Why Spreadsheets Matter

#1

http://www.eusprig.org/stories.htm

This is a not-for-profit no public interest collection of analysts who log major errors due to mishandling or misuse of a spread-sheet program. More than 90% of corporate employees of any level in any department in any industry use a spreadsheet every hour. Over 60% of these are developed by contractors or employees specifically devoted to the creation of spreadsheets and similar applications or analysis projects. The most common industry standard is MS Excel, comprising over 87% of the corporate world. That means if you have proficiency in Excel, you have a 87%+ chance of adding value to any given company WORLDWIDE. but if you don't, you most likely will take value away. Companies realize this, and not having Excel on your resume now is like not having a phone number on it. They have no reason to call.

Corporations, even staffing agencies, universally agree that spreadsheet proficiency is more important than typing speed, for non Secretarial positions. 100% of all secretaries use at least 1 spreadsheet a month. It is generally considered the most valuable skill to have in your set.

FYI: most companies will not release the stories on that site, and that is why it exists. EVERY COMPANY has spreadsheet issues, and if you find one, you can easily make it worth their wild to keep you around. If you know how to look, you can save a company 84+ million dollars in a week, and thus easily validate your own wages, with unmoderated overtime... with little or no college.

Study these cases, and look for patterns... they are there. also, make sure you laugh at some of these... you might see them some day.

he thought making the cells black would "hide" the numbers from the GOVERNMENT???

heh,
Ch

#2

You mean that doesn't work?!?! OH SHIT!!!!!

#3

the best one i have seen in a while is a guy who made all his negative values red (because he didn't want to erase them)

and when he tried to calculate the negative numbers, he *wrote* the formula.

=SUMIF(A1:A3670="red", 1, 0)

and since the Header for the column was "Date Occured", it actually returned the value of 1.

This negative value was subtracted from what he had formulated as his positive total SUM(A1:A3670).

So the negative value was "1" and this was subtracted from the real total,..

me: see when you add positive and negative numbers,.. it subtracts the negative values.

him: ohhhhh, like in fourth grade, right

me: yeah, *pound skull into ground*, like in fourth grade,.. but IN THE FOURTH GRADE, it was not for an 3.4 million dollar loss in profits, like IN THE NOW.

so, I just calculated it into the money I saved the company,.. which averages tens of millions a month before I do my own job, and I went back and put my headphones on.

vertical,
raum