So SAS is literally one of the best places to work ever. I remember reading a article when I was little and SAS was listed as one of the best places to work. The article listed the great benefits that SAS had to offer. Now taking a tour of some of the buildings and talking to employees I realized just how great the benefits are. Employees have free use of recreational facilities, almost free healthcare, free day care, etc. I have learned that SAS heavily emphasizes culture. Dr. Goodnight wants to make sure everyone is a part of the family whether you are from grounds keeping crew to a senior manger at sales. The benefits apply of all workers and the culture seems to be more of a family. The campus is enormous and much larger than I realized. Since I am new I had to GPS around the campus going from building to building. Fun fact, there are five different cafeterias on campus. Sadly, sage dining cannot rival the amount of diversity and high quality food that SAS offers. The first day we had a presentation on what SAS does and SAS culture for around two hours. We then transitioned to building C that offers that largest cafeteria and had lunch. I wanted to branch out because the cafeteria offered so many different options, but at the same time I couldn’t go wrong with pizza. So for lunch I had pizza and this special rice and vegetable soup they offered. Overall dining experience on the first day was A+, another part of adding to the SAS culture. After lunch I met with Beth Cosby who is a senior manager in the sales department and she gave me a tour of building C and some of the things she does. The tour was really awesome because the technology in the building is state of the art and parts of Iron Man 3 were shot in the building. Building C also houses most of the executive offices on the 6th floor. The 6th floor houses Dr. Goodnight’s rock collection which were all stunning and worth oh so very much money. Then Mrs. Cosby talked about the sales academy which is the academy that employees go through to become part of the sales team. The sales side of the business is split into different sectors. The part that Mrs. Cosby is in is sales relating to the government in terms of local, state, and federal government. Mrs. Cosby showed me some graphs and figures/things she would have a meeting with her boss with later. I learned about pipelines which blew my mind. Essentially what SAS does is create pipelines and those are projected combined earnings throughout the year. So for every goal they have the pipe line is usually 4 times as big as the goal. The rationale behind it is that deals won’t always go through and if the pipeline is 4 times as big you have a high chance of still hitting your target even if some deals fall through. I learned a lot about different things SAS does with pipelines and how you can take data from it. After all SAS is an analytical software company. Overall, first day at SAS was amazing. I could definitely see myself working in the future. Tomorrow students at the sales academy are giving their final presentations and I will be watching some of them so I am excited to see what it is like at the sales academy. 10/10 first day.
Me with Dr. Goodnight’s very expensive rock collection
Building C, site of a scene in Iron Man 3.