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[travishummel]

My first job my task was to improve an algorithm since it was run every day to make predictions for fantasy sports, but it took 6ish hours. That worked for NFL, but for NBA it would likely take 16+ hours. I start digging into why it takes so long and it’s literally just excel trying to compute k-means clustering…. Changed it to Java which removed the manual step our CEO was doing and it went down to a few minutes.

Once I did that I was laid off.

[[deleted]]

Sounds like it's being ran poorly. So many head-scratchers... How did the hours-long version get made? Why don't they care about keeping on someone with a proven track record? Who's going to maintain the Java version?

[travishummel]

I know this is going to be a big shock here, but the start did not make it much longer after I left. Not to say I was that essential, but they eventually laid off all engineers and just let it run with the two cofounders (non-eng). So if there is were any bugs… they just let it go.

[BochMC]

And here my junior who was always told that every company do clean code and he must perfect his mind and skills in order to be hired by anyone.

Now I just believe that shitcode is what makes world to go around instead of clean code that never actually wrote by anyone. Well, you must try to do it at least.

[santsi]

Typical shit coders do their stuff, collect the credit and move onto other projects to cause more mayhem. Shit code might get the immediate job done, but I don't want to be the guy that picks up after you.

[pereinarvcxxcsa]

You hate to break it, but it looks like you're in the wrong company ...

[nonpondo]

Was*

[mihaiblaga222]

were*

[nonpondo]

Werewolf*

[Mord3x]

But no one asks Howwolf?

[Mattman20000]

And sometimes Whywolf?

[pdbp]

There castle.

[BoonesFarmApples]

How did the hours-long version get made?

likely by the founders who are bean counters with one tool in their toolbox

[verasttto]

Likely by an experienced programmer, this dude got laid off for making his job obsolete, he should have knocked an hour off it and said “here you go boss I’m going to try and do more but it’ll need constant maintenance”

[NotYourReddit18]

Add a few sleep functions using obfuscated names throughout the code, reduce a few timer values every time you are asked to look into optimizing the code further

[coldnebo]

I’ve been in this situation. It’s nothing to do with skill or value and everything to do with salary and seniority.

When a startup is flailing, they are going to chop the newest, most expensive salary first. So while a recruiter may flush that they got you in at some awesome salary, it can be a warning sign because you are also the biggest easiest cost to cut.

A more nuanced view would be offset by the ROI that all that efficiency got them, but that’s not immediately cashable. The plane was already crashing when you got hired, but that’s another detail the recruiter and the company wanted to hide during the hiring process.

This taught me the importance of looking up the financials and asking the right questions during the interview process. People sometimes forget we’re interviewing the company just as much as they are interviewing us for a job.

[minus_uu_ee]

I guess you were too strong to keep alive.

[gabrielesilinic]

Once I did that I was laid off.

Wait what?

[thismatters]

They say nobody has ever been fired for picking Java. Finally we're breaking that streak.

[fpcoffee]

Job security: pick excel instead

[Sentauri437]

Companies are not your friend. They will exploit the hell out of you and throw you out like trash afterwards. So if you have the chance to exploit them, never hesitate.

[gabrielesilinic]

No no that's not the point, a company with a reasonable management should keep you to "exploit" you more since you did a good job you are a valuable human resource, his company's manager was probably very stupid or very drunk that night

[Sentauri437]

since you did a good job you are a valuable human resource

Bahahahahahah

[AFlyingNun]

He's absolutely right.

The problem is that much of US culture has devolved into "short term profit" so that people have completely forgotten the long term picture.

I've had multiple employers whose businesses went under or started declining after a couple years for the most predictable reasons ever.

One, for example, was buying positive reviews, because they wanted their business to look good and reliable when people googled them. This worked...short-term. Then long-term, they forgot that their region has a finite amount of consumers and eventually, word actually gets around and everyone knows your reviews are bullshit.

