SAS(Statistical Analysis System) Career As a computer science student

Question

Hi. I have completed MSc in Computer science this academic year. So I am fresher... While I am doing graduation and post graduation I did many projects using PHP and MySQL. Now I got opportunity to get into SAS(Statistical Analysis System) career, and I heard that SAS having better career growth than PHP developement. For the past 4 days, I was working with SAS and I feel interested in working.

My questions are,

1. Since i am a computer science student whether i will have any problem in my career growth in SAS?
2. I am ready to learn statistics also, is there anything else I have to do?
3. Doing certification in SAS will make any changes?
4. Is it a bad idea to get into SAS with only CSc backgrond?

So please guide me for my career...

Answer 1

Where I sit SAS means 'Special Air Service' one of the UK's special forces outfits. With the way the world is I'd agree that a future in the SAS is likely to be a lot busier than one with PHP.

Answer 2

I did CompSci, worked as a programmer for 4-5 years and then ended up learning and specializing in SAS for the past 8 or so years. It worked out very well for me as SAS is quite a niche area and provided that you are willing to move to where the SAS jobs are then you can earn considerably better than regular programming gigs. SAS jobs are typically found in higher paying industries as well such as pharma and finance (although when I learnt SAS I was working at a manufacturing company) so that always helps boost the paycheck.

Certification in SAS is mainly to make your resume look better, although when I did my certification last year I did learn some new things. I've found that a lot of the time SAS is used for it's ETL capabilities first, and it's statistical side second. Most of the time it's a glorified report builder so knowing statistics is required only depending on your job function. I've noticed that for a lot of jobs in the States for SAS it's not just enough to know stats, you will need a masters or PHD if you want to get the top paying very statistically oriented jobs.

So I would recommend it. I think SAS needs more people from a CompSci background actually as a lot of people learn it on the job and wouldn't consider themselves programmers so provided you are a decent enough programmer you should definitely stand out. Also, if you're happy to be a data monkey and spend your time working with data rather than developing applications then yeah I'd say go for it.

Cheers Rob

Answer 3

Greetings! First of all i'm not from USA but from Milan, Italy so my experience may be quite different.

1. Since i am a computer science student whether i will have any problem in my career growth in SAS?

Definetly not. I work in SAS (among other things) and i'm an industral engineer with some interest in statistics. From what i've seen CSc, economics or statistician and the most common SAS users. Also SAS is pretty straightforward and if you did Heavy C you'll find it even quite easy.

1. I am ready to learn statistics also, is there anything else I have to do?

Data Management, Datawarehousing and possibly throw in some Project Management skills!

1. Doing certification in SAS will make any changes?

It will look good into your resume. I did take the certification (actually i believe i'm the only one in my country to have scored 100% )and while not learning much i definetly found some good question to ask in an interview :) Most important part about the certification is it requires you to have experience with SAS and understand how things works, its not a memory based exam.

1. Is it a bad idea to get into SAS with only CSc backgrond?

I believe it is a good idea. As pointed out is a niche with high paying big customers and it can get u better salary than similar programming position. Also it opens you the possibility to gain experience in all the BI world with competitors (business objects, oracle, microsoft, microstrategy, cognos,ecc ) and quite possibly put you eventually in charge of large projects as a Project Manager.

Good luck!