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Post by Aj_June on Nov 24, 2018 6:17:55 GMT
I had an interview a few days ago with a company that suits me and they were happy with me. I was looking for role as a financial analyst but that company is offering me the position of financial research analyst. Sadly, the knowledge of SAS (Statistical Analysis System) is mandatory for my work. The company has given me 10 days to decide and learn the system. They said I just need to learn the base SAS on my own, they will teach me advance in the company. If anyone uses that system then please let me know what is the minimum time period in which a person can have basic working knowledge of the system? I tried going through youtube videos. Not very difficult but it seems to have vast amount of codes/commands. I haven't got any programming experience either.
I remember you having some sort of background in the field of computer. Any info about SAS?
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Post by general313 on Nov 24, 2018 21:36:23 GMT
I had an interview a few days ago with a company that suits me and they were happy with me. I was looking for role as a financial analyst but that company is offering me the position of financial research analyst. Sadly, that knowledge of SAS (Statistical Analysis System) is mandatory for my work. The company has given me 10 days to decide and learn the system. They said I just need to learn the base SAS on my own, they will teach me advance in the company. If anyone uses that system then please let me know what is the minimum time period in which a person can have basic working knowledge of the system? I tried going through youtube videos. Not very difficult but it seems to have vast amount of codes/commands. I haven't got any programming experience either.
I remember you having some sort of background in the field of computer. Any info about SAS?
Unfortunately that is well outside of my area of expertise, which is computer graphics. I'm afraid I can't help much with business oriented applications. The only thing I can offer is that if it sounds interesting to you, maybe it's worth going for it. It might have a steep learning curve though. I wish you luck in your decision. |
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Post by Aj_June on Nov 25, 2018 3:09:23 GMT
I had an interview a few days ago with a company that suits me and they were happy with me. I was looking for role as a financial analyst but that company is offering me the position of financial research analyst. Sadly, that knowledge of SAS (Statistical Analysis System) is mandatory for my work. The company has given me 10 days to decide and learn the system. They said I just need to learn the base SAS on my own, they will teach me advance in the company. If anyone uses that system then please let me know what is the minimum time period in which a person can have basic working knowledge of the system? I tried going through youtube videos. Not very difficult but it seems to have vast amount of codes/commands. I haven't got any programming experience either.
I remember you having some sort of background in the field of computer. Any info about SAS?
Unfortunately that is well outside of my area of expertise, which is computer graphics. I'm afraid I can't help much with business oriented applications. The only thing I can offer is that if it sounds interesting to you, maybe it's worth going for it. It might have a steep learning curve though. I wish you luck in your decision. Thanks. I went through youtube tutorial. It's not very difficult but almost everything is done through keyboard and there are a lot of unique commands that I can only grasp through lots and lots of practice. Don't believe I can be an expert of even Base SAS in 10 days. But I think by today evening I will decide whether to go for it and get one on one tution in person from an expert. I do love online videos as mode of education but this field is totally new to me and I don't think I am capable of self learning here. |
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Post by alpha128 on Nov 25, 2018 17:08:49 GMT
Thanks. I went through youtube tutorial. It's not very difficult but almost everything is done through keyboard and there are a lot of unique commands that I can only grasp through lots and lots of practice. Don't believe I can be an expert of even Base SAS in 10 days. But I think by today evening I will decide whether to go for it and get one on one tution in person from an expert. I do love online videos as mode of education but this field is totally new to me and I don't think I am capable of self learning here. I took SAS back in college. I don't remember much about it, but I don't remember it being particularly hard. The larger issue is you don't have any programming experience. Once you're proficient in one programming language, learning another one is largely a matter of syntax. If without that baseline level of experience, learning a language will be a lot harder. Good luck! |
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Post by general313 on Nov 25, 2018 18:08:05 GMT
Unfortunately that is well outside of my area of expertise, which is computer graphics. I'm afraid I can't help much with business oriented applications. The only thing I can offer is that if it sounds interesting to you, maybe it's worth going for it. It might have a steep learning curve though. I wish you luck in your decision. Thanks. I went through youtube tutorial. It's not very difficult but almost everything is done through keyboard and there are a lot of unique commands that I can only grasp through lots and lots of practice. Don't believe I can be an expert of even Base SAS in 10 days. But I think by today evening I will decide whether to go for it and get one on one tution in person from an expert. I do love online videos as mode of education but this field is totally new to me and I don't think I am capable of self learning here. Let me know what you decide to do. |
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Post by Aj_June on Nov 26, 2018 14:30:50 GMT
Thanks. I went through youtube tutorial. It's not very difficult but almost everything is done through keyboard and there are a lot of unique commands that I can only grasp through lots and lots of practice. Don't believe I can be an expert of even Base SAS in 10 days. But I think by today evening I will decide whether to go for it and get one on one tution in person from an expert. I do love online videos as mode of education but this field is totally new to me and I don't think I am capable of self learning here. Let me know what you decide to do. Thanks. I went through youtube tutorial. It's not very difficult but almost everything is done through keyboard and there are a lot of unique commands that I can only grasp through lots and lots of practice. Don't believe I can be an expert of even Base SAS in 10 days. But I think by today evening I will decide whether to go for it and get one on one tution in person from an expert. I do love online videos as mode of education but this field is totally new to me and I don't think I am capable of self learning here. I took SAS back in college. I don't remember much about it, but I don't remember it being particularly hard. The larger issue is you don't have any programming experience. Once you're proficient in one programming language, learning another one is largely a matter of syntax. If without that baseline level of experience, learning a language will be a lot harder. Good luck! Yeah...the total lack of experience in programming seems to be an issue. I am a child of graphical user interface era and have never worked on command line interface on any software except for simple update command "sudo apt-get update" on Linux. I am very poor at using keyboard and rely totally on mouse in my computing. But the company and my profile can be very good for my future and I don't want to miss the opportunity. I decided to hire a personal tutor. He asked for 15000Rs (210 USD) and would give me tution for 2hrs a day for 5 days. Today was the first class and while it wasn't very difficult it was confusing. The terminologies such as variable for columns and observations for rows is pretty new to me. Codes like below didn't felt difficult when the tutor taught me but when I returned home I was totally blank.
