How much SAS experience should we hire?

[nightshadeDJ]

I work in the electric and natural gas utility industry. Our load forecasting team consists of two employees that have beginner - intermediate SAS skills. We have an open position for a lead / manager of Forecasting. We currently have SAS 9.4 and are transitioning to SAS Viya. 

Currently the hiring director of the group is thinking that "If someone can code well in R, python or other similar programs, I think they could plug themselves in very quickly."

How important is it that this open lead/manager position is filled with someone with strong SAS experience vs. someone that is more well versed in R, python or similar programs? Please provide any supporting details or examples of times when things went right/wrong.

[PaigeMiller]

"If someone can code well in R, python or other similar programs, I think they could plug themselves in very quickly."

And if someone can program at a high level in SAS, they could plug in very quickly as well.

Experience with load forecasting seems to me to be the major criteria, not the programming language this person will use.

I think it is a mistake to phrase this as a question of which software to use. If you need an advanced/high level programmer, then you need an advanced high level programmer, regardless of which software that person uses.

[PaigeMiller]

SAS Energy Forecasting

[ChrisHemedinger]

Since I work for SAS I'm probably a bit biased here, but here are my thoughts based on working as a software developer (in many technologies) over the years.

Domain knowledge is paramount, and experience with applying that domain knowledge in technology (code-based, in this case) is important. If the candidate has strong Python or R experience, that's great --they can easily translate that to SAS capabilities. But it needs to be clear that "in this job, we use SAS", and no fair pining for a syntax or library that you're already comfortable with. All of the features and capabilities are there in SAS too, but you do have to invest some time in getting to know where they are.

In SAS Viya, you can actually leverage Python knowledge in the system -- but again, that's not necessarily an invitation to lean on a familiar Python package when SAS is your standard. However, it may help with the learning process.