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Royal College considers no confidence move after Excel recruitment debacle

theregister.com

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Re: Royal College considers no confidence move after Excel recruitment debacle

#41

Post by cryptonym »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #28

People think that Excel is the most used "programming language" in the world. Which may or may not be true. But the one truth is this: the world runs on broken Excel spreadsheets. People have no idea. The number of decisions taken higher up the chain based on wrong numbers are beyond belief. If you've ever been tasked to rewrite a semi-advanced Excel spreadsheet to a dedicated (web)app, you know. I'm a coder and I do…

Tools wrongly used, mistakes carried up to top management, this is nothing new and not Excel-specific.

They are usually looking at numbers to support decisions, not much for actual guidance/directions.

Re: Royal College considers no confidence move after Excel recruitment debacle

#42

Post by jjgreen »

onionisafruit wrote: post #31
jjgreen wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copy Paste technician , fabulous, up there with Prompt engineer

Is prompt engineer a derogatory term for people who spend their work day at a shell prompt? If so, I can own up to being a prompt engineer. Or maybe it’s an engineer who does their work promptly. In that case, I’m not sure I qualify.

Neither, it's someone who crafts ChatGPT prompts to get the desired output (and that seems to be what they call themselves, so not really derogatory).

Re: Royal College considers no confidence move after Excel recruitment debacle

#43

Post by onionisafruit »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #28

People think that Excel is the most used "programming language" in the world. Which may or may not be true. But the one truth is this: the world runs on broken Excel spreadsheets. People have no idea. The number of decisions taken higher up the chain based on wrong numbers are beyond belief. If you've ever been tasked to rewrite a semi-advanced Excel spreadsheet to a dedicated (web)app, you know. I'm a coder and I do…

If it’s a programming language, then its users are programmers. Just like with javascript or c, some of those programmers are more skilled than others.

Re: Royal College considers no confidence move after Excel recruitment debacle

#44

Post by TeMPOraL »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #28

People think that Excel is the most used "programming language" in the world. Which may or may not be true. But the one truth is this: the world runs on broken Excel spreadsheets. People have no idea. The number of decisions taken higher up the chain based on wrong numbers are beyond belief. If you've ever been tasked to rewrite a semi-advanced Excel spreadsheet to a dedicated (web)app, you know. I'm a coder and I do…

> People have no idea. The number of decisions taken higher up the chain based on wrong numbers are beyond belief.

Yup. That's a lesson in how robust organizational systems are - the errors mostly get compensated for somewhere downstream, so visibly bad outcomes are rare.

> If you've ever been tasked to rewrite a semi-advanced Excel spreadsheet to a dedicated (web)app, you know.

Yeah, I know. I've worked in a place that tried and failed to beat an Excel plugin with a web app.

The thing is, in my experience, you'll have a team spend two years doing the rewrite - with a lot of that going into designing and then building complex web frontend using modern tech stack - and in the end, you'll get a dedicated application that has less functionality and worse ergonomics than the spreadsheet you tried to replace.

The timeframes and costs involved with getting a Proper Software Development Team to build you a Proper App For That are absurd, and are only getting worse with everyone wanting to do bespoke web SPAs using modern practices and tool stacks. Even if one could afford that, the outcome is unlikely to be better for actual users. And so Excel stays, covering for all the processes that are custom enough that there is no ready-made popular Enterprise SaaS on the market that management can order people to use instead.

Re: Royal College considers no confidence move after Excel recruitment debacle

#45

Post by potatopatch »

surgicalcolor wrote: post #29

This is such a weird body for comments. You have devs in here shrugging and saying "hey it works, no big deal" when it comes to a business process. But if it comes to svelte vs react vs whatever it's a butlerian jihad where everyone's accusing eachother of not even knowing how to program. sometimes I wonder if most of us do the job to play with silly tools rather than actually make shit.

We should create an internal tool that relies on a framework which needs quarterly code changing updates for a yearly(?) administrative process with less than 24 candidates?

