Is there a word for being good/talented at something you find undesirable?
Cursed.
The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It
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Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It
#62I do not understand the mindset of not wanting to help other people. Enabling people to learn more about the software they use every day is better for everyone involved. Yes, some problems are too complex to solve in a few minutes, but pointing someone in the right direction requires little to no effort. Excel lacks the community programmers have and also lacks the learning opportunities given by open-source software…
I think there are jobs that people need to have done, and know that they can't do themselves, but that they consider to be menial and lower class. Like being the bass player in a band. (Disclaimer: I'm the bass player in a band).
They may think that the difficulty and expertise are gratuitous -- if software were written right, it wouldn't need an expert.
Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It
#63Shameless plug - we actually founded a service [1] that provides Excel experts on-demand, within 30 to 60 seconds. So if you're tired of being the "Excel expert" at work feel free to pass them on to us. Also happy to answer any questions.
Tidbit: Most popular questions tend to be formulas, vlookups, conditional formatting, pivots.
Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It
#64I'm "the excel guy" for a lab of about 100 people, and it is indeed a challenge sometimes. Mostly I just yell at them and tell them to stop using excel sheets as makeshift databases. Then I yell at them some more and make them switch from formulas (which, being written in reverse Polish, are terrible to debug) over to macros. Then I yell at them for recording macros instead of writing them themselves. Then I just do…
There needs to be an Excel "pro mode" where the mouse is disabled and you have to do all navigation by keyboard. People would become so much more efficient that way.
And where hitting F1 doesn't launch some useless help app.
Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It
#65For me, this article shows as paywalled. Paywalled articles should be banned, or at least some indication of a paywall should be included in the title, as people sometimes do with PDFs.
If there's a workaround, it's ok. Users usually post workarounds in the thread.
This is in the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and there's more explanation here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It
#66Sounds like a cool startup idea. A legion of VLOOKUP gurus manning a helpdesk, only $20 per screen-share!
Mentioned this elsewhere but we created a startup that does exactly this [1]. We charge a lot less than $20 though! Happy to answer any questions
Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Having used Excel for many years on the trading floor, I have to say it's awful. But the interface is not awful - it's absolutely wonderful as a quick way to enter and share data and do a fast analysis. The part that's awful is when you do more than that. And once you've got the data into Excel, why go through the trouble of changing to something else just to do one additional thing, even if that additional thing i…
As technological scrap paper, I admit it can be useful. But as soon as your "fast analysis" is done, you need to be hardening whatever process it is you are creating. After all, that is what your analysis is about, right? Building some sort of repeatable, often auditable, transparent process.
I'm certainly not arguing in favor of Excel. I only open spreadsheets when I have no other choice, but I understand why others use them.
Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It
#68Everyone should be using airtable now
Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It
#69Is there a word for being good/talented at something you find undesirable?
Cursed.
For certain curses I suppose [0]. I wanted something more general because not having words for certain concepts can affect the perception of that thing e.g. make it less relatable.
Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It
#70I've always wondered: these clunky Excel sheets are used at billion-dollar companies. Why don't they invest in building a sane web application (or similar) that can do all the validation and calculations in a much better looking interface that is suited for the job / application?
Some do, but the way of working can be very deeply rooted. I work with an in-house made DCIM whose primary competition is excel. Switching way of working and also migrating bad quality excel spreadsheets is hard, especially when the spreadsheets have diverged between sites.