100 Things to Do in Your First 100 Days as a New SAS Programmer

Kari Kelso, Ph.D., VSP Global, Rancho Cordova, CA ABSTRACT

Creating your SAS training plan for a new programmer job is not easy. Avoiding eye contact with your new boss is not an option. The expectation is that you know data, SAS, and how it all fits within your organizational mix. Your first 100 days speaks volumes to whether or not you will succeed in your new position. Walk away with a plan that you can share with your teammates back at the office for yourself or the new hire. Training is not just about learning code but navigating your organizations data culture. Basic expectations of the new programmer will be covered. Learn what has worked (and not worked) from someone who has recently navigated this transition.

BACKGROUND
As I was preparing for the interview process for my current job, I was in search of tutorials, books, groups and anything I could get my hands on to be successful as a new SAS programmer. Once I got the job, I needed to put theory into practice and start some hands-on learning. In this paper, I present my thought process with what I was thinking as I was going through this time period. Ive chosen not to number the list as it reads better in bulleted form.

INTRODUCTION: MASLOWS HIERARCHY OF NEEDS SAS BUILDING BLOCKS

SAS Success in your job is based on a building block approach. There are certain fundamentals in your job as a SAS programmer that need to be mastered to be successful. From our college days, we should all be familiar with Maslows Hierarchy of needs. Here is a quick visual to refresh your memory:

SAS Presentations / Training Successful SAS programming

Your work team - SAS Helpful / Not Helpful - Sharing the SAS Love

Job Evaluation / Retention

Job Hiring Process Get Hired!

http://aitraining.net
Im not going to explain this much more than the key is to get the job retain the job which hinges on how helpful your team is in your SAS learning which leads to successful SAS programming and finally presenting your own SAS knowledge back to your team and hopefully to a much larger audience. Whats most important to you as your building blocks? Its okay to have a different version of your own interpretation of Maslows Hierarchy of Needs. For me it was reflecting on how I got the job and knowing how to retain it as the key for the first my first100 days. Starting from the bottom of the pyramid and moving up:

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Begin with your Job Description Next look at your Job Evaluation metrics Now, you can start learning SAS - Interview your peers learn who they are and how they learned SAS and then systematically move on to programming and finally presentations. This paper focuses a lot of attention in this building block. There are three areas that you will need to navigate successfully as you move up the pyramid: o Culture This is the tone, attitude and just about everything you cant really pinpoint. The problem with culture is that it is intangible and invisible but around us all the time. o Data Locating the data can oftentimes be the biggest hurdle. o Code - So, you cant control the culture, after a bit of a struggle you stumbled upon the data coding should be easy right?

Employee Evaluation Print out your job description and reread it. o Read SAS job descriptions (especially yours but also others) and see what you can accomplish right out of the box. o Pay close attention to what is missing in both the job description and evaluation metrics. o VSP: Going Above and Beyond; but what does this look like? Ask for examples. Know how you are going to be evaluated in regards to SAS. Learn the talk about learning and training in your organization.

Find your Data What department controls the data? o What is the nature of the relationship between departments and people? Where is the majority of your data coming from? o Surveys? Data sets from external vendors? Billing? o VSP: Claims and Provider Data Print out (or know where to get them) any data dictionaries, business/transformation rules, data maps you will need. Create a Data Resources Binder for your desk. o Ask your peers for their binder or file; sometimes it is just a few handouts attached to their cubicle wall. o For specific projects print out data dictionary resources and file them in the same folder.

Data Cleaning Get a sense for how messy data is in your company. Ask your peers how they clean their data. Everyone seems to have Get examples of what they look for and how they do it. o Write up a step-by-step example o How are missing observations handled? o How are duplicates handled? Come up with a list of ten things you need to look for.

Coding

Learn where your peers keep their SAS programs. Are they accessible on a shared drive? Is there any index system to their programs? Is this being used? Can you create one? Determine which programmer best illustrates the type of coding you would like to do. The challenge with coding is that there are multiple ways to get at the same result and for the new SAS programmer this can be very confusing. When you meet with your peers start asking if there is another way to code for the same result. If you can, keep track of the alternate ways so you can start seeing a pattern with the end goal of determining what works best for you. o The classic example is joins and merging.

Data Politics Know the politics of your departments data in your organization. Know who your data champions are for your department.

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Timelines Consider having a 30, 60 and 90 day plan or 100 days, first year o What can you be successful with right out of the box? o We know you did work in your first year but did you learn anything? If you have not documented your learning it will be harder to demonstrate to your boss. Realize that SAS learning will involve weekends and that is okay.