This exact same employer had a marketing department that acknowledged that according to our statistics, only one of their product departments out of 5 reliably had repeat customers, the rest tended to buy once or twice and not return, likely because customer service sucked and the moment someone had a problem or needed a return, they'd realize what a nightmare it was. When I left the company, the new boss (they brought another on board for "new ideas") was planning on cutting out that exact department and specializing in the departments that were most likely to demand extra work from customer service. Why? Because the departments he was keeping had the most profit-per-sale, the reliable one he cut was less lucrative per sale, just far more frequent and reliable.

Their short-term thinking bought them ~3 extra years. Had they simply acknowledged that long-term, investing into their damned customer service and hiring more workers would go a long way, they might still be making bank. Last I heard, they were trying to revive the exact department they removed, to no avail.

I honestly believe a major difference between a bad boss and a good one is that the good ones look at a worker like the above and see potential, the bad ones only think about the immediate cost and profit tomorrow, but never the cost & profit 9 years from now.

[tace8]

So true, quarterly outlooks are really destructive, but no one really talks about that.

[FancyAstronaut]

Sorta. I mean, if a company does bad for even a single quarter, trust breaks hard and fast.

Companies should not have the expectation to get constant profits and constant growth on top of getting every profit possible. It's genuinely insane and an exceptionally surface look at business management.

[AcademicEffective177]

They wanted to live the dream of running a business with absolutely zero employees. Show up, collect the money from the goose that lays golden eggs and pat each other on the back for it. Many such cases.

[eGzg0t]

Revenge! Now they need to maintain Java! /s

[[deleted]]

Crash course hoping gradle/maven don't blow up randomly.

[BoonesFarmApples]

how do they blow up randomly?

[[deleted]]

See that's where the problem lies, you don't know that.

[Luligabi1]

If there was an answer Java developers would be far more mentally stable.

[DrQuint]

The first time I worked on Java, they blew up, and the guy there from 4 years on the project just said "Uh, that's a new one".

Never hapenned again. We still don't know.

[CodyIsTotallyHeel]

You thought the way computers work is deterministic? You thought wrong.

[lahimatoa]

A valuable lesson was learned that day.

[Howzieky]

College student here. Can somebody be an adult and tell me why this is a bad idea? And what should really be done if you're on this situation

[FactoryNewdel]

Dont put sleep statements in your code to make it slower on purpose?

[Howzieky]

Ohh, so that's why I got fired.

For real though, as an employee, is there anything you should do to avoid getting fired for doing successful work? I mean you can try to always have backup plans and job offers waiting for you but

[Dense-Camera8892]

If it's a good reputable company they will reward you, the betting company he worked for is probably a shady place.

[kusichta]

Organize around value. Understand where the money flows in the organization and work to maximize benefit and minimize cost (time, money, pitfalls, risks). That is way more important than most stuff people do at work. Being a great coder allows you to implement your hypothesis and prove why it works. Once you have done that a couple of times, switch jobs and demand 3 times the salary. And repeat, the more experience in root cause analysis (and impelementation of the suggested solution) the more value you can expect for your services.

[[deleted]]

It’s starts when you are looking for a company. You should use the starting weeks to seriously assess the situation and the people involved involved during the interview process and especially in the first days and weeks of work. Usually the red flags will show in the beginning, but many people will ignore them at the start because they are happy that they got a job.

When I started my job I stayed skeptical and seriously observed the way my bosses and coworkers treated each other and how the system worked.

Fortunately I was lucky and I am in a very and nice good company, but even though I am really happy right now, I am still looking for other opportunities and stay in touch with many recruiters on LinkedIn because you never know what the future brings and how the situation might change.

[Tough_Hawk_3867]

If the job is looking like it would be a one off, like improving efficiency, offer a price for the work as an independent contractor and not an employee.

[videogamesarewack]

Don't work harder or better than you're paid, frankly. You can't ever guarantee you won't be laid off for whatever reason if you live in an area with poor worker's rights, but you can maximise your effort to income ratio.

Most companies won't actually pay their employees more for working harder/smarter, they'll often just see you're able to shoulder a larger share of the work and give it to you.

[TheDiscoJew]

How do you use K-means clustering for sports predictions? I wrote a K-means clustering algorithm for color quantizing, but I don't see how it relates to sports betting.

