SAS – CA Work Experience Program

Day 1

Today was the first day of WEP. As I am working remotely, this morning, I had a Teams call with my host, Dr. Karmakar. After a quick introduction and some technical difficulties resulting in us turning off our cameras, Dr. Karmakar spoke about the basics of operations research and optimization and how they help people with real-world problems. Then, she explained her plan for me in the upcoming weeks, starting with setting up a demo presentation in biomanufacturing. To help prepare this pitch, today, Dr. Karmakar had me research biomanufacturing applications and processes, along with identifying challenges in the field. I will present my research to her tomorrow morning at our next meeting.

Meeting:

Some research:

Day 8 – Human Resources and Gather IQ

6/6/19

Today was my last day working at SAS. I started the day by shadowing my host as she did background checks and other things she needed to do as a University Recruiting Coordinator. After shadowing her, I left to meet with someone who worked in the HR Communications department. She talked to me about social media and how they are the link between marketing and HR. After that meeting, I went to lunch with the rest of the Cary Academy students. After lunch, we finished up our projects for Gather IQ and presented them to the team at SAS. I had a great experience at SAS and really learned a lot!

Day 7 – Human Resources and Interviews

6/5/19

Today I was working in Human Resources. My host was very busy today with an interview day, so I spent the majority of my time meeting with other people who worked in the Human Resources department at SAS. I first sat in on a meeting about diversity and how they were trying to spread it throughout the company. I learned there that SAS had just won an award for diversity at the NACE conference. After the meeting I sat in on, I met with 2 different recruiters who talked to me about their jobs. They also talked to me about their paths in SAS and how they have been able to switch jobs and move around whenever needed. For lunch, I had Panera with my host. We were sitting in on an interview day presentation, so I got to learn a lot more about how SAS interviews candidates. After lunch, I met with a HR Business Partner who talked to me about how she is the liaison between different areas of the company and makes sure everything gets done. Lastly I talked to a program manager, which was a cool experience because she showed me how diverse her job could really be. I am excited to go back tomorrow for my last day!

Day 8 at SAS

Today is the 8th and final day of my work experience at SAS. We started the day in building R to meet a employee that does the QUX or quality user experience of the product. She talked a lot about her job and gave us a very in depth tutorial on how to use the product she has been working on. She also showed us a broken product and how she is able to give critiques back to the UI developers to fix. After the meeting we jumped boat to meet another SAS employee named Dan. Dan does a lot of the UI aspect of the products, which meant how it looks on the screen to customers. I was really interested in how all the parts of the product is compiled together, so he drew a diagram that showed the progression from the client all the way down the main servers. He also talked a lot about his previous job at a very small start-up company. He described it to be much more fun and enjoyable because you are able to watch your company grow. But he has also enjoyed SAS since it is more flexible on due dates and it is much more stable because the reason he had to leave the start-up was because an investment fell through.

For the second half of the day, we all met up again in building A to present our final projects. Although we only had around two days to do it, I felt like we all made very solid videos. It has been an amazing two weeks at SAS. Everybody is really nice and the campus is also very pretty. I really felt immersed in SAS culture and will definitely not forget about the food.

Peace.

SAS Day 8

Today was the last day at SAS. Day 8 started with two hours of shadowing, which I spent with Sierra, Mark’s coworker that also worked in UX Design. Instead of creating designs and working on how things work visually, Sierra was in charge of designing how graphs work and making sure that data visualization apps were as efficient and effective as possible. She showed me some of the equations she uses to create graphs, and SAS’s Visual Analytics (VA) app that she worked on. SAS’s VA app had very intuitive ways of creating graphs, plots, and maps that helped visualize thousands of data rows and columns. Finally, she gave me a lot of time to play around with the app and simulate a potential customer using the app for the first time. I gave her feedback on what I liked and what was challenging but for the most part, I found the VA app to be extremely helpful. I was glad to see the visual analytics side of design since it is something I had never experienced before. After working with Sierra, I said goodbye and thank you to Mark and headed towards building A to eat lunch with the whole Cary Academy group.

After lunch, we all headed to a meeting room where we would present our projects that we finished on Monday. We were given some time to practice our presentation and my group went first. Many workers, including people of high position at SAS, showed up to watch us present. We showed the video we created and answered questions. We watched the other groups present and discussed the projects and completed a survey to conclude the experience at SAS. Working at SAS for 2 weeks gave me the opportunity to learn about areas that I was already familiar and passionate about in a way that I had never experienced before. I would do this Work Experience Program again at SAS and would strongly recommend it to anyone considering it for future years.

Day 8

In the final day at SAS, Allen and I were in building R for the first half of the day.

We had a meeting with a QUX designer- that is, quality user experience. Her job is to ensure that every product the company produces has common components- font sizes, spacing, colors, and more. When she finds inconsistencies, she creates presentations and brings the issues to the attention of the developers to fix.

Then, we had a meeting with a front-end software developer. Now, he codes mainly in javascript and XML, but he came from a start-up in which he got to experiment with a ton of different languages and roles. This is a common theme that we saw- as the company grows larger (like SAS), the more nuanced and specific the positions get. Anyway, he taught us about requests to servers and services within SAS systems and how it all operates within the company.

