SAS – Page 4 – CA Work Experience Program

SAS Day 2

Day 2 at SAS gave me a glance at what several people in the workplace do every day. The first hour was split into shadowing 2 people for 30 minutes. Evan was a marketing writer and Trey was a marketing editor. They both ran us through past and current projects and told us why they preferred editing over writing and vice versa. We then spent an hour shadowing Beth Satterfield which showed us several of her projects at SAS like all the times she went at Disney for fair to sell products from SAS. She showed me pictures from her booth and showed us the process in creating a booth that would grab someone’s attention by linking it to Disney or whatever their customers’ interests are. She also told me about many tips on getting a job, like maintaining contacts with people I meet, sending thank you letters after interviews, and being kind to everyone since they can provide opportunity in the future. After beefing with Beth, I went to eat lunch with everyone I met today and the day before. The lunch room was a different lunchroom than yesterday but was also huge and offered a broad variety of foods from around the world.

I then went with my host, Leah, to look at many of the work/life centers like the gym, pool, meditation garden, daycare facility, library, and many other facilities that were offered by SAS. Finally, we spent some time in the design lab where we explored many of the collaboration spaces filled with sticky notes and many variations of buttons, links, and drop down menus that are found in a website or app. We didn’t spend too much time there because I will be shadowing people at the design lab next week. I am glad that I was able to shadow so many people and get to see so many professions within the same branch of SAS and am excited for my last day in the marketing field.

Day 2 – Marking and Tours

5/29/19

Today we met in building U before going upstairs to meet with other members of the team. We first met with a writer who showed us a lot of the projects he works on every day. After showing us what he did, he then completed one of his tasks for the day with us. Once he was done with that, we were then taken over to a copyeditors office. The copyeditor that we met with explained to us how a lot of people came from journalism backgrounds of newspaper companies before coming to work in marketing at SAS. He also explained to us things about his job and he talked about the different projects that he edits. After he explained all of that, we were taken downstairs to meet with another writer who specialized in booths and testing out the software. She explained to us how she tests out one of the programs that SAS is developing so that she can catch any glitches before the program is publicized. She also showed us the advertising side of marketing and gave examples of ways visuals were used throughout the field. After meeting with her, the whole marketing team we were working with took us to lunch, where we had lots of conversations about SAS life in general. After lunch, we went on a tour of the recreational parts of campus so that we could see the benefits that SAS offers to its employees. The last thing that we did was meet with a graphic designer in building R. She showed us some of the ways that she designs programs and we toured the area as well. Overall it was a great day and I am excited to go back tomorrow for my last day in marketing.

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.”

Day 2 at SAS

Today Elena and I came in bright and eyed and bushy tailed ready to start the day. I was excited to learn more about RSQ and the different departments that all need to work together to make it run. We spent the first 30 minutes in a meeting with a consulting architect that specialized in the RSQ department. He told us all about how different types of consultants have different responsibilities and through that, we learned exactly what his job does. We learned that being a consultant for a software company is very different from marketing consulting or strategy consulting. We then spent the next hour or so in a team meeting with our host, Pauline Ashcraft. We got to meet her team and learn about what each of them does to pull their own weight. After lunch, we met with Rani, a coworker of Pauline’s that works right down the hall. She gave us insight into her career path and how she assembled her resume to get to where she is today. Our conversation quickly digressed as we discussed colleges and majors, all helpful nonetheless.

notes taken by me during team meeting

whiteboard explanation during meeting with architect consultant

Day 1 at SAS!

Today was such a fun day!

We started out the day by congregating in the lobby of Building A. Who knew we’d have our first obstacle before the work day even began? There were two entrances to the building, and after a few tries, we finally found the front desk. Before today, I had no idea how big the SAS campus was! I had only been here once or twice before to support my friends in swim meets at the SAS recreation center. After we finally found where we were supposed to be, I, along with my 11 other classmates who are also participating in the SAS work experience program, filed into a conference room where we learned all about the company and it’s mission.

What really stuck out to me during the orientation presentation was how committed SAS was to improving the world around us. SAS analytics are used everywhere, ranging from cancer treatment/research to retail to animal endangerment to the printing of US currency! I was shocked about the extent to which SAS had such an amazing impact on the world, and I feel so humbled and fortunate to be able to shadow and work in this company.

