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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

#121
post #38

Is there a word for being good/talented at something you find undesirable?

If the task is both undesirable, difficult to find people to fill, and yet widely sought after and greatly needed, the word you're looking for is "lucrative."

Example: plumbers.

Excel wizards: quit your whining and go make bank.

Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#122
There is a paywall sadly.

I myself have stopped using excel for the last 3 years. My company runs on GSuite, and I love how there can be one source of truth updated in real-time for 1 document. For the better and the worst, some of our internal processes are Google sheets centric now.

I believe the next generation of business will be "fighting" google sheets intrusion in operation processes. Some processes are fine in a Google sheets, but not all of them.

Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#123
post #5

I 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…

>Excel lacks the community programmers have and also lacks the learning opportunities given by open-source software.

Source needed.

There’s crap tons of excel help, and the amount of excel queries+answers will easily put other languages to shame.

The difference is that excel is not usually treated as an engineering tool, with the various rituals that go with it.

In contrast, take a look at how financial analysts learn excel - a field where excel IS an engineering tool.

It’s the differences between being a home cook and a professional chef.

Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#124
post #66
post #21

Sounds 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 [1] https://www.excelchat.co

How is the pricing sustainable at $20/hour or $30/month "unlimited"? Do you just employ overseas where labor is cheap? Or are you counting on people paying $20 for questions that only take a minute or two to answer?

Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#125
post #72

People say "use a real database", fine, but where is the visual data entry? Where are the easy adhoc reports? Where are the forms? I guess if you're on Windows you can use Microsoft Access, but that's the only accesible tool I know of that doesn't require a team of programmers or an enterprise license for some Oracle/SAP type monstrosity.

Obligatory Comment: "Excel as a Database" by Rory Blyth, circa early 2000's.

"As a developer, you've probably, at some unfortunate point in your life (possibly several points, actually), been handed an Excel file that has been crammed full of 'data' by someone in marketing and told to 'do something with it.' " http://wyorock.com/excelasadatabase.htm

Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#126
post #21

Sounds like a cool startup idea. A legion of VLOOKUP gurus manning a helpdesk, only $20 per screen-share!

Add another ten for pivot tables.

Mentioned this above: pivots, vlookups any help: all the same cost for a 20 minute collab session

Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#128
Happened to me before as I used to be able to do VBA and use Excel's data analysis toolkit and then a lot of my assignments as a intern was to literally help department managers with their Excel spreadsheets even though that wasn't what I was hired for.

Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#129
If we're sharing awesome excel videos, You Suck at Excel with Joel Spolsky has to be among the best I've ever seen. Joel, being on the team that made excel, has an incredible amount of excel knowledge.

The video is meant to be in the same vein as the You Suck at Photoshop videos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c

Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#130
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference between "doing other people's job" and "enabling them to learn on their own" in my experience. Explaining to someone why it is better to use INDEX MATCH in lieu of VLOOKUP will never ruin my productivity.

In my experience not 1 person in 50 of people who "aren't computer people" will retain that information regardless of how much time you spend. I once worked with a guy who would come to me for everything from excel stuff to "help I can't find this email in my gmail account". I tried to stress to him that I had my own work to do (write code) but he whined that it would take me just a minute and it might take him 15 or…

Show him how to use Excel to make an invoice for your time he's wasting.
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