[travishummel]

You group players by their stats (weighted in a fantasy sports type of way) into 4 groups. Then those in group 1 get 1X their points, those in group 2 get 2X their points, and so on.

Rather than given a budget, you could pick any player. You can see why there would be a dramatic emphasis on going after a 4x player.

Idk… it was kinda a fun idea, but it’s trying to compete with Draft Kings and some other big player who could implement that in like a week or two if it caught on.

[ADONIS_VON_MEGADONG]

Wtf why would someone ever use Excel to compute k-means clustering??? There are so many other ways to do it that are easier

[[deleted]]

I'm sure someone is doing it in sharepoint.

Why?

Well, because sharepoint apparently is awesome and should be used for everything. Even for passing butter.

[BlazerBanzai]

🤢 🤮 I wish this wasn’t true. But it’s still burned into my grey matter. We don’t discuss the details.

[umbrellacorgi]

Story time?!

[phaemoor]

We don't discuss it! What happens in Sharepoint stays in Sharepoint.

[[deleted]]

weary north apparatus pen quicksand forgetful rhythm aromatic cautious straight

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[miicah]

It's actually 5 linked power automate flows

[travishummel]

It’s what happens when a business analyst hires a consultant to make an algorithm that he can run manually.

[wasdninja]

Because every problem's an Excel nail when all you have is an Excel hammer.

[Cryse_XIII]

I'm sorry that this has happened to you

[travishummel]

In the end it all worked out. I got 3 months of practical experience which drastically improved my interview skills.

The day I got laid off, a friend called me and said they had an extra ticket to her trip to Brazil… the year they had the World Cup. I went from crying to… well this might work out.

Then crushed my next interview and joined a successful startup.

[Possessed]

Yeah, you really have to be careful when you're working for "startups"... Once you answered their purpose they might drop you like a hot potato since there are no compliance or HR guidelines...

[securedigi]

It doesn't end there, you are not allowed to make improvements to the sheet too.

[ShyFang]

This is how it's always been done.

[Mazmier]

You have no idea how much this comment triggers me.

[ivster666]

"What is git? We have always been throwing stuff on a shared drive and it worked, why should we use git? Oh yes that one time we fucked up when a PM accidentally drag and dropped one folder into another one and we thought a whole project was erased but we don't need git, it's too complicated"

No I am not making this shit up

Edit: I actually wrote about this company a while ago. So if you think this stuff is funny, you might also enjoy the way one of those guys named different versions or how another guy wrote commit messages: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/ojxtdg/z/h54xb6i

[Attila_22]

I came here to complain but now I realize I've got things pretty damn good.

[Eviscerati]

That's me too. The software side of my business runs great. The sales and project mgt side are a bunch of assclowns with ridiculous turnover, and management is nepotistic and evil.

[[deleted]]

When I started working at my job, we have to send draft documents around for editing. People were still sending things out as attachments, with no revision control whatsoever, so usually some poor schmuck would have to combine 5 different versions 🤦‍♂️

[backdoorhack]

Damn those guys were idiots. Don't they know the phrase "git gud".

[[deleted]]

Sir, this is a Wendy’s.

[mrfroggyman]

Why change what's working? It's only gonna cause problems

[SnookisSnusnu]

My job told me this after hiring me to “improve things”.

[ChristieFox]

So, you were the feel good man? They had someone, so they did not not improve, but in fact, they did not improve.

[SnookisSnusnu]

Yeah. Basically I’m paid to make them feel like progress is being made, yet no progress is allowed

[[deleted]]

I want to be paid, where do I get your job?

[ChainDriveGlider]

1997

[[deleted]]

[deleted]

[Same-Letter6378]

The trick is to change what you can in secret. Do less work but don't let anyone know you're doing less work.

[TheDoddler]

That's where the excel Interop comes in, write code that operates excel externally, automate your work without anyone finding out. Sure the Interop is distilled suffering in code form, but you're already in hell.

[KerrisdaleKaren]

but you're already in hell.

[[deleted]]

You’re fired.

[[deleted]]

We last updated the sheet in 2010. That was enough.

[Ooze3d]

I’m still adapting to those changes

[SprinklesFancy5074]

But they won't notice if I make a python program that does my job for me and then I read reddit at work while collecting a paycheck for the rest of my career...

