It’s not easy being a SAS programmer!  Your family, friends, and neighbors do not understand what you do for a living.  At work, management is mystified by your programming prowess and doesn’t quite know where you actually belong in the organization.  Other types of programmers patiently regard you as a niche programmer while envying your productivity.  The computer press rarely mentions “SAS programmer”, though publications often cover successful applications where SAS is involved and the many awards that SAS software routinely wins.  And, it is challenging for you to keep up with the ever evolving landscape of SAS releases, products, solutions, and features.  But, year-after-year, in project-after-project, you continue to be successful at turning your organization’s diverse collections of data into understandable, actionable information using SAS software.

This presentation takes a light-hearted look at what it is like to be a SAS programmer.  It discusses the many societal, work-place, and industry issues that SAS programmers routinely face.  The presentation highlights the one event that brings SAS programmers together in a friendly, cooperative setting with others that can truly understand them—the yearly SAS Users Group conference.  That is where SAS programmers meet to socialize, to share information, to learn new programming techniques, and to reenergize so that they can continue doing great things for their organizations with SAS software.