IMO the arguments people make in frontend are similar to the infinite scaling requirements in back end that require 10X overpriced machine rental.

Whether or not the current site could ever be appropriate for all 10 billion users, a developer wants the universal skills tuned to the top end.

A university HR employee OTOH probably realizes they won't code themselves if they end up at the largest employer on Earth.

Re: Royal College considers no confidence move after Excel recruitment debacle

#46

Post by tormeh »

pjc50 wrote: post #32
surgicalcolor wrote: post #29

This is such a weird body for comments. You have devs in here shrugging and saying "hey it works, no big deal" when it comes to a business process. But if it comes to svelte vs react vs whatever it's a butlerian jihad where everyone's accusing eachother of not even knowing how to program. sometimes I wonder if most of us do the job to play with silly tools rather than actually make shit.

There's a very "bikeshedding" property at work where the fewer "real" consequences come from a decision, the more heated the discussion gets because it's purely opinionated. (there are also a number of HN commentators who are reliably noisily wrong about things, but not in such a blatant way that they get obliterated in downvotes, and one of them started that top level thread)

See pineapple on pizza. It's fun to discuss precisely because of how trivial it is, not despite it.

Re: Royal College considers no confidence move after Excel recruitment debacle

#47

Post by Pat_Murph »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #33
surgicalcolor wrote: post #29

This is such a weird body for comments. You have devs in here shrugging and saying "hey it works, no big deal" when it comes to a business process. But if it comes to svelte vs react vs whatever it's a butlerian jihad where everyone's accusing eachother of not even knowing how to program. sometimes I wonder if most of us do the job to play with silly tools rather than actually make shit.

> sometimes I wonder if most of us do the job to play with silly tools rather than actually make shit. Yes? I thought this is common knowledge. Here's a universal tool whose potential is limited only by one's imagination, and yet most of the jobs in our profession are at best boring - the high-paying ones usually involve making actively harmful things that shouldn't exist in the first place (see e.g. whole adtech for…

Often I can do what I need in a few minutes in excel where à programmer would take hours and not give me what I actually asked for. And in excel I can modify and update my work. Where a programme solution is static and needs tons more hours for every change needed.

Often we see people claiming that "This new thing is the spreadsheet killer, like ai at the moment. People have been saying this forever but spreadsheets are still here. And there's a good reason for it.

Re: Royal College considers no confidence move after Excel recruitment debacle

#48

Post by impostervt »

surgicalcolor wrote: post #29

This is such a weird body for comments. You have devs in here shrugging and saying "hey it works, no big deal" when it comes to a business process. But if it comes to svelte vs react vs whatever it's a butlerian jihad where everyone's accusing eachother of not even knowing how to program. sometimes I wonder if most of us do the job to play with silly tools rather than actually make shit.

As in religion, it's the minor differences that lead to major wars.

Major differences let you say "well that's just what THOSE people do". It's not a threat to your sense of self.

Minor differences challenge your own sense of self, and thus must be destroyed.

Re: Royal College considers no confidence move after Excel recruitment debacle

#49

Post by heisenbit »

They had 24 applicants and they ran the process seemingly fully on excel and technocratic HR and email. If these decisions were only involving human subject matter experts this would not have happened. Imagine you need someone, define criteria, get two dozens CVs and then HR tells you nope: they are all no-go. Most would say WTF or go ballistic. But if HR is in the driving seat alone and makes final decisions alone without human contact - anything goes.

Thankfully it will be all getting better when we delegate that to A.I..

Re: Royal College considers no confidence move after Excel recruitment debacle

#50

Post by permo-w »

pasc1878 wrote: post #26
curiousgal wrote: post #22

I don't understand why they're blaming Excel. It seems like a fairly straightforward operational error.

They are blkaming the process that is uncontolled which uses Excel. They also blam Oriel which is another system

are you commenting from a corporate system that censors the word "blame"?
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