Imagine going to work where you get to meet Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow, managers value you and you feel like you are on a college campus.

For people working at SAS, a software company started in Cary by N.C. State faculty member Anthony James Barr and SAS CEO and N.C. State alum Jim Goodnight, this is reality.

Senior in business administration Virginia Webb said she chose to intern at SAS because she heard it was “the biggest information technology company in the world.” Her statement comes as Fortune Magazine ranked SAS as the second best place to work in the U.S. for 2012. Google currently holds the top spot, but SAS held the number one spot in 2010 and 2011.

Employee satisfaction hailed from a number of factors that included the people, amenities and the flexibility. According to SAS’s website, the core of these factors goes back to Goodnight’s philosophy, which refers to the company’s employees as “creative capital.”  

“It’s my job to maintain a work environment that keeps those people coming back every morning,” Goodnight said in an article on Harvard Business Review featured on SAS’s website. According to a WRAL Tech Wire article, Goodnight’s innovation resulted in a 3.3 percent employee turnover rate and record profits.

Webb said the best part of her internship was the people, who still visit her at the restaurant where she currently works.

Former N.C. State and UNC-Asheville student Jordan Dorsett, who graduated from Greensboro College in 2009, worked at SAS for two years, first as a summer camp counselor and then as a recreation and program coordinator. He said SAS is a “tight-knit community.”

“People hang out with each other in a laid-back atmosphere,” Dorsett said.

Junior in statistics and computer science Bethany Vohlers has worked at the company for three years.

“My father and brother work there, so it feels like one big family,” Vohlers said. “I get my hair done out there, go to the gym and see people I’ve known since I was little.” 

Even Student Body President Andy Walsh works at SAS, following in the footsteps of his mother and father who also work for the company.

“Getting to work in such a positive SAS environment – where one is given the tools to be intellectually challenged and stimulated – has had an impact on how I perform my duties at N.C. State,” Walsh said in a blog by SAS communications specialist Shannon Heath.

SAS also offers many amenities to employees.

“It’s almost like a big college campus,” Dorsett said. According to Dorsett, SAS employees have a card similar to the Wolfpack One card, which they can swipe to deduct the money they use on SAS’s services from their paychecks.

“Where I see SAS most emulating a college setting is through the technology found on both campuses,” Walsh said in Heath’s blog.

Webb said she also enjoyed seeing famous movie starts when Iron Man III filming took place in her building.

“I got to meet Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow,” Webb said.

According to Dorsett, SAS operates under flexible conditions as well; some employees come in early to go to the gym and then return to their office.

Dorsett said he only worked Tuesdays through Fridays, equating to a 35-hour workweek.

“You work 35 hours, but you get paid like you are working 40,” Dorsett said.

Dorsett said the only reason he left his job at SAS was because he preferred collegiate athletics rather than recreation and fitness. Dorsett now works as a marketing assistant for the University’s athletic department.

“However, for analytics and computer science, SAS is the best place to be,” Dorsett said.

SAS was unable to give Technician statistics regarding the number of N.C. State students employed by the company in time for publication. According to Webb, many N.C. State students working at SAS have family or friend connections. 

Dorsett said SAS vice president of human resources Jenn Mann was a family friend. 

According to Webb, managers also associate with a lot of the University’s organizations, like Alpha Kappa Psi, with whom Webb is a member.

Webb and Vohlers said they would love to work at SAS as full-time employees after graduation. According to Webb, 60 percent of SAS interns get rehired.

“I didn’t just do busy work during my internship and they treated me like a real employee,” Vohlers said.

“I learned a lot of how software products get from point A to point B,” Webb said. “I actually got to be in the business world and see how it works.”