seconds whereas it used to take 24 hours to get a turn around. We had to come back at night because that's the first time we got a turn around from the big main frame out in the distance somewhere. But now with machines on our desk, I can get 20, 30, 40 turnarounds a day on my work for testing and development purposes. So there's not a lot of reason to staylate or stay on.

Q: But almost everyone else in the high tech industry is notorious for 60-hour plus workweeks. How do you compete?

I have seen programmers that have been working 12, 15-hour days and the next day they come back in and have to correct all the bugs that they put in their code because they were too tired to think about what they were doing. So it really doesn't pay off.

Q: If a faster, better competitor came along, could SAS, this workforce, gear up to meet that?

We are already in direct competition with at least 200 companies because the SA-system is so broad. We are constantly looking at our competition and our customers are looking at them. And they let us know some of the things some of our competitors have that they'd like to see in our software. The one thing we have done over the years is listen to our users. We try to please them and if we can please them, that's really all we care about.

Q: SAS has low turnover in nearly every area of operations. But can people get stale at SAS?

I think one of our competitive advantages is the fact that we encourage people to move around internally every six months or a year. SAS is a very flat organization. We only have about three layers of management so there's no chance of advancement. Your salary will continue to grow and in fact some people make more than their managers do for being here so long. So it's one of our secrets to retaining the knowledge workers you have.

A visit to the SAS employee cafeteria reveals another secret to keeping knowledge workers – at least post-Gen x ones: let them have a family life. On Livelyhood’s visit, employees were encouraged to bring their kids to lunch with them, picking them up at the employer-provided, onsite daycare.

This is definitely atypical in a newbie industry like software. A 1998 Business Work-Life Study, conducted by the Family and Work Institute, found that the companies most likely to be "family-friendly" were finance, insurance and/or real estate industries. Will high tech follow suit and do we want it to?

Your answer depends on your perspective. Danielle Rios of Trilogy Software is certainly not concerned with bringing kids to work at this stage in her life. According to Danielle, she "can hardly take care of plants." And she is very happy with the community of friends formed at Trilogy.

Is work a safe replacement for a robust extracurricular life in our early 20s? Is it safe to prolong college days into a professional 5^th, 6^th and 10^th year? Or are we setting a dangerous precedent for recent college graduates who are becoming accustomed to life without leisure outside the workplace?

Are we marching ourselves down a path that discriminates against workers unwilling, or unable, to match the grueling demands of a dot-com or software schedule, or can the new economy accommodate all? Is this newfound pride in work an encouraging sign of a level of workplace fulfillment not yet seen in our history or a dangerous emotional gamble, placing the ability to fulfill human need for validation, praise and emotional connection all in one workplace basket? Are we replacing social, cultural and civic affiliations with office birthday bowling parties?

Maybe it depends on your idea of fun and work. One viewer emailed just after watching the Trilogy piece on television:

"I think it is awesome how these people can work and play so well together. I would have to say that I am somewhat envious of their commitment, their drive and their camaraderie. They are working hard and hopefully their dedication will pay off BIG someday."

It may also depend on how future employment conditions in the dot-com/software world do or do not shake out.
Regardless, it can’t hurt to remember the Chinese proverb:

"If you find a job you love, you'll never work a day in your life"

Compiled by Angela Morgenstern

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