Training - Add Value to your Teams learning Youll notice that most everything in this paper comes back to training. Your first 100 days is all about learning and training. We want to make sure you keep track of your learning, retain it and share with others. This supports the evaluation building block as every layer in the pyramid. Know where your peers learned SAS; get their notes Ask for your peers training manuals. o My experience - no training manuals for the most recent SAS class and no notes from peers = no help! Improve the system: When you take a SAS class create a system for note taking. The challenge of being a good note taker and/or documenter of organizational processes is that others on your team will immediately look to you to write everything down. This is usually couched in terms of them being too busy, its all automatic, they dont stop to think about the how and the why of what they are doing my advice: Dont buy what they are selling. Everybody needs this skill regardless of organizational hierarchy. This is a team cultural challenge that will need to be overcome or you will be the designated note taker from now until entirety. Know what books are available from your department SAS learning library. Purchase an embossed library stamp and emboss your personal books. Label books on the spine that are team books so others on your team know whats available on the team bookshelf. Business Intelligence user group - community (start one); this is much broader than the SAS user groups. Invest in Camtasia Studio or Snag it; make your own how-to training videos. Create a Training plan by listing all possible SAS classes from SAS and competitors o Start with the SAS Training Paths for different job classifications from the SAS website. o Two issues that you might encounter: Boss thinks: One class makes you an expert issue; more often then not you will not know what training you really need until youve encountered several projects. Boss says: When do you think youll have enough training? I explain it like this when there are whole books written about one statistical equation that should speak volumes (no pun intended) that the one beginning SAS class is not enough. Would you hire a mechanic who only had the general course on automotive repair? Solution: Make a pitch that you will come back and train others if you can get more classes. Also argue for conferences that have pre and post training workshops to augment your training. o If you are lucky enough to have taken a SAS recorded on-line course remember you have access to the course for a year. Take it again and savor it now that you have more experience on the job. Things will make much more sense to you the second time around. Save the course notes that are provided for future reference. If your course comes with reference sheets dont forget to print them. o SAS Education has produced a new video titled What is a good first SAS Training course? Review this. o Create your own You Tube Video on SAS training My version used a flat screen TV connected to my computer where I utilized PowerPoint. There was another computer set up that ran a teleprompter program. As my first video, I learned a lot and have made several adjustments. Please email me and Ill send you the link. Contact SAS Corporate and get them to approve your use of SAS for You Tube. Contact your General Counsel and get them to approve future SAS You Tube videos. Know how best you learn (in class, on-line, synchronous / asynchronous) and be able to advocate for what you need. Know that your boss will naturally guide you toward the asynchronous on-line learning that is

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100 Things to Do in Your First 100 Days as a New SAS Programmer, continued typically that least expensive of all the options outside of buying a few SAS books and saying, good luck and have at it. Training on the Cheap: o Look for vendor seminars and/or sponsored webinars by consulting firms. o SAS website; SAS Talks, SAS Webinars, SAS White Papers/Case Studies Become master of the lunch and learn webcast; archive these on your shared drive and type up a one page synopsis for the team. Invest in yourself: If you are like me and believe that on-going training is the key to success offer to meet your boss budget half way and ask for more training by helping to pay half. They pay for registration; you pay for gas/hotel/food. This proves you are serious not only about your job but the skills that go with it. Get your team to go for Top Tips at every meeting; rotate presenters o If you can walk away from your weekly team meetings with something in your hand (yes, you need to demand presenters write them down or have them available on the shared drive) or you might as well not do this exercise - then youve successfully built in a life- long team learning initiative. Be aware that everyone says this is a great idea but few will take the time to really come up with new and interesting tips. Set the bar high. Listen for a Train the Team opportunity. Even the best programmers that have been working at your company for a long time do not know everything. When you hear of an area that is causing a serious time delay or frustration in coding offer to look it up. What I have noticed is It typically is a topic that is rarely used but very important. Internalize that training resides in the team and not the individual; o SAS training is expensive. Period. So any training offered to employees must come back to the team in a formal presentation, shadowing and handouts (not just copied but scanned and saved on the shared drive this needs to be an organizational team mandate). This has to be my biggest pet peeve, someone goes to training and comes back with no notes, no handouts and offers no presentations to the team. o Approach training as if this is the last class your company will offer you and you have to ensure others get trained. Essentially you are proving to your boss that if they select you to attend training, youve got the ability to build the team. Its about building capacity and it starts with you. Develop the persona of wanting to be the one people go to for SAS questions. Do this by having your SAS library at your fingertips. Start writing one page SAS tips for your team.