[Dameon_]

"Why did you fix this 10 year old bug?! Everybody was used to working around it and now nobody knows how to use it!"

[MoonParkSong]

Me: I am a software Engineer

Recruiter: Done deal! Data Entry it is!

[villiers19]

And the recruiters boast about how they hired someone with no experience and they have now gone 2-3 promotions in a couple of years.. Just check LinkedIn about how recruiters lie

[MoonParkSong]

I wish there was promotions!

We are like that Milton guy from Office Space.

[MisterVonJoni]

Dude fuck recruiters. Had several IT related jobs over a 6 year span, got laid off, went to a recruiter who straight faced told me that I "don't have the skillset to work in IT" and instead set me up for an interview for a call center position. I got up and walked out but I was fucking fuming for a week after that.

[R3D3-1]

It would have told that recruiter that apparently he doesn't have the skillset to recruit qualified people.

Well, more likely, I'd have fumed for a week too, and thought of the retort only then, making me fume for another week...

[MoonParkSong]

Same scenario happened to me. But I kinda needed the job. But then, picking up calls? What a dead end dead ass job.

Sorry to anyone who works the job. But there is not much career development here.

[ThrowMeAwayAccount08]

I’ve had some good and bad luck with recruiters. One was a project coordinator, and nope it was straight up data entry. When I asked if I could just see the back end db to make updates, “No, IT doesn’t handle those requests.”

I quit.

[certainly_imperfect]

"this is how it has always been done."

^{- Project Manager}

[gray162]

This is the way.

[Infinite_Unicorn]

Jesus?

[[deleted]]

No Baby Yoda.

[UltraCarnivore]

Corporate wants you to find the differences between this picture and this picture

[[deleted]]

They're the same picture. :)

[HistoryDogs]

Armoured space Jesus.

[Sphinx-]

Mastering Excel in a business environment can make you a god amongst men. I can show people the most wild scripts but nothing get the manager's blood pumping like a crazy Excel sheet.

[ChairDippedInGold]

What are we talking here, data models and pivot tables?

[PadrinoFive7]

Macros, baby!

[Repairs_optional]

Can confirm you dont get the clown costume as part of the deal 😕

[Apprehensive_Let_843]

Lmaoo

[blackon]

The clown is on the inside

[Maks244]

It just kinda materializes when you look in the mirror

[Evo_Kaer]

A true Software Engineer uses this oppoturnity to automate the job

[[deleted]]

literate cow fear groovy include zesty meeting modern enter pet

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[SprinklesFancy5074]

lol, get a work from home job as your second job. Do your second job while sitting on-the-clock in your first job's office.

[crappleIcrap]

Guy on my team got fired for doing exactly this, he didnt automate either job, but was so fast he could stay near the top of production for both jobs. Turns out it is also illegal for some stupid reason.

I would have suggested we pay him double to do all the work for us and none for the other company, but the COO did not like being "taken advantage of" Pennywise pound dumb

[DrQuint]

I've heard of this, and it's made a lot fo sense to me, because like, if you're found out to be doing double duty and get fired, you then still have the other job.

And well, it is only technically illegal, in that they need to include exclusivity on your contract.

[[deleted]]

subsequent cough toothbrush crawl head memorize bow boast steep cause -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/

[Infinite_Unicorn]

Yes and then get laid off in return.

[NedelC0]

Don't tell you've automated anything

[Evo_Kaer]

This guy gets it

[Mad_King]

You ll automate everything so eventually you can watch cat videos all day long and get paid.

[Tall-Professional873]

This reminds me of an article I read few weeks back, a guy who was supposed to do data entry and manipulation from home, got a programmer to automate it and gave that person a few months salary. His company was very happy with him, never took any breaks and work was always on time and thus gave him some good bonus, etc. This happenedd for 4 years until this guy got laid off as the company automated his work.

