Excel warriors who save governments and companies from spreadsheet errors • Hacker News Board

Re: Excel warriors who save governments and companies from spreadsheet errors

#191

Post by setr » Wed, Oct 21, 2020, 5:26 AM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #54

johnrgrace wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A well designed high complexity spreadsheets are pretty easy to tell what's going on. The problem is most people don't put thought into how they design their spreadsheets. That's not their fault because there are very few resources that teach people how to design a complex spreadsheet well. If you have not seen a spreadsheet with say dedicated data input tabs, calculation tabs where you can see and audit the work bei…

I have literally never seen this. Do you have any links?

I've seen quite a few of these, but only in the context of video game equipment/leveling optimization sheets...

Re: Excel warriors who save governments and companies from spreadsheet errors

#192

Post by Veen » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 10:35 AM UTC

listenallyall wrote: post #121

Veen wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is written for a general audience that probably doesn’t use Excel regularly. It would be counter-productive to use an example the reader needs paragraphs of explanation to understand.

It's not about the article, it's a criticism of a company so clueless that it was unable to decipher a date without calling upon outside consultants.

That describes thousands of SMEs and non-technical business units who use Excel to manage their accounts and business operations. For example, a small law practice might use it to manage salaries, but, in spite of being full of very smart people, employ no one who has a clue about the quirks of how Excel handles dates.

These consultants exist to serve that niche.

Re: Excel warriors who save governments and companies from spreadsheet errors

#193

Post by listenallyall » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 7:39 AM UTC

Veen wrote: post #192

listenallyall wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about the article, it's a criticism of a company so clueless that it was unable to decipher a date without calling upon outside consultants.

That describes thousands of SMEs and non-technical business units who use Excel to manage their accounts and business operations. For example, a small law practice might use it to manage salaries, but, in spite of being full of very smart people, employ no one who has a clue about the quirks of how Excel handles dates. These consultants exist to serve that niche.

I'm not criticizing the consultant, hell, I'll happily take someone's money to "solve" these types of problems. But nobody from "payroll" (as described in the article) should be authorized to cut checks, especially for $40,000+, if they haven't figured out a pretty basic aspect of the primary tool they use -- and in addition, don't have critical thinking skills to determine that, hey, the person's start date seems to be missing. If Excel is too challenging, either outsource payroll or go ahead and spend for a dedicated application. Being a non-technical business is no excuse to hire incompetent people.

Good thing Excel doesn't use Unix time... payroll would likely have just written the guy a $1.6 billion check. Look at that, Excel just reduced the company's expenses by 99.997%!