Know Two Great SAS Resources (outside of the SAS website) www.safaribooksonline.com o Safari has all the SAS press books on-line along with 24,000 technical books at the time of this presentation. For approximately $100 per year you can have a five item bookshelf and you can rotate monthly what you need. Lex Jensen blog o This website will come up when you start searching for SAS presentations and papers from user conferences. Save this to your browser favorites as it is the go to source for SAS help. The papers are short and typically cover one topic really well. o When you get back from WUSS save your Top Ten papers you found helpful from the conference on the shared drive for your team at work. Are you able to practice? What does that look like? The team needs to create for you a series of training exercises that come from your own data at work. This is absolutely critical to your success. These need to be heavily documented with commentary so you have their thought processes behind why they did what they did. o Try and avoid the exercises that do not provide the answers; this will only add to your frustration and make you dependent on others. o Screen shots are mandatory for your success. Can you access SAS from home? Youll need it so argue for it. Part of your learning will be coming from just playing around in SAS and making a lot of mistakes and sometimes doing this in the office when someone is walking by asking why you are combining tables in a certain way is just not helpful. You need to be able to let your guard down. Find space to create your own sandbox.

Practice

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100 Things to Do in Your First 100 Days as a New SAS Programmer, continued Your Future Start a collection of job descriptions of similar jobs in your area. o This is what you will show your boss when you ask for a raise J o Read for how job descriptions ask for what they want in SAS programmers. o This also helps keep your own resume fresh. o During WUSS meet the job placement recruiters and get on their mailing list. Start a list of your major projects and how you used SAS. You will use this for your evaluation at work and also for keeping your resume up to date. Build your Network o Utilize Linked In o KK example of SPSS Modeler Consultants Become an expert in your field: o Write a paper. You can do this! o Make a presentation; start small and present to your team Mini topic - 10 minutes Offer to do a Lunch & Learn Brown Bag Dream Big: Have the goal be to open it up to other local businesses. There is no reason why you cant invite several nearby companies (as long as they are not competitors) to your presentation. You dont have to know everything about SAS just one area really, really well. Do a limited radius search from your business address and contact companies and ask if they use SAS and if they would like to participate. It could be the beginning of a user group if you dont already have one easily accessible. o Attend local/regional user groups. My local ones are: http://www.basas.com/ [Bay Area] http://svsug.blogspot.com/ [Sacramento Valley] Linked In under Groups: Sacramento Valley SAS Users Group o Host the local user group at your business o Volunteer at a conference or user group o Contact your local colleges and offer to do a speaking tour on SAS topics. Great places to start are the math/statistics, education and psychology departments. As a former professor myself, guest speakers are very much appreciated. Call the departments administrative assistant and ask if you can draft a flyer for their boxes. Most professors are subject area experts and not necessary methodology and/or SAS programming specialists. Clubs and organizations at the schools are always looking for guest speakers this can be you as well!

Get to Know Your Boss Know your bosss comfort level with data. Know your bosss education and SAS programming knowledge base. Know your bosss boss and what their expectations are regarding data and SAS. They may be so removed from the data they do not even know SAS is used. Here is your chance to say a few words about how you use SAS for the company.

Your Education (Academic) Develop a life long learning attitude; what does this look like to you? Get to your university library and get an alumni card (if applicable) or a community user card. Know what your education reimbursement is and how it works from your organization. Know the education level of your team mates (and their sensitivity). Share the math behind the SAS model and why its important; dont let that knowledge disappear. Work on being able to explain it without going into the math but rather the conceptual picture of the equation.

Invest in Yourself - Your Professional Education Research the continuing education programs available from your local and regional universities. o For example: UC Berkeley Extension (SF Campus 425 Fremont at Market) If you can take the SAS Programming Essentials Course consider taking the Certification Exam with a little more practice and studying.

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Research on-line programs that may be of interest to you. o Northwestern University Online Master of Science in Predictive Analytics, o DePaul University Online o Stanford Data Mining and Applications Graduate Certificate o Oklahoma State University Graduate Certificate in Business Data Mining Go to SAS User Group Conventions You are already here! Research when the SAS Global Forum is within a reasonable distance and make a case for attending. Start a White Paper Study Group with a peer o KK example reviewed a White Paper on Data Mining with a teammate. We took about five hours over the course of a week and stopped every few pages to dialogue how we might apply it to our work.

