Meetings – CA Work Experience Program

Lenovo Day 6

Today was more of a low–key day. Jono, Felipe, Jack, and I all arrived at around 9:00am, give-or-take a few minutes. We all sat down and were logging onto the wifi when we were called into a meeting with Greyson. By the time we arrived at the conference room he was in, he had already started his conference call with his coworkers in China. The meeting was a Scrum meeting meaning Greyson and his colleagues were reviewing the backlog for all of the upcoming tasks and organizing them into sprints which are the tasks currently being worked on by the team in China. After the meeting, Greyson informed us about agile development and gave us two tasks. The first task was to do our own research on agile development, and the second task was to research how Apple’s new Sign-in with Apple software would work, a challenging task to say the least. Feeling a little humorous, Greyson jokingly said he wanted us to complete an actual working prototype of Sign-in With Apple by the end of the day knowing there would be little chance we would be able to fulfill his request. We all understood that he was joking, but we just couldn’t let the opportunity for a prank pass. We immediately started working on our tasks, and upon completion, we began to research how to write a program that would simulate the Sign-in With Apple software.

We started this work at 11:30am and completed it at 3:45pm. Jono, our team’s most knowledgeable computer programmer, successfully simulated theSign-in With Apple software code and even programmed the application to send emails, with attachments, using only the Python programming language. Once we told Greyson about what we had completed, he laughed it off thinking we were pulling his leg; however, once we showed him the code and had him run through the program himself, he realized that we were not joking. In the end, Greyson said how impressed he was with Jono’s programming skills. Even Greyson’s coworker from Germany, Nicholas, agreed with his assessment. While we all contributed to gathering the information for the two tasks, it was definitely Jono who received the gold medal today.

Day 2 at SAS!

Day 2 in building T was packed with meetings! It was so interesting to talk to different people at SAS and learn about their journeys to their current career positions. One of the main trend throughout all of them was that the position they thought they wanted was not at all the position they ended up in.

The first think Niki and I did today was meet with Alec LePrince, a business consultant architect. He taught us all about the different sectors of the broad term “business”. There is truly a career position for everyone in the realm of business, ranging from marketing to sales to developer to educator.

After this, we attended the weekly Risk Management Business Meeting, in which Pauline’s manager attended from Maryland! It was really awesome to see how each member of their team utilized their respective skills to come and work together. For example, Tatiana, originally from Brazil, focuses on the more global aspect of the Risk team, while Pauline focuses more on the marketing aspect. They also discussed future project plans, improvements, and what they each accomplished that week. Through the meeting, we learned more about the internal developments of SAS itself.

After that, we had lunch with the Risk team in the Building T cafeteria. Although SAS employees say that the lunch here isn’t as good as the ones in Building A and C, the food was still phenomenal and we had a great time talking to Pauline’s team.

At 1, Niki and I had a meeting with Rani, a business consultant down the hall. She gave amazing advice about pursuing a business career. My favorite advice from her was

1. Sometimes starting out in bigger companies isn’t the best idea. It is really easy to get lost in the mix, and it may be hard to advance in your career.
2. Find what makes you unique. Yes it’s important to get a business degree, but what will make you special? Is it digital marketing? Software engineering?

I look forward to use her advice when curating my path in the business world!

At the end of the day, we took on a small project. Our task was to research banking trends, specifically about AI in 2019. We utilized research from Deloitte consulting to summarize the biggest trends in the finance/business world.

These are some of the trends I found:

For the first time ever in 2019, the use of data, artificial intelligence (AI), and advanced analytics was ranked first, replacing improving the customer experience as the number one trend
Increase in importance of open banking and application programming interfaces (APIs) by organizations globally
increase in importance of innovation
increase in serving a segment of one: “Many banks have initiatives aimed at targeting demographic-based clusters such as young people, Millennials or older people, but some banks are now targeting customers based on lifestyles, values, aspirations, mindsets and underserved needs.”

SAS Day 2 – Meetings and Demos

My second day at SAS was jam-packed with meetings and things to learn. I started the day off per-usual at 10:00 o’clock meeting with Christie Dougherty in the lobby of building Q. From there we went to a conference room and called so potential job candidate to schedule in-person interviews for them and their potential managers. Next, I went to Kayla’s office with another co-worker to jump in on a call with a representative from Handshake. Handshake is a platform that allows business and college students connect so that the recruiting process for business becomes painless. Typically, businesses have to post jobs at every college separately, but Handshakes platform allows businesses to post the job just once and it goes to all of the colleges the business would like to post the job at. The whole purpose of this meeting was for the representative at Handshake to explain, present and demo the platform to Kayla and the Recruiting team at SAS because they are currently looking for new ways to keep up with the new technologically advanced recruiting methods. Listening in on this demo was awesome because I learned so much about Handshake and the ease that it provides for both businesses and student. It gives me excitement knowing that I will probably be using this platform when I am in college looking for a job or internship. After the meeting, we headed to Building T for a delicious lunch with some of the Tech Support Academy Graduates. After lunch, I met with Danielle Pavliv the director of diversity and inclusion at SAS. From there she talked about her job and what she does a diversity and inclusions director at SAS. After talking for a little we headed to a meeting on how SAS can connect with Historically Black Colleges and Universities. At the meeting, we were planning a day for students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities to come and tour SAS and learn about the careers SAS has to offer. Overall I would say that day to was a very busy and successful day. I look forward to day 3!!