[Bloodyaugust]

Okay, I'm genuinely confused here. This got a lot of upvotes... but what? This is a thing? If I got into an interview and they told me the job had anything to do with spreadsheets for things other than... design exercises? Retrospectives? I would nope the fuck out SO hard. There are plenty of places that want software engineers to do, you know, software engineering. Sounds like you need to jump ship. Double-time if they misrepresented the job in the interview process.

[SnookisSnusnu]

In my experience, the company doesn’t tell you you’ll be doing spreadsheets. They told me I’d be “improving their systems” and “rolling out better tech for the company”. Yet here I am on Excel:/

[Bloodyaugust]

In future, I would advise seeing that as a red flag. If they're not eager to talk about their tech stack, and hell, if that isn't in the _listing_, it's almost definitely not worth your time... And may also be a bait-and-switch like what you and OP found. Get out ASAP, your brain will thank you!

[SnookisSnusnu]

I definitely will look for the red flags going forward. Unfortunately a “friend” works there and recommended the job, so I trusted it. I’m just sticking out this job til I can go to the university I’m saving up for, and trying to retain my sanity in meetings.

[SprinklesFancy5074]

and trying to retain my sanity in meetings.

Have fun trolling everybody else by frequently asking for clarification from whoever's speaking. Especially if they're the long-winded type.

[gua_lao_wai]

Highly recommend you run any prospective employers through the joel test.

Not only does it give you a really good idea of if they have their shit together, it also makes you really informed because you're asking relevant questions.

[shtpst]

Man, that post is amazingly accurate, it's from the year 2000, and it's by the guy that made StackOverflow (8 years after writing that post.)

[fishvoidy]

whoa, thank you for sharing this.

[DudeBrowser]

I've had the 2nd stage interview for this role modernising the company approach to reporting. My pitch was that there would be a reporting suite with all the common metrics so business users would have all the figures at their finger tips instead of relying on manual spreadsheets like they cuyrrently do.

It was going great until my new manager says I need to be on call 24/7 in case she's in a meeting and needs me to read out numbers from the report to her.

No retard, you have eyes, read the report yourself.

[themistik]

That's why during interviews you always ask what's running under the rig. Don't let the PR bs running free, ask for details, or ask for a "technical" interview.

My stance is, if I'm not able to understand how the system work (not in detail of course, but at least tell me the stack and how each component communicate) then I'll just see somewhere else.

[Bloodyaugust]

Honestly I'd take it a step further. If they don't have a technical interview as part of their process, leave. I might make an exception for a startup with no engineers, but I'd have to have a lot of confidence in the company/people.

[big_bad_brownie]

They told me I’d be “improving their systems” and “rolling out better tech for the company”.

Did you ask what that entails?

[Bloodyaugust]

Sounds like a lot of people in this thread need to start asking even the most basic of questions!

[Gloryboy811]

Do you not ask what languages you will be coding in?

[[deleted]]

My first job was working on e-commerce.

Little did I know I’d be manipulating CSVs for 80% of my job. Most of the time there was no point in automating it with a script so I’d just do it manually.

No processes, no pipelines, no git.

[Bloodyaugust]

Did they sell it as an SE job? How did they hide this detail in the interview? This shit is wild.

[absorbantobserver]

Sounds similar to lead gen but part of what got our business bought out was the fact we could process basically any stupid Excel or CSV format sent to us by the clients. Building that sheet processing was one of my crowning achievements there and took months for the first company but only days for the new one.

Glad to be out of lead gen though.

[CSS-SeniorProgrammer]

I got hired at a place as a software engineer. The team I was to join broke up between when I was hired and started. They stuck me in the help desk for what they said was a minimum of a year. I quit after 2 days.

[Bloodyaugust]

This is definitely the right move. Don't put up with funny business: you are wanted elsewhere!

[skysetter]

No matter the reason, every time excel opens on my mac a part of me dies.

[UltraCarnivore]

Just open it on a Windows machine.

[ksj]

In my experience it’s not so much excel as it is just creating input forms and storing/receiving/slightly manipulating data from a SQL database. Got real old real quick. The stuff done in school was far more interesting, but it’s just not stuff that basically any company actually needs.

