My SAS Certification Log

[Nietzsche]

Hello, happy week 12.

2023 Week 11 update. Total SAS Study Time = 14.45 hours.

I was about to abandon SAS altogether due to

1. Not getting that SAS job I interviewed for

2. Not many SAS jobs in Australia

3. Not getting any SAS work experience at my current job.

4. General tread that SAS is losing market share to R and Python.

What I have been studying in the last 6 weeks were Power BI and AWS.

Last week I was asked to help the data engineering team, so I finally got my first real SAS work experience at work this week. Which really re-motivated to study SAS again. 

Finished chapter 9 and 11 of the SAS certification Advanced Programming using SAS 9 Prep Guide 4th Ed.

I am now aiming to take the Advanced Programming exam in May.

[novinosrin]

"I was about to abandon SAS altogether due to

1. Not getting that SAS job I interviewed for

2. Not many SAS jobs in Australia

3. Not getting any SAS work experience at my current job.

4. General tread that SAS is losing market share to R and Python."

It seems to be increasingly the trend. I just love SAS and I really hope SAS prevails. 

Feedback for @ChrisHemedinger & team, You folks know where I work and the info I am getting is that SAS is rather losing out on its pricing strategy than anything can better that. IMHO, We the SAS family should sincerely revisit and take feedback and the pricing folks should focus on "volume" based growth than "premium". Take it or leave it, I don't want us the last set of folks who were part of the religion called SAS. Thank you for reading!

[Nietzsche]

Looks like this is the end of my SAS career, it ended before it even got started.

I went to two interviews last week, one is Power BI/Python/Azure stack, the other is Power BI/R stack. I am confident that I will likely to get one of them as she said if she can call my referee at the end of the interview.

[Nietzsche]

I have accepted the Python/Power BI Data analyst position.

I don't think the 200 hours I have spent on SAS is wasted, at least I was able to demonstrate my ability to learn a the basics of a new language and pass a difficult exam in less than three month during the interview.

Who knows, I might encounter SAS in the future if I happen to work for a government department or company that use SAS again, but at this stage, it looks like Python and Data Science is my future.

[Nietzsche]

Hi SAS community,

It has been 1.5 years since I last posted. I got a new job, this time mainly working with SQL Server as a DBA in the health industry.

My friend at Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care asked me join SAS Viya Workbench event in Canberra.

Met some awesome people from SAS Institute in Canberra and people from various Australian federal level departments.

Got some nice gifts from SAS, the food, drink and networking was awesome. 

Great to see SAS starting to embrace Python with the Viya workbench. The coding session and the presentation was informative. 

Here are some photos.

[Quentin]

Glad you're doing well.  I enjoyed following your SAS certification journey.

I'm also excited about SAS Viya Workbench.  I had a chance to demo it at SAS Explore, and then seeing Dr Goodnight on stage at SAS Innovate 2025, writing SAS code in Workbench was a powerful statement that SAS is committed to the SAS programming language.  If you want to see more, BASUG (Boston Area SAS Users Group) is hosting a webinar Nov 6 noon (UTC-4).  I think that might be 0300 for our friends in Australia, but we do post recordings to our website.  Folks can register at www.basug.org/events. 

[Nietzsche]

Same here, very excited to see SAS embracing Python and R and their new direction to be more open.

I didn't touch SAS or follow SAS' development for 1.5 years now and have been mainly in the Microsoft ecosystems, didn't know anything about Viya Workbench before the event, but now I am very excited for SAS and it is a skill I want to develop further in the future.