I tried practicing and doing it on my own. Sometimes I would forget giving semicolon at the end f every statement and other times I would forget to put M or F inside single quotes. He says the list of codes is huge.
But I guess with practice one can learn these things. I will try to talk to the company and ask them for some more time. My other hope is that I do not get to use the software immediately when I join the company. It definitely doesn't seem to be something like SAP that runs the entire business. It most probably has limited use but I can only know that when I start working.
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Post by alpha128 on Nov 26, 2018 23:54:36 GMT
The terminologies such as variable for columns and observations for rows is pretty new to me. Codes like below didn't felt difficult when the tutor taught me but when I returned home I was totally blank.
I tried practicing and doing it on my own. Sometimes I would forget giving semicolon at the end f every statement and other times I would forget to put M or F inside single quotes. He says the list of codes is huge.
But I guess with practice one can learn these things. I will try to talk to the company and ask them for some more time. My other hope is that I do not get to use the software immediately when I join the company. It definitely doesn't seem to be something like SAP that runs the entire business. It most probably has limited use but I can only know that when I start working.
The example you give above is a good illustration of what I was talking about. An experienced programmer like myself can more or less read that right away, based on previous experience. age = age + 5 means take the previous value of the variable age, add five to it, and store the results back in age. But someone new to programming might look at that as an arithmetic expression that doesn't make any sense. But I think you made a good decision by hiring a tutor. Good luck! |
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Post by Aj_June on Nov 30, 2018 9:16:48 GMT
Thanks. I went through youtube tutorial. It's not very difficult but almost everything is done through keyboard and there are a lot of unique commands that I can only grasp through lots and lots of practice. Don't believe I can be an expert of even Base SAS in 10 days. But I think by today evening I will decide whether to go for it and get one on one tution in person from an expert. I do love online videos as mode of education but this field is totally new to me and I don't think I am capable of self learning here. Let me know what you decide to do. Plan dropped. Just getting too much to handle. Will stick to finance. Research is ok but I don't think at this point of time (I am 32) I am going to learn so much of extra stuff. Can easily analyze financial data without becoming an expert in SAS. Another company can have my services. |
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Post by general313 on Nov 30, 2018 15:39:14 GMT
Let me know what you decide to do. Plan dropped. Just getting too much to handle. Will stick to finance. Research is ok but I don't think at this point of time (I am 32) I am going to learn so much of extra stuff. Can easily analyze financial data without becoming an expert in SAS. Another company can have my services. Makes sense. It's probably better to branch into a new area gradually (perhaps on the job learning from another department) instead of cramming. Less risk and stress. |
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Post by permutojoe on Dec 1, 2018 1:39:56 GMT
Fake it till you make it, brah. Tell them you're up to speed and ready to go ASAP and that you're more than happy to work on the Penske file if needed too.
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Post by Aj_June on Dec 1, 2018 13:29:35 GMT
Fake it till you make it, brah. Tell them you're up to speed and ready to go ASAP and that you're more than happy to work on the Penske file if needed too. I could have done that but seriously I didn't want to move into research side. I figured out in a while that even though they had posted their job position as "financial research analyst' what they were actually looking for was just "research analyst".It was more about about identifying market trend and then finding various stats based on the data through SAS. I am much better in finance and would do better to stick to my core field than get dragged to research. Also, admittedly the programming stuff was too tiresome and I accept that I was struggling. I could have become better with practice but I just didn't think it was worth it. |
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Post by alpha128 on Dec 1, 2018 15:56:24 GMT
I figured out in a while that even though they had posted their job position as "financial research analyst' what they were actually looking for was just "research analyst".It was more about about identifying market trend and then finding various stats based on the data through SAS. I am much better in finance and would do better to stick to my core field than get dragged to research. Also, admittedly the programming stuff was too tiresome and I accept that I was struggling. I could have become better with practice but I just didn't think it was worth it. I understand. I'm glad you're happy with how things turned out. |
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Post by Aj_June on Jul 3, 2019 18:14:01 GMT
Thanks. I went through youtube tutorial. It's not very difficult but almost everything is done through keyboard and there are a lot of unique commands that I can only grasp through lots and lots of practice. Don't believe I can be an expert of even Base SAS in 10 days. But I think by today evening I will decide whether to go for it and get one on one tution in person from an expert. I do love online videos as mode of education but this field is totally new to me and I don't think I am capable of self learning here. Let me know what you decide to do. I got the same position as mentioned in my OP but in another company. Thankfully, I do not have to work on SAS or any other complex system. Been busy lately as I have been slowly settling in the job. Been learning a lot as our clients are from US, Europe, Australasia and even Latin America and my job requires having a good understanding of financial reporting of all those different countries.
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