R to SAS bait and switch?

How would you handle a scenario where the company may have altered the truth about a job?

Question details

"So here is a scenario. I accepted a job two months ago as an analyst where I'd be working primarily with two programming languages. Of the two, one I'm proficient in (R) and the other was brand new to me (SAS). I was going to be their in-house R expert. However, soon after starting, they said that I needed to focus just on SAS. 

Learning SAS isn't that hard and I can spend my evenings using R, however, that is not the arrangement that we agreed on. Therefore, I'm a little frustrated by this and considering whether I should jump ship. What would you do? 

For what it's worth, I've had a couple companies who I've talked with in the past reconnect with me and one even offered me a data scientist role. So I have something lined up if I want to jump ship." 

My answer

It is plausible that the company had a change in business needs, and that is why they want you to learn SAS rather than using R as you were told when hired. It is a lot more rational and economically sound to hire a SAS-familiar programmer from the start than to entice someone who knows R but no SAS, then require them to learn SAS on the job!

SAS is not difficult to learn if one knows how to program already, especially for people who know some math and statistics. I've worked with programmer / analysts and even a lead developer who was able to take my SAS code, which I wrote as a prototype in order to solve an analytical problem, then convert it to production code in C++. The lead developer was the best. No surprise there...

We made the transition only when we were ready to have the functionality incorporated into our enterprise production system. Doing this minimized the amount of iterating from revisions to my SAS code to C++. That is important!

Have you asked if your work in SAS is temporary?

You should. Also ask if there will be an opportunity to program in R. If the answer to the latter is "yes", make sure to ask when that might happen. Try to gauge if it is a certainty, e.g. a specific project requiring R that is scheduled to begin in the near future. 

Regardless, I wouldn't switch jobs after only two months unless you were also unhappy with other aspects of the workplace. This could be due to a range of things, like if the company seems unable to match project assignments to employee skills, or if you don't feel your work is valued.

By remaining at least a year or preferably two, even if only programming in SAS, you will have acquired a marketable skill. You will have accomplished this by using licensed, non-open source software that someone else (your employer, not you!) has paid for. You will also have increases your overall value as an analytic professional.