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I cannot begin to tell you how proficient I am in Microsoft Word

newyorker.com

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Re: I cannot begin to tell you how proficient I am in Microsoft Word

#21

Post by 3pt14159 »

version_five wrote: post #18
culturestate wrote: post #13

Maybe I'm the one misunderstanding this, but... This piece isn't about Word or nerd-shaming or the author's self-perceived mastery of desktop publishing. It reads like a take on the absurdity of people constantly adding inane things like "must be proficient in Microsoft Word" to job postings and, consequently, their appearance on the CV of every person who applies to be a corporate drone in the western world. On the…

I've worked adjacent to financial consultants who build excel models all day. There is such thing as an "expert" at excel. I've interviewed lots of people who say they "know" excel, but when you dig into it, it's the equivalent of saying they know a programming language because they know basic flow control syntax. With word, I'm not sure if you can go as deep expertise wise as excel, but there is still much more to i…

With Excel its: Do you know arrays, UDFs, Solver, lookups, mastery over chart design, and cell formatting. With word it's basically: Can you do a mail merge and a table of contents? Congrats. You're an expert.

Re: I cannot begin to tell you how proficient I am in Microsoft Word

#22

Post by arepublicadoceu »

deepstack wrote: post #12
johntdaly wrote: post #3

I never understood The New Yorker. This is in humor, is this supposed to be funny?

Yeah The New Yorker always seems pretentious in away how the guy in the bar scene in Good Will Hunting is. Typically cater towards Ivy league educated trust fund crowd.

Well, I’m as far removed from a Ivy League education as one can be and I found this quite funny. But I’m also someone who uses Word since early 00s and can relate a lot to this text.

Re: I cannot begin to tell you how proficient I am in Microsoft Word

#23

Post by Siira »

culturestate wrote: post #13

Maybe I'm the one misunderstanding this, but... This piece isn't about Word or nerd-shaming or the author's self-perceived mastery of desktop publishing. It reads like a take on the absurdity of people constantly adding inane things like "must be proficient in Microsoft Word" to job postings and, consequently, their appearance on the CV of every person who applies to be a corporate drone in the western world. On the…

“Must know ten flavors of Markdown”

Re: I cannot begin to tell you how proficient I am in Microsoft Word

#25

Post by GlennS »

culturestate wrote: post #13

Maybe I'm the one misunderstanding this, but... This piece isn't about Word or nerd-shaming or the author's self-perceived mastery of desktop publishing. It reads like a take on the absurdity of people constantly adding inane things like "must be proficient in Microsoft Word" to job postings and, consequently, their appearance on the CV of every person who applies to be a corporate drone in the western world. On the…

I don't know how Microsoft could possibly make pivot tables easier. You can easily learn the basics in half an hour's experimental clicking.

But, I've had a client explicitly request that a report in Excel shouldn't include pivot tables, because they're too difficult. Too difficult to even look at.

Re: I cannot begin to tell you how proficient I am in Microsoft Word

#26

Post by suifbwish »

culturestate wrote: post #13

Maybe I'm the one misunderstanding this, but... This piece isn't about Word or nerd-shaming or the author's self-perceived mastery of desktop publishing. It reads like a take on the absurdity of people constantly adding inane things like "must be proficient in Microsoft Word" to job postings and, consequently, their appearance on the CV of every person who applies to be a corporate drone in the western world. On the…

What about “can programmatically generate word documents and xlsx files in Python”

Re: I cannot begin to tell you how proficient I am in Microsoft Word

#27

Post by analog31 »

I realize the article was supposed to be humorous (it's in the humor section), but the amusing thing is that I'm seeing declining use of Word. Communication has gotten a lot more formal. People are happy to edit a report in the e-mail editor, using a screen capture utility to copy and paste bitmap graphics when needed. Or they use the editor in the cloud version and don't bother to learn where all of its features are. Or PowerPoint. Of course the programmers have switched to Markdown or comment-free code.

The main remaining uses for Word seem to be documents that nobody reads.

Re: I cannot begin to tell you how proficient I am in Microsoft Word

#28

Post by nathias »

Word is a solution looking for a problem. It exists because of MS wormed itself into public systems around the globe, and it became the standard for writing and publishing. It does both of those tasks horribly compared to any alternatives (markdown, latex).

Re: I cannot begin to tell you how proficient I am in Microsoft Word

#30

Post by tentacleuno »

modernpink wrote: post #9
amelius wrote: post #5

This is nerd-shaming, and just as bad as other types of shaming.

No self respecting 'nerd' would be using Word.

Isn't this comment nerd-shaming? I use LibreOffice Writer (and sometimes Word) quite frequently, and I consider myself somewhat of a nerd.
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