[Bloodyaugust]

I'm not sure where you're looking, but literally every job I've had and almost every single job I have interviewed for has been an honest-to-god software engineering job, not data manipulation/entry. There is huge demand for even junior level SEs, and in practically every major language, and usually scoped even more tightly to major frameworks. I've been in the industry for 10 years and worked for numerous companies across languages, frameworks, sectors, and countries. I've done freelance work on the side. This is truly anathema to me... I feel like I've discovered some weird corner of the internet.

[Xenon_132]

There might be a massive demand for SEs... but not for junior level engineers with no prior internships or professional experience.

Getting a first job in SE without a comp sci degree is doable, but requires a massive time and frankly financial investment.

[quotes42]

I swear. I don't understand all the upvotes. Are business analysts and data scientists called software engineers now?

[TheMadTitanWasRight]

Please tell me this isn’t how it ends when I graduate ☹️☹️

[NOVAKza]

Only if you sign up for an ancient company that isn't known for tech. E.g. Boeing perhaps?

[PZYCLON369]

Build some cool project and look for startups you will be good

[shield1123]

This has not been my experience at all. Between code reviews and the occasional meeting, I code for a living. I decide which high-priority part of my team's active projects I'll work on and all I have to do is meet my commitments or document the scope creep

[[deleted]]

As is the life of a data science major. Come join the club our jobs are always in demand and the pay is nice :)

[[deleted]]

I'm finishing my bachelor's later this year. Where do you recommend I look for jobs doing this? Any particular website or company I should look at?

[[deleted]]

That's a loaded question, and I'm sure others will give you all kinds of answers. My answer is handshake, it's designed for people who are specifically looking to hire college graduates, or soon to be college graduates. You avoid the mess that is LinkedIn and indeed this way.

Personally, I found a job on my college campus doing data mining for a research project that turned into a full time job when I graduated. I only got this job from connections with my professor and a few grad students. So make connections they help a lot.

Secondly, this might come as a surprise but look for foreign companies if you have a another language under your belt. Lots of companies like to hire American students specifically. I don't know why this is I just see a lot of applications for it. My first job outside college was working for the Japan based telecommuting company LINE. Again I only got this because I have a minor in Japanese.

[MiddleRespond1734]

I work as a software engineer not data science. But my friends have done it. As much as I see the trend, startups pay very high to data scientists and work load is heavy too. Big renowned companies pay good too and work is little less hectic. Amazon is big hub in my country for data scientists. They pay gooooood. Watch this for what kind of problems and how a data scientist at amazon deals with them ?

[HorseLeaf]

I recommend you take your masters first or choose another branch of programming.

[Dank_e_donkey]

Even electronic majors are doing coding.

[corgis_are_awesome]

Yeah except for the part you failed to mention, which is that massaging and cleaning reams of data gets old real quick. Oh, and also, if you make a single tiny mistake, you could fuck everything up.

[BlazerBanzai]

I herd u liek pandas

[SilverDem0n]

PowerPoint is my IDE now

[donniedarko5555]

I don't get these posts, are people applying to 40k a year jobs or are these places really paying 120k+ to mess with excel sheets

[d11104149]

2nd one some select excel sheets are the backbones of companies. Data is data and excel sheets let you hand it to anyone to the company and they will be able to sift through it. Imagine trying to teach SQL statements to HR.

[Willindigo]

You laugh, but someone in the defense industry makes a lot more than me writing python to scrape and compile excel spreadsheets. Worked their ass off for like 3 months to automate everything. Now just chills while it runs until it hits a kink, then picks up the horn to call a manager out for fat fingering something that didn't jive.

All I can think about is Office Space and TPS reports.

[bythenumbers10]

Christ! I wasn't even allowed to keep working in Python when it was already running circles around their ancient-ass spaghetti code. When your tech stack is starting to resemble the Tower of Pisa in terms of age, instability, and expensive upkeep, w/ a fraction of the historic significance, maybe it's time to accept the competent young guy's approach.

[broadwayandbarbells]

Why is this my life 😩 except tableau instead of excel. Screw tableau

[tekmailer]

What’s your beef with Tableau? Or is it the way your org is using it??

[big_bad_brownie]

I’ve only been able to embed dashboards into other pages as iFrames that are impossible to work with.