After lunch, we got back together in building A with the rest of the Cary Academy kids for the final time. We all completed a feedback survey for SAS and then we finalized our video projects. After we presented these projects separately and received feedback, our time at SAS was over. It was certainly a memorable and worthwhile learning experience, and I’m sorry to go so soon.

Day 8 at SAS

For our last day, we came in a little early to meet with Jenni Elion. We sat down with her in her office and discussed her work as a senior test engineer. She brought us to a team meeting where they discussed their updates and any problems that she might be able to help with. She then took us to a whiteboard to diagram her job and tell us a little bit about how she got there. Then she gave us some advice, telling us to try new things. She told us about her passion for improv and I told her about the UCB book I am reading about improv right now. She ended up giving us tickets to her show and we can’t wait to see her perform! Then we met back with Mr. Sims for a final wrap up and last minute questions and advice. It was a very quick last day, but still full of information.

Scott Sim’s desk

outside of building Q (featuring the rotating statue)

Day 7 at SAS

Today at SAS we started the day back in building Q with our host Scott Sims. We met with Brad Lagle, a solutions specialist, who told us all about his work with child welfare. It was so interesting to hear about how much good he does with his coding. We then spoke with Mr. Sims a little bit more about his day to day so we could get a better feel for what he does. He then took us to tour parts of the campus Elena and I had never seen before. Then we went to lunch in building F, one of the few cafeterias we had yet to try. then we met with Ruth Baldasaro who’s an analytical consultant. She mostly told us about her family and how to balance your career with your personal life. it was very helpful advice. Then we went downstairs and met with Vrushali Sawant who works as a solutions specialist and focuses on data for good projects. It was a very fun and eventful day!

Scott Sims and I in his office!

getting ice cream in building R (photo by elena)

Brad Lagle’s desk (he went to NC State can you tell?)

Day 6 at SAS!

I had so much fun in the Global Hosting & US Professional Services sector of SAS in Building 6! On Day 6, we met our host, Scott Sims, who is a technical consulting manager in GHUSPS. He explained to us all the different aspects of consulting in a managerial position, and we talked about future career paths!

After that, we met and talked to Cammie, who is a project manager at SAS. She presented a PowerPoint titled “Consulting 101” and showed us all the different aspects of how a big corpora tion like SAS works together. The main things I learned from this meeting were that

1. It is extremely important to step up and out of your comfort zone. In terms of job growth, just meeting your job expectations are not enough. You need to go above and beyond.
2. The GHUSPS division provides value to the customer that motivates them to buy more and hire more services. They educate, advise, and implement.
3. I also learned that project management would be something I may be very interested in in the future. I am excited to learn more about it.

Next, we had lunch with a few of Scott’s coworkers in Building R. It was so cool to see all the different lunch options SAS offers and talk to people with different positions at SAS.

After lunch, we talked to Angela Hall, who is the director of consulting at GHUSPS. She spoke to us about the many adversities women in the STEM field such as herself had to overcome to get into the position they are in today. She was so friendly and outgoing, and you could tell that she truly cares about her employees, as she often plans group outings to make for a better work environment.

Lastly, we spoke to Clay Setser, who is a Solutions Specialist in GHUSPS. He specializes in Data for Good projects, which is so unique and special. Specifically he taught us about clumping, which is crucial for companies and even the government to recognize and differentiate who’s who. This directly connects with the child welfare program in NC and even the criminal justice system in NC. It was really interesting to see how important data and analytics are in terms of bettering the world and making it a safer place for all.

Day 7 at SAS

It is day 7 of my work experience at SAS. Today, just like any other day, started off with a meeting with a developer that focused on machine learning and artificial intelligence. He showed us some of the algorithms he has been working on since he has been at SAS. Aside from regular day-to-day work, he signed up to help transition some of the Java code into Go despite not knowing a single thing about it when he initially signed up. He really enjoyed learning the new language and SAS’s flexibility to allow you to work on things you would find enjoying. After the meeting with the developer, we met with two project managers. Although they are “managers”, they really are conductors. They lead without authority. Their job consists mostly of coordinating meetings, checking in with people on their job and making sure that the work flow is smooth.

After lunch, we shadowed Ms.Mayo and the two project mangers to a meeting with almost everybody on the project. Although it was only a discussion on a specific scrollbar, it showed how meticulous and careful SAS is about their products. After this group meeting, we met with another developer for a short bit. This developer worked mostly on hot fixes, so he showed us how he uses GIT to make changes on the master source code and making branches to test things out. At the end of the day, David and I met with a “themer”. The themer is someone who works mostly on color schemes using CSS. She showed us several of the styles she has been working on for the 11 products on her agenda. It is really interesting that SAS separates the front end down to someone who specifically focuses on QUX, UX, html, and CSS. Tomorrow, we will meet with two other developers who works closely with Ms.Mayo. I am very excited to see what their job entails.

Machine learning probability(beta distribution)