After the presentation, we ate in Building A’s cafeteria and the food was SO good. I cannot wait to try all the different kinds of foods throughout the next week and a half!

After lunch, our group split up into our respective areas of focus. Niki and I headed over to Building T, focusing on the many different aspects of business within a large company. There, Ms. Pauline Ashcraft explained to us her department: Risk business. Her job is really interesting because she gets to work with marketing, finance, and the consulting departments as a part of her focus in Risk. I am extremely excited to shadow her for the rest of this week!

Day 1- Introduction and Marketing

5/28/19

Today was the first day with my work experience program and myself, as well as the other students working at SAS, started our day off by meeting with two Human Resources representatives who had coordinated our work experience at SAS. After meeting them downstairs in the lobby, we went upstairs in building A to a conference room to listen to a general introduction about SAS and what it does throughout the world. We learned a lot in the presentation about the Data for Good programs which use SAS analytics and software to solve modern day problems in the real world. We also learned about how SAS was founded, some perks of being an employee there, and about the tradition of M&Ms being served every Wednesday. After our introduction meeting, we went and had lunch in the building A cafeteria, The Terrace. There was a wide selection of food ranging from sushi to pasta to salads, however, most of us decided to still get pizza. I am sure we will all venture out and try other foods as the two weeks pass. As we ate lunch, we met with some of the HR interns and other employees working there who talked to us about life at SAS and their journeys that led them to SAS. We learned about how the majority of interns and workers actually come from North Carolina State University because the company is widely publicized at the university. After lunch, we watched a few more videos about SAS and then split up to meet with the people that we were shadowing. I shadowed someone who works in Marketing and Communications in building U. She started off our meeting by introducing herself and a little bit of what she does at SAS before bringing us around the floor to meet a lot of the people that she worked with. We met lots of designers, copy editors, writers, and more who all worked in that particular marketing branch of the company. After the introductions, we looked at some information packets that had been recently produced as well as started to look at a packet that they were in the process of producing. We were able to offer up suggestions as to how to make the packets better and give information about what would resonate the most with specific audiences. After this, we were able to ask lots of questions about marketing in general and specific ones about what they do in the company. Overall it was a great day, and I am excited tomorrow to meet more people that are involved in the marketing process .

SAS Day 1

Working at SAS today gave me a general overview about the environment and community of the workplace. We started with a presentation about SAS to introduce us to the company, noting its relevance in the world and its work “behind the scenes” in almost all of the Fortune 500 companies. We watched videos on the different uses of SAS programs and the outlook of the company from the employees’ point of view. We then went to one of their many lunchrooms which had an assortment of foods (sushi, sandwiches, pizza, and global dishes) and discussed the presentation with our peers and the person that gave the presentation.

After, we broke out into our individual interest-based fields; for me, it was marketing. I shadowed someone called Ms. Sundheim who was very thorough in showing me the community and we walked around meeting people in the marketing field and talked to us about what each of them did. I found that to be a great introduction to that specific branch of SAS since I was able to get a good understanding of the environment. We finally finished in her office, where she showed us some previous projects her team had worked on and asked us for some advice and help in thinking about ideas for her next project.

First Day at SAS

I received this pack of m&ms from SAS during orientation today

We start our day at 10 in a sort of “orientation”, where our intern manager, Christie gave us a sort of overview on what SAS is about, the company culture, and what SAS is involved in. Ranging from topics from elephants, to healthcare, to humanitarian crises, and to local police department projects, SAS seems to span multiple industries. The food in the cafeteria is nothing short of amazing, though I always get the same thing every time I visit- the sushi. It’s so good… 🍣

After lunch and watching some videos, we went to our various buildings; I’m in R for the entire WEP. (Did you know that it has a Starbucks on the bottom floor?) This week I am shadowing Mark Malek, who graduated from NC State with a bachelor’s degree in graphic design. We spent a little bit of time touring the design spaces and meeting his coworkers whom I’ll probably also be working with this summer. The rest of the day was geared towards learning Sketch, which is a wireframe tool used for designing UI. I personally think it has a very different feel from Figma (another competitor with Sketch), but Sketch is only on MacOS anyway. I’m sort of surprised that most of the keybinds and macros on Figma actually translate over to Sketch, and so do the ones from Photoshop Illustrator. I am excited to see what tomorrow will bring, and I hope to learn more new things.

Day 8 – Last Day/Conclusions

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.

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.