This morning I started off by meeting Jack Shea who told me his story about how he got to SAS. He manages an infrastructure group and he has 6 project managers. He was a construction engineer for 5 years then left to be a general contractor for a few months, but he realized how much he loved SAS and he came back for a job in IT and now works there for 33 years. He showed me around the data centers and then he brought me to my next meeting where I met an old soccer teammate/CA Alumni Connor Mann who was interning along with another woman from Kansas. He was working to clean the code gathered from different places and make it more accessible for sales, pre-sales, and basically anyone else in SAS who needed to use it. Then I met with Allison Becker, their boss. She told me that 80% of her time is spent preparing data and 20% is spent implementing it. She used data to figure out if a group’s project is going to be successful. Then during and after lunch I ate pizza with all the employees and we debriefed with a woman from human resources and we got to speak with members of a group called young professionals. They gave us advice about college, jobs, and life in general. They told me how important it was to figure out other people and be nice to them and treat them how they appreciate being treated. So, overall the SAS experience was very helpful in learning how to make business communications and how to handle myself more formally in a business environment and work and learn.
Tag: 18MatthewC
Day 7 – Data Centers and Technology
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.
Day 6 – Intro to IT
Today was my first day in IT. I started off the morning by getting to meet Sarah Betz, a person who oversees a team of enterprise business analysts. She said that at first, she got a degree in journalism economics at UNC. So, she didn’t know that she would ever end up at SAS. So, at the end of the day, one of the main takeaways I learned was to just keep learning, working hard, and following my passion and I will end up in the right job for me. Then I sat in on a meeting with Ms. Bettz’ very friendly team and they talked about what IT does and what their goals are. They make SAS’s software compatible with businesses and they update and make changes and make bug fixes. This group also makes sure data is what they want from customers and that it’s clear. During lunch, I met with Andy, another IT worker and he explained how he got to SAS which was after he learned he likes to manage other people’s projects. After lunch, I met with Bill Mckeown who taught me more about IT and gave me an overview of his career. He explained how he used to work with data centers and how customers use SAS’s data centers.
After that, I met with Randy Wilcox who taught me about his job. Randy was a DBA (database administer). However, it is more like “Does ‘Bout Anything.” He managed and protected customers data, assisted RnD and helped with their optimization, and he helps sales through engineering of projects. He also showed me a little computer that had old arcade games on it that he plays on for fun from time to time.
Day 5- Working with Data For Good
Today I got to learn a lot more about the coding that goes behind SAS data. I created my free SAS on demand for academics account which is similar to Java or Python, but it is intended for analyzing data sets and forming graphs, so it is also like Excel. A SAS programmer presented to us for the first half of the day teaching basic lines of code that will create bar charts and such that represent fake data that is realistic to sales. We analyzed fake data from 3000 customers, three different groups of 1000 people were presented with the same product at different three different prices and we were to analyze lots of data to figure out what would maximize our profit. There were many factors that we had to take into account.
After lunch, we learned how to use SAS Visual Analytics which had many options to turn numbers into graphics. This was very helpful for me because I was able to understand all the data better when it was combined all into one visual graph and the data was easy to compare and contrast. We eventually got to make our own visuals about data from the prices of different foods in developing countries and it was really interesting to see how other SAS interns interpreted and presented their data. In the picture below I am asking Matthew Schaeffer a question about his data presentation.
Day 4- Working With Gather IQ
Today we came to building R, one of the research and development buildings and the first thing I did was get to meet some members of the development team working to create a new SAS application. The team gave me and the other SAS interns a presentation on the development process and how there are many more than just developing and marketing a software. Then, I got to go hands-on with the GatherIQ, one of SAS’s projects in development. I was working with Matthew Schaeffer who could read at the speed of light where I could read at a normal speed, so he would always want to get ahead and I would make him go back so I could finish reading things on the website. After getting hang of the purpose of the website we submitted a survey to help SAS understand what users thought about it. I thought the purpose of the website wasn’t clear at first and it would take at least five minutes of digging to figure out what SAS was getting at. Then I had lunch in an incredible cafeteria called that took place in an open space called the atrium.
The chefs were really nice and the food was great! After lunch, then I went upstairs to a new conference room to present on ideas that I thought would make for a good app. The purpose of GatherIQ is to raise awareness on global issues by sharing information, data specifically, on social media. So, the other interns and I had to come up with ways to present the information so that a younger audience like middle schoolers would be interested in learning about the issues and would want to share them with their friends. My group came up with the idea that the user should be rewarded in some way if they view the page or share it/retweet the page/ like it. So, we thought that for every 100 retweets it would get a sponsored company would donate 10 dollars towards the cause or something along these lines. This activity was really fun and its really cool how SAS will actually use our feedback to make changes to their app going forward!
