IT – CA Work Experience Program

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 3- Farewell IT

Today I got to spend some time with Barb Whittinghill and her intern, Andrew, who worked in Compliance. They walked me through the intricacies of compliance. Basically, their job is to ensure that every client that SAS has abides by federal regulations, that way, their servers would be more secure from outside threats. Andrew, who previously worked for the military, discussed with me the process through SAS workers petitioning compliance for outside help (vendors). Compliance then checks the certifications of said help to make sure they are up to date, and gives approval based on their findings. Next, I had a meeting with Steven Toy, head of the infrastructure side of IT and the father of CA’s own Chris Toy. Mr. Toy walked me through SAS’s goals of transferring data into virtual servers, a project that would lend itself both to efficiency and security.

At lunch, I was able to have beef tips with Mr. Andy Rash, who was responsible for the more applications side of IT. This means that instead of maintaining servers and making sure the foundations of SAS remain up to date, Mr. Rash oversees a lot more of what workers operate on a day to day basis; the checkout system for lunch for example. I was then placed with Peter McNeill, one of the many Cary Academy graduates working at SAS. Peter showed me a lot of the script he was writing for some new software SAS was putting out, as well as how he was participating in intern training by having them review some of his old code for practice.

Lastly, I went to E building with Taylor Andrews, a software engineer currently working with Ms Dawn Smith (who I met with on Day 2) to create a new application for client agreements. He took me through a lot of the coding that went behind building the application, such as SAS software and the conversion of Java into JavaScript. Ultimately, it was a great way to end my time in IT!

~Rundown of the Supply Depot

Day 4 – It’s always the last box

The 4th day of my work experience started off like normal. I got in for the day and helped out around the IS department, helped Mr. Rokuskie box up charging cords, and also attempted to trace discrepancies in the tablet purchase sheets. This all was quite normal until it was realized after a count of the boxes that there was one more tablet somewhere in the wall of boxes that didn’t belong. We counted a few times all 240 tablets but the database had 239 registered. Someone might simply say “well, just register one more in the database”, but we needed the serial number and had to register the specific missing tablet. We spent a while opening boxes and checking for them in the database each one after the other came back as registered. After searching through almost 25 boxes of tablets I opened the last box and pulled out the first tablet. I read the serial number and was about to put it back in the box until i heard “Its not on the list!” and of course we found the tablet we were looking for in the very last box.

(the stack of boxes we searched through)

Day 2 – Middle School Madness

My second day of working with the IS department started off quite well and very productive. Firstly I was excited to finish re-imaging the stacks of computers set before me on day one and getting that task complete felt extremely satisfying. After those computers were done I was introduced to a cart full of even more computers waiting to be prepared for sale to teachers and staff. Interestingly with these computers, their startup includes the virtual assistant Cortana talking the user through the setup. When you have 10 Cortanas all talking over each other at varying times it sounds a little bit like the Seagulls from Finding Nemo. After working on those for a while it was time to collect the middle schoolers tablets which as one can imagine takes the entire IS department to handle. During the process, I was walking in classrooms helping teachers and checking names on tablets for collection all while wading through a sea of middle schoolers. After all the chaos we had carts stacked high with the collected computers and with the rain pouring outside we stowed the tablets in a closet and ended our days work.

Day 2- Server Farms and Rocks

My day began with Ms Dawn Smith, who showed me the platform she was creating for the website that contained all of the agreements with SAS and their clients. Using SAS and Java code, she worked to both improve the interface as well as make the information on the site more available and succinct. After learning about what she and her team were up to, I spent time with Jonathan Hairr. Mr. Hairr serves as technical support for executives only, ranging from senior vice presidents all the way up to Dr. Goodnight. I assisted him in delivering materials throughout the SAS campus to different employees, as well as getting a look at some of the unique rooms each building has. After a tour of the supply depot, Mr. Hairr took me to the executive building (C Building), where I was able to visit not only Dr. Goodnight’s office and conference room, but his rock collection as well. Holding pieces from all around the world, it gave the executive offices a personality of their own.

Come lunch time, I shared my table with Trish Hailey, in charge of security and various other jobs in the IT department. We discussed everything ranging from what brought her to SAS, as well as what the company is doing to stay innovative and secure. After lunch I went back to the supply depot to spend some time with Jonathan Smith and his team, where I saw where the broken equipment was refurbished and shipped back out into rotation. Additionally, I inspected the configuration of conference rooms, tested of of the technology they are attempting to deploy throughout the campus, and met the man who programmed/controlled BB-8 for the Last Jedi red carpet premiere. I ended the day with Will Phillips, who took me to the facilities that allow SAS to function on a day to day basis. I visited the servers, affectionately referred to as Server Farms 1 and 2. There, I was able to witness their heating and cooling system designed to get the best possible performance from their hardware. Mr. Phillips took me to the “chillers”, machines that miraculously get air to flow from cold to hot instead of the usual hot to cold. Lastly, I examined the charts of SAS’s energy efficiency, such as the RTI of their air flow and brainstormed ways to make the system more effective to make it more cost efficient and environmentally friendly.

Dr. Goodnight’s extensive Geode collection

R Building’s cafeteria

The executive conference room at C Building

The supply depot

Day 1- Intro to SAS and Help Desks

I had the privileged of heading to SAS for my Work Experience Program. Along with Kevin C, Isaac F, Matthew C, Will P, Jessica J, and Megan T, I was given an intro to SAS with Ms Christie Dougherty, one of their University Recruiters. This included a tour of Q building, where we met up and head the intro, as well as a presentation over the history of SAS and some of the projects it is currently working on. This was led by Steve, another University Recruiter, which helped us understand what SAS takes pride in and the people they want to attract.

After the intro, we had the pleasure of eating lunch as a group in the dining hall of C building. I would later learn this was one of the higher end places to eat on campus, one where they served pizza everyday. There was also a salad bar, grill station with burgers and hot dogs, and other daily offerings like a pork chop. We had the opportunity to eat with both Ms Dougherty and her manager, talking about a range of topics from CA, to college, to the NBA Finals.

The last half of the day I spent with the IT department. Leaving the rest of the CA people, I headed over to H Building, where local Intern Chris Eaves gave me a tour of the help desks. This portion of the department dealt with internal issues at SAS that arouse when workers had technical difficulties. I later helped Mark Davis conduct interviews with members of his team, helping to access ways to improve the way SAS deals with problems such as viruses, technical malfunctions, and identifying the severity of every complaint.

Lobby of H Building

Day 1 – Joining the IS team

I started my work experience this morning as an odd job taker of sorts. Carrying computers to box them up, moving boxes of charging cords and helping Mr. Qiao with some TV trouble. But after the short morning of errands, I was put up to a more pressing task of re-imaging computers turned in by the upper school. After an informative instruction on how to re-image a computer by Coach Moore, I sat amongst the towering stacks of computers waiting to be processed and got to work. Things were a little slow at first with me getting my bearings and maybe misspelling a few commands here and there. Once I got my system down though, I was cooking with gas and knocked out almost 40 computers greatly depleting the stack I started with earlier. I was glad to give the IS department a hand and lighten their workload by getting the computers imaged for them and I’m glad for the organization skills I gained while working today.