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A couple companies ago, I worked with this older guy. When I say older, he was about mid 40s. The boss had him make up an excel spreadsheet to do calculations. It took him a while, but he finally came up with one. Emailed it to all of us and we started uaing it. Very quickly, we all realized when we changed a value nothing else chamged. A closer look revealed that he did not put in the equations for the calculations. We confronted him and he admitted he did not know how to use excel so he just used his calculator to calculate the nbers for that particular set of data and manually punched in the results.
We are talking about an engimeering firm, here. How did someone get away with working in the engineering industry for 20 years and not ever used excel before?
Not all employers use that. My mother worked at a company that frankly didn't use anything of ms office really. They used OS/2 warp and old VAX systems. The "latest and greatest" doesn't always give a good ROI and ROE. If the old system works then it is kept. Companies generally do not train people like they did back in the 1970's. Add in some non competes and non disclosures and experience declines as a value.
Excel is great I use it all the time at work and to a point at home. However, excel is so open ended that not everything is used. Filters get most of my work done and I check percentages to a point. Pivot tables and Vloopup isn't exactly needed but if requested I can make them. Now the database system I use is proprietary (MUNIS) you can't buy this so technically unless you get a job in government the chances of getting that experience in the private or non profit sectors is slim to none. Non profits tend to use Raisers Edge, that's not something youd find a person with private sector or governmental experience. So yes it isn't so much what are "they" doing but what the employer was doing. When I was in the private sector we had Linux but it was a company version. Many companies do NOT want to train people in a skill that has a value outside of that place.
We are an analytics based group. Excel is a fundamental requisite. There is no excuse for not knowing what you're supposed to know.
This thread is a perfect example of why we do not permit gross generalizations (a/k/a bashing) re: any demographic. Shame on everyone who bashes an entire group of people. Please read the Work & Employment forum rules set forth in the Sticky thread at the top of the W&E index. This thread is now closed. And believe it or not, the most egregious Terms of Service violations have been deleted.
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Last edited by PJSaturn; 12-17-2016 at 10:31 AM..
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