Day 2 – Introduction to SAS Software/CECL
This morning I showed up a little late because I misheard Ms. Hager when she told me what building to show up to yesterday. I originally came to T when I should have gone to C, however, this wasn’t a huge deal as I parked and I came in near the beginning of the meeting. The presenter was very lively and engaging and it he made it very easy for me to be engaged and interested in learning about a new topic that I was unfamiliar with. Basically, he was teaching all ten or so people in the room the importance of calculating expected credit loss when customers default on loans. They used many different acronyms that were really unfamiliar to me, but I tried my best to understand what was going on. I participated in a presentation with three other employees on how we would pitch SAS’s CECL product (a model to precisely predict expected credit loss on defaults) to a CFO of a target business. I learned many key presenting points such as the “Tell, Show, and Tell method,” and how important it is to use repetition to emphasize the main point of your talk. My group’s presentation went well and later at lunch I met with college interns and talked with them and then I ate lunch with the Pre-Sales team I was working with before lunch. After lunch, I went back upstairs to the conference room and continued to learn more in-depth aspects of CECL and how it is helpful for businesses. Their CECL program will launch by Jan 1st 2020, so SAS needs to finish up the software and find get in contact with potential clients between now and then.
Day 1 – Introduction to Pre-Sales
I arrived at SAS at 9:30 this morning, 30 minutes early for my shift. I was very excited and a little nervous to see how my first day would go at my new internship. I sat in the lobby with excitement as my classmates arrived. Then Ms. Dougherty showed up and gave us a tour and I was really impressed at how nice everything was at SAS. Everything was really tidy and clean and comfortable. After a quick tour, I sat in on a 2-hour presentation about SAS’s purpose and this was very helpful to me. I learned that SAS can do almost anything with data with any company in the world. SAS even uses their software to help them decide how many metal sheets they would need to help Nepal rebuild and recover from an earthquake. Their work can literally be applied to any company or situation on earth that deals with any sort of data. However, at the end of the day, I only have a vague idea of what SAS does because it is so complex and there is so much to learn about it. Throughout these two weeks, I hope to become much more familiar with some of their software and the techniques sales members use to convince other companies to try out their software. After lunch, I shadowed Patty Hager, the director of mid-market presales at SAS. As soon as I met her I was rushed upstairs to her office and she immediately got to work, we had a busy afternoon together. She called her boss to let her check in on her to make sure she was staying busy and on track with her relations with other companies. Ms. Hager, I learned, deals even with sports teams such as the LA Kings. After her checkup with her boss, I went with Ms. Hager to a conference meeting with three other pre-sales workers that were on her team and five other people that had called in through Skype. Everyone shared ideas on how to get their clients interested in their products. All of them had interesting ideas and perspectives. One of the most profound ideas I took notes about during the conference was the suggestion that as a salesperson for SAS you should put yourself into your clients’ shoes and consider what they would want to hear offered from a salesperson. A SAS salesperson would want to pitch their product in a way that leaves the customer confident they will profit from the SAS software. So, I learned a lot more about sales that I thought I would from this meeting. I’m excited to continue learning about the SAS software specifically tomorrow and I hope day 2 will be just as fun as day 1 was!!
Day 3 SAS Presales
First, this morning, I listened to a Skype call with an expert on the cloud at SAS. He explained that it is more profitable for some smaller to medium-sized companies to use SAS software through the cloud rather than installing it into their own servers. Then Later I experienced a common employee check-in where the boss (Ms. Hager) checked in with Ms. Lanier to see what she was working on and if she had any suggestions. She suggested for the pre-sales team to get together at social events like the Durham Bulls. After this, I got to know more about Lanier a pre-sales and analytics specialist. She actually showed me a little about the SAS software and what it looked like. It was really interesting to finally get a hands-on experience with what everyone in the meetings had been talking about! Lanier showed me a project she created that analyzed data about a fictitious company she called Statwars. She made this project when she was a new employee and she was just learning the SAS software.
Later, I learned more in depth about CECL and I listened to a conference call that was very confusing and difficult for me to understand. Later, I met with another employee named Erin and she showed me a potential client out in California whose business was similar to Amazon. I was really interested in the idea of how SAS could sell software to this company that would tell them what deals they should have and when based off of what customers buy at the same time and when they buy their items. This was my last day with the Pre-Sales team and I learned how important it is to use social skills in the real world. This is something that isn’t really taught at school and getting a hands-on perspective with real employees is really helpful for me to build and continue learning on how to speak and interact with professionals. Next week I have work with IT members and I’m really excited to see how it goes!