Anyone Need a Good SAS Programmer?

My current company, despite my objections and expertise, is phasing out SAS, and I think it is a misguided decision.

I am only about three years away from semi-retirement, but you won’t find a more motivated worker.  Not only am I a “virtuoso” SAS programmer with many years of programming and data analytics experience, but I’m also very good at teaching and mentoring others in the use of SAS—something I almost never get to do in my current position.

I need a change.

I have “big city” job skills in a small town where there appear to be no other employers who would be able to make use of my SAS expertise.  And, at this stage of my life, I can’t relocate and am unwilling to commute, so working from home appears to be the only option.

I’m looking at potential opportunities as an “encore career” and would really like to do something that directly benefits society.  I loved my 21 years at the Iowa Department of Transportation, and would love to be a public servant once again, or to work for a nonprofit organization. Or work on scientific projects—true science, not data “science”. Or, data for good projects.  Both salary and number of work hours (up to full time) are completely negotiable.  I’m at a point now in my career where I can be more flexible for the right opportunity.

I have my own personal SAS Analytics Pro license, so could do work for you even if you don’t have SAS.

SAS is a great product, and SAS Institute is a great company.  And SAS keeps getting better all the time.

Some say that SAS is difficult to learn, but, like many things, it is not difficult at all if you have a good teacher who has a thorough understanding of the subject matter and a passion for teaching it. That would be me.

Retirement Advice?

I’ll be 63 in a couple of months. My the years go fast, faster still of late.

Naturally, I’m beginning to look toward retirement when I can finally devote nearly all my time and energy to astronomy, preservation and restoration of our nighttime environment, and classical music. These three avocations have been my primary interests all of my adult life.

I’m in need of some retirement advice by someone who is not trying to sell me a financial product. I’d like to semi-retire as soon as possible, but want to wait until age 70 to collect Social Security when the monthly benefit reaches a maximum. So, I guess that means gradually cutting back work hours and supplementing the lost income with some retirement benefits.

I’m in a good position in terms of having a marketable work skill for the semi-retirement years. You’d be hard pressed to find a better SAS programmer. I’ll be at SAS Global Forum 2019 in Dallas this spring if you want to talk.

Honestly, I’ve been in a bit of a funk since I started this blog back in December 2016. First, Trump got elected, and that made me realize how bad things have gotten in this country. That someone so boorish and with zero job skills as a public servant got elected as President of the United States is both frightening and depressing. And the national nightmare continues. Then, last fall, my employer moved everyone except for management into an open office environment, which I hate. Throughout my work career, I’ve always had my own office or a cubicle and now I’m in a big open room with lots of distractions and a desk half the size of what I had just a few months ago, and no place to put my books, so I had to bring them all home. No one wants to learn SAS at my company anymore, even though I do amazing things with it every day. I’m in high demand, but they’re not hiring anybody anymore with SAS skills. That’s depressing, because it is a great language and a great company and SAS Institute most definitely continues to innovate. But open source is the name of the game where I work now.

It is easy to feel isolated living in a small town. As my friend Jeff Dilks once said when he was a physics teacher in Shenandoah, Iowa, the chances of finding anyone else in a small town (or rural area) with similar interests and abilities are vanishingly small if you have “big city” interests and a specialized education. That’s true, but where else are you going to live if you want to do observational astronomy and ride a bicycle to and from work? Quality of life issues like that, you know. But loneliness, yes, and I imagine that gets to be more of a challenge in our later years.

For something like 30 years, I’ve wanted to help develop and nurture a science-oriented and education-oriented intentional community where astronomy is a major focus. I even have a name for it: Mirador Astronomy Village. Can’t think of a better way to spend my retirement years, but it takes serious money to get something like this off the ground, and money I don’t have.

With open office and all (which is pretty much ubiquitous nowadays), I’ve soured on the idea of working for “Corporate America” any longer. I’d be much happier as a public servant, trying to make the world a better place and helping to solve the many problems for which Corporate America is not the answer, and has no answers.