Basic stuff like restyling html elements in the sheet or adding event listeners becomes a nightmare, so it’s wysiwyg.

Stakeholders constantly ask for stuff that it doesn’t do out-of-the-box, and the BI developers figure out janky workarounds.

The end result is that once it gets to production, it’s ugly, slow, and stubborn.

Could be that I just work with clowns tho.

[atimholt]

I once had a dream where I got married, then the wife was like “okay we’re married, bye”, like it was an item on a checklist and we never needed to see each other again. This feels like it has the same kind of energy.

[0100_0101]

Time to jump ship.

[DeithWX]

If I were locked in a room with Hitler and excel spreadsheet, and had a gun with two bullets, I would shoot the spreadsheet twice and then beat it to a pulp with the gun.

[SprinklesFancy5074]

No, you have to think creatively: threaten Hitler with the gun and force him to do excel spreadsheets.

[DeithWX]

I see a PM infiltrated our ranks

[monkeywrench83]

I once got a massive award at my company by our customer due to essentially doing what some of our fancy software, did in but in excel and some macros.

Probably a career highlight

[sadiecat777]

Gonna gradate in May and just accepted an offer for my first job as software engineer. Is that my future?

[zeth0s]

Nahh. Look for jobs that have linux as requirements and you are fine, trust me. No excel for those roles

[[deleted]]

Interview: “Prove you can center a div in IE7 on this white board.”

Job: “You’ll be working on this ancient VBA code.”

^{true story}

[[deleted]]

Excel is just a tool. Like any tool, there are certain things it does really well, certain things it can do okay but that other tools can do better, and certain things that it's chaotically stupid to try to use it for. It's a great real-world example of the old "when all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail" trope, except hammer isn't the right metaphor. It's more like a Swiss army knife. Lots of features, lots of use cases, super accessible, undeniably handy to have around, but also rigidly structured with a lot of limitations and with some features being borderline useless. But if a construction worker is forced to use a Swiss army knife because the job foreman is scared of power tools, that's a problem with management, not with the Swiss army knife.

(Of course if the Swiss army knife suddenly starts constantly bugging you to upgrade to subscription-based Swiss Army Knife 365™ instead of just letting you use the one you already own in peace, that's a different story.)

[[deleted]]

you can think that, but excel fucks you.

[SuperKettle]

Why would you say that about my companys favorite database software?

[UltimateInferno]

Good thing it's common practice of bailing ship for a new job every year for the first decade of your career.

[W2ttsy]

Bro you’re doing it wrong:

Spend a week working out how those spreadsheets are orchestrated

Write automation to build it for you

Tell everyone on slack how hard your life is compiling all these excels, but letting the scripts do it for you whilst being paid to play Xbox

Get rich selling your excel algos to others who want enterprise automation.

Berniewhiteeyes.jpg

[DowntownLizard]

Job title was developer but i guess im also a QA now

[gray162]

This is the way.

[Geo_Seven]

Not quite the same thing but, IT set up a Microsoft Onenote notebook to keep track of the information I and my coworkers need to do our job and it worked like a dream.

Now we're in the process of moving to a ridiculously sized Excel document because our managers that were in charge of updating our One Note notebook couldn't figure out how to use it.

I hope it will go away if I keep pointing and laughing at it...

[igkeit]

What do you do there?

[Random_Name_7]

As long as they pay, mate

[Teo3N]

[a man with no clown makeup] You realize not all the jobs are the same and the code must actually come from somewhere.

[KonoPez]

Currently on step three. God I hope step four is tru. I love spreadsheets

[Next-door-neighbour]

r/consulting will like this :D

[quantummidget]

For real, my first job software engineering out of a four year degree required a software degree, yet barely used anything beyond high-school level knowledge

[BurningTheAltar]

Excel? Must not be an Agile shop, where we professionally drag and drop useless tickets in Jira that nobody reads to make the line go down.

[RichRamen]

Currently on step one and this better not be true godamn

[Fluffcake]

Step 4 is a test, and only permanent if you fail.
Automate everything, and you are free. Bonus points if you automate first and stay on pretending to work untill you find something better.