• Olap@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    I do this for a living. I’ve spent basically my whole career (15 years full time professional at this stage) basically trying to kill excel. You can’t, or at least I can’t. You can add processes to it, you can programmatically read/write from it, but when it comes down to ditching it: every stakeholder is invested in excel. No other piece of office has the staying power that excel has, it will outlast us all

    • 0x0@programming.dev
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      7 months ago

      Because the tech-illiterate people who have authority only know “productivity” tools and couldn’t care less about the opinions of the people who actually know what they’re doing.

      • Olap@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Those at the top are often more tech literate than I give them credit for. I suspect it is actually those armies of analysts that are holding it back

        • dogslayeggs@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Yeah, I have access to database tools to do my job, but I don’t know how to use those tools so I use Excel to do shit it really isn’t optimized to do.

          I am 100% part of the problem when I create a spreadsheet with formulas cross correlating data from 41000 entries, 9000 entries, and 1200 entries.

      • dogslayeggs@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I disagree. It’s way more that they aren’t hiring the right people to do the job. I’ve been asked to do some analysis, but the only tool I know how to use is Excel so that’s what I use to answer the mail. If I had access to a database person to help me build a better tool I’d be happy to not use Excel. But I don’t so I do what I can to do my job.

      • Olap@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I suspect slightly more useful than a cockroach. Believe it or not, it’s actually good at what it does. That’s why it’s still here. And also why I’m in a job, as there are plenty of things it shouldn’t be doing too