Earlier this week, a recruiter approached my firm and asked if I had any SAS programmers available for contract work. While my analytical consulting firm prides itself with having its finger on the pulse of Boston’s analytics community (and we indeed provide folks that program using SAS), I could not answer the recruiter’s question correctly. Mind you – I’ve been programming in SAS for a third of my life and have built entire SAS departments. But I’m still not sure what a “SAS Programmer” is. When someone tells me that they are a “SAS Programmer,” I generally need to ask about 5 more questions before I understand what he/she does for a living.

Before discussing what a SAS Programmer is, we should first answer the question, “What is SAS?” Originating in 1966 at North Carolina State University, SAS is a proprietary 4th generation programming language specifically designed for data analysis. Data analysis includes data management, ETL, descriptive statistics, plots and graphics, inferential statistics, data mining, forecasting, etc.. In addition to the SAS programming language, SAS Institute, its parent company, also sells solutions built on top of the SAS language.

Some people confuse SAS with the common database query language called “SQL”, thinking that both languages manage data in some way. While SAS may be used for database querying (reading/writing data to databases), this is only a tiny fraction of SAS’s capabilities. To give some scope, the entire SQL language is available in SAS as but one “procedure” (think of a procedure as a bundle of functionality). SAS has over 300 procedures. While each procedure varies in size and functionality, it is probably safe to estimate that all of SQL makes up about 1/300th of SAS’s functionality. So, does that mean that a SAS programmer should cost 300x more than a SQL programmer?

While some SAS programmers would like for this to be true, the sheer size of the SAS language means that no one can master it in its entirety, even in a lifetime. Interestingly, one of the top SAS experts in the industry once stated that he knew only 10% of the language. This may be an overestimate. Since SAS is so large, SAS programmers typically specialize in a small component of the language. For example, some specialize exclusively in data management (re-organizing data and tables). Others specialize in reporting and presentation of SAS information. A smaller group specializes in statistics. On the far end of the spectrum are the folks doing data mining, predictive modeling, and advanced forecasting.

Each of the areas a SAS programmer can specialize typically requires different training and skill sets. In industry, this translates into salaries being all over the place when it comes to SAS expertise. In contract work, you may have two candidates, each with “SAS Programmer” at the top of their resume. One will cost $15/hr while the other costs $250/hr. This difference in cost may have little to do with their performance – both may be fantastic “SAS” programmers. However, one may focus on simple data management tasks while the other focuses on procedures that enable interpretation and prediction from data.

For our analytical consulting firm in Boston area, we’ve started 2012 observing non-managerial data management & reporting SAS programmers bill for around $65/hr on contract. To the other end of the spectrum, we see SAS experts doing predictive modeling and data mining for businesses billing between $180/hr – $220/hr on contract. For experts on the predictive modeling management end who can build end-to-end predictive systems to enable companies to make rapid, strategic decisions, we’re occasionally seeing bill rates in excess of $2000 per day.

Some folks we speak to are surprised when they see such variation in salaries and rates (and just how high they can go). However, it is important to look at the value such expertise can bring to an organization. A predictive modeling expert can help reshape the strategic vision of an entire company, identifying new target markets and opportunities in real-time. Can an attorney billing for $450/hr make such a tremendous contribution to the daily operations of a business? When assessed in terms of ROI, the reason behind market prices for SAS expertise can more easily be understood.

SAS is not the only language where such a gradient in skills will be observed. R, a free, open-source language that competes with SAS in many respects also sports a similar variation in labor expense. However, we’ll save this for another article.

For more information or to request a free analytical consultation, call 617-500-0093 or visit bostondecision.com.

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