Today I got to see a lot of the technology that SAS uses and distributes to their employees. I saw hundreds of phones and laptops and computers and cables all in storage waiting to be used, fixed, and reused. First thing this morning I met with Joel Langley an IT project manager. He ties together development, manufacturing, fulfillment, and sales. Then I got to meet with Jonathan Hairr a man who is similar to Mr. Harris at Cary Academy. He listens to internal workers problems with hardware and software and solves their problem. He finds the right cables to connect a pc to a project and he hands out phones to employees and much more. He works on the top floor and he shares floors with all the highest up in SAS including Dr. Goodnight, in fact, I got to see his huge rock collection. It was incredible!
Jonathan also showed me some data centers and he explained how it all worked. He said that there are some cables that are the same size as others, but they operate at 7 or 8 times the speed as others. I was very fascinated by all of the technology.
During lunch, I met with Charles Sayre and two of his friends who were all programmers. They all had very interesting and fun personalities! Charles went to NC State, another went to Duke, and the other man went to UNC. After lunch, I met with Jonathan Smith who showed me similar things to what Jonathan Hair showed me. Both Jonathans were on their feet a lot and they rarely sit down in their offices. I used a VR headset for twenty minutes and played games while Jonathan Smith spoke with his co-workers. It is crazy how SAS has so much extra fascinating technology that is unnecessary but raises morale. After that, I met with Will Philips who drove me to SAS’s (somewhat) hidden main data center. He talked about how it was all cooled and how efficient it all was.