Increase Your Political Survival Know-How Know who applied for your job and their comfort/acceptance level with you. Know who you can trust and to what degree. Unfortunately this information always comes too late to be helpful from a teammate. Know who advocates for competitor products and why o Know if there is a movement to convert all users to one enterprise product Know who likes to talk in pictures vs. who likes the numbers o Listen for data storytelling; how does the end product of your SAS program get communicated? o Know that there can be a subtle political backlash with all the great training ideas in the previous section. Remember that teammates or even your boss may become suspicious of all your great outreach efforts. o One of the themes that can come up is youve got all this time to do all these great additional presentations, trainings and create great documents for the team let me translate this for you: Dont you have any work to do? One way to combat this attitude is to ensure that most of your work that can be perceived as not working on the current job load in your department is done off hours. This will be a continual challenge for those of us who naturally want to do more. Just be sensitive that others may question your motives as all of these ideas have the additional effect of building your resume. As long as you always give back to your organization everything you learn and encourage others to come along with you youll be successful. Know what SAS products you have available run this code: PROC SETINIT NOALIAS; RUN; This is what I am most interested in:

SAS

Print in color from the Enhanced Editor and add training commentary in separate column Google SAS Code and what you are needing to do for examples Learn to search your shared drives at work for SAS Code elements you need Best book purchase: The Little SAS Book (Delwiche and Slaughter) o Take the time to download the data sets and commit to going through the two page examples daily or weekly. They are short enough to learn something new every day. Keep your book at your desk and bookmark where you are. Be a team player and add a book to your department library; there usually is a discount if you buy a book at the user group conferences. This also has the added benefit of demonstrating to your boss and team you really got something out of the program. Know the SAS product line; know what you got and what you are missing

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100 Things to Do in Your First 100 Days as a New SAS Programmer, continued o See everything in action at WUSS (Western Users SAS Conference) o http://www.wuss.org/ Get your free subscription to SASCOM magazine; I ordered free back issues and passed out the current copy when I got back from the conference. Know your sales representatives o Write an unsolicited letter of appreciation for your favorite SAS employee; Ive done this for and it truly makes a difference in their performance reviews. They work really hard and need to be recognized. Get a list of all SAS users for your company your sales rep will know how many licenses you have. I always find this very surprising. Commit to meeting each and every one of them. Reading about SAS 15 minutes a day. Consider using a flashcard on-line system to help with keeping thing fresh. o The thing that confused you in SAS last week is still going to confuse you in SAS next week unless you just memorize the concept. Review code from your department and look for a shell that is used over and over. This was probably the best advice I got from a teammate. Once you locate it study it and ask questions about the code. Find a SAS mentor both inside and outside of your organization but also consider being your own coach you know what you need to work on. o At my company you cannot get an assigned mentor until you have been with the organization for one year. This is too late in my opinion. The first year is critical. o Personal coaches are big business for a reason everyone could really use one. Ask a friend to play this role even if they do not know SAS. Their job is simple just continually ask how your doing regarding learning SAS. They should be your one unconditional SAS supporter. Every SAS mistake you make you should tell them, and have them repeat Great, glad you figured out not to that again. Be okay with copying code but dont rely on it to the extent you forget basic SAS programming. Once you find the secret stash of code on the shared drive at work your knowledge of SAS will diminish proportionally. Learn how to read the log. Ill be honest here the log baffles me greatly and I need to work on this myself. Learn how to read code o Code looks simple and there lies the problem. Continually ask yourself what is it trying to do? Learn the common formats used in your departments programming o There are formats for everything - so start with what the majority of what your programs use. Create your own cheat sheet. Accept the fact that SAS dates will drive you crazy but know what you can do about it. o Search for a book or paper that makes sense to you. Learn to sort Master the Where statement Know what PROC SQL can do

I found the following valuable to know in my first 100 days: PROC PRINT PROC MEANS and PROC UNIVARIATE PROC FREQ PROC CHART and PROC PLOT PROC TABULATE

Have Fun! o o Halloween 2011 our team became M*A*S*H Master Analytical Statistical Headquarters Celebrate your SAS accomplishments. No one else does this better than you!

CONCLUSION
Everyones first 100 days will be different. As you can tell, mine centered on learning as much as I could about SAS and convincing my boss that SAS will always be at least for me a constant learning curve and Im okay with that.

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ABOUT THE PRESENTER

Dr. Kelso has managed research and evaluation departments for several school districts. She has written white papers for Dell and Intel as well as serving as Senior Editor for a technology magazine. In her current job as a Senior Data Analyst at VSP Global on the Provider Intelligence team she navigates vision insurance and provider data. She is an award winning national presenter in several fields earning numerous top paper awards. She considers herself a novice SAS programmer with a lot to learn.

RECOMMENDED READING
Delwiche, Lora D., and Slaughter, S. (2008). The little SAS book: A primer. SAS Institute: Cary, NC.

CONTACT INFORMATION
Your comments and questions are valued and encouraged. I would enjoy hearing from you about your educational journey with SAS. Maybe something magical happened for you on day 101 that I need to know about. I am also more than happy to share my You Tube video, training documents and general notes. Lets learn together! Contact the author at: Dr. Kari Kelso Senior Data Analyst VSP Global 3333 Quality Drive Rancho Cordova, CA 95670 (916) 851-6141 kari.kelso@vsp.com SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.

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