How hard is excel . May have new job

12-19-2023, 08:30 PM

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#1

MajorTendonitis

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How hard is excel . May have new job

Hey all , I could potentially have a new job ,but they would like applicants to be experienced in excel . The most I’ve done with excel in the past is fill in my expenses .
It’s a logging company , and they need a guy in shipping and receiving. Not really something that is in my ballpark , but I’d love to have full time work again .

Back with my Fam

12-19-2023, 08:33 PM

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#2

N0stradamus
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Excel is one of the most robust software.

I've been working with excel for 15 years and still learn something new every week.

But unless you work in finance (like yours truly) you don't need to know anything more than vLookup, SumIfs and pivot tables. And you can learn this by watching youtube videos - no need to buy any books.

Everything I post is satire.
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12-19-2023, 08:34 PM

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#3

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You can definitely learn the basics on YouTube. There isn't anything you can't learn there. Maybe except for teaching miscers how to talk to and attract women.

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12-19-2023, 08:41 PM

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#4

N0stradamus
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Originally Posted By TugOfPeace⏩

Ay is it worth entering finance in my mid 30s if my comp in engineering is 150+? Finance seems interesting

Your first few years will be brutal as you learn all the intricacies of the profession. But stay with it long enough and you'll achieve what I've achieved: "working from home" aka doing absolutely nothing but jerking off to pr0n and miscing.... and getting paid a mogger salary.

The thing about engineering is that your calculations MUST be correct otherwise the circuit boards don't work and bridges collapse. In finance, we just pull numbers out of our as5es and call them "reasonable estimates".

Everything I post is satire.
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12-19-2023, 08:42 PM

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#5

LuigiMiami631
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Go coursera or Udemy for excel courses and formulas.

Easy, plus you got AI to sift and breakdown data and stuff.

12-19-2023, 08:50 PM

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#6

N0stradamus
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Originally Posted By TugOfPeace⏩

that's hilarious, I have this lifestyle now, but I hate working from home. is it a tough barrier to entry in finance, and low starting salary generally? I'm curious if I can just do a direct transfer to a finance role if I self study some of the material

No, you most likely can't do a lateral transition. People in finance look for experience because no one has time nor patience to explain anything. They'll just throw you a bunch of excel workbooks and expect you to build a revenue forecast model. And when you ask a question, they'll just say "figure it out".

You'd have to start at the bottom and grind your way up.

Finance is actually a useless, non-value-adding department within any organization. They get paid really well to build bullsh/t forecasts that are always wrong, and yet, we get fatty bonus checks every year like we've actually contributed something meaningful.

The janitors who clean the bathrooms add more value to the organization than the finance people. I'll be the first to admit it.

Everything I post is satire.
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12-19-2023, 09:04 PM

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#7

ThePump0561
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noob advice off the top of my head

learn difference between "paste" vs "paste values" - pasting the copied cells formula vs the calculated value

relative vs absolute references when applying a formula to a range of cells - use "?" operator to define a cell or column absolute

beware excels tendency to autoformat values if you dont explicitly set the cell format - the real value of a cell isn't always the same as the displayed value

instead of dragging a formula to other cells below it, you can highlight the cells and hit "control-d" to apply to all

copy/cut/paste = use control c/x/v if you don't already, and practice until you don't have to look down at the keyboard to hit those shortcuts (learn as many keyboard shortcuts you can)

learn the difference between xls/xlsx and csv files, and understand csv format - open a csv file in a text editor and see how the data is represented with text: rows separated by line breaks, and cells on each row separated by comma. quotes can be used to explicitly define single values

Originally Posted By N0stradamus⏩

In finance, we just pull numbers out of our as5es and call them "reasonable estimates".

I'll have to remember that for next time I get in a jam

12-19-2023, 09:17 PM

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#8

DustinTheHuss
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Originally Posted By TugOfPeace⏩

that's hilarious, I have this lifestyle now, but I hate working from home. is it a tough barrier to entry in finance, and low starting salary generally? I'm curious if I can just do a direct transfer to a finance role if I self study some of the material. I'm in nyc

Maybe go into sales engineering and you can get heavy commissions.

12-19-2023, 11:11 PM

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#9

ChinkWithDink
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learn the difference between absolute ($A$2) and relative (A2) cell references and how that applies to the formula drag fill functionality as well as when doing cell deletes and the difference between a cell delete and a contents clear.

if you don't know these things it will take a chit tonne more time and effort to do things

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/...nt/m-p/2783330

12-19-2023, 11:15 PM

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#10

EvanStroud
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Originally Posted By N0stradamus⏩

Finance is actually a useless, non-value-adding department within any organization. They get paid really well to build bullsh/t forecasts that are always wrong, and yet, we get fatty bonus checks every year like we've actually contributed something meaningful.

The janitors who clean the bathrooms add more value to the organization than the finance people. I'll be the first to admit it.

Am in finance and can confirm this is exactly correct.

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12-19-2023, 11:17 PM

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#11

MajorTendonitis

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Wow thanks guys . I suspect all I’m doing is filling in fields in a spread sheet they already have , at least I hope .
If I knew this opportunity was coming up I would have did some research on YouTube to familiarize myself with it more so I could at least sound like I know wtf I’m taking about .
I think this job might really be out of my wheelhouse, and although i should give it a chance as I have nothing to lose, it’s a tough call .
Sure would like to get back on my feet and build that gaming rig and computer desk I’ve always dreamed of

Back with my Fam

12-19-2023, 11:17 PM

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#12

DustinTheHuss
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I haven't used Excel in awhile and I'm having fun with the formulas :-/

The basic ones are fine but the really complicated once which reference multiple sheets and have greater than or equals and all of that......sigh.

I think the hardest problem about growing old is your eyesight goes so it's so easy to miss a quotation mark or a space and then the damn formula keeps coming up as ERROR.

Originally Posted By ChinkWithDink⏩

learn the difference between absolute ($A$2) and relative (A2) cell references and how that applies to the formula drag fill functionality as well as when doing cell deletes and the difference between a cell delete and a contents clear.

if you don't know these things it will take a chit tonne more time and effort to do things

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/...nt/m-p/2783330

Yeah this stuff just reminds me of college and it's not my cup of tea...hence why I didn't major in accounting or finance......but, it's good for the resume as so many companies are big on metrics these days.

12-19-2023, 11:28 PM

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#13

EvanStroud
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OP when they ask about Excel, say:

"Things like pivot tables, index match, vlookups - I used to dabble in macros but I'm a bit rusty since it's been a little while, but I'm sure it'll come back to me quickly."

Excel takes like an hour of learning to be in the top 1% of users, not sure why everyone acts like it's such high IQ stuff.

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12-19-2023, 11:29 PM

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#14

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Aren't you retirement age?

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12-19-2023, 11:33 PM

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#15

ChunkBuster
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Google search for what you need to do in excel.

12-19-2023, 11:54 PM

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#16

ErnieMccracken

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Originally Posted By EvanStroud⏩

Excel takes like an hour of learning to be in the top 1% of users, not sure why everyone acts like it's such high IQ stuff.

I have at least 10k hours using excel at the highest level for all kinds of modeling and data analytics (including VBA, SQL, monte carlo sims, live data warehouse, etc.), but every once in a while I'll come across some super autist who is doing things I had no idea were possible. The ceiling is infinite.

12-19-2023, 11:56 PM

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#17

outfoxxed
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Originally Posted By TugOfPeace⏩

Ay is it worth entering finance in my mid 30s if my comp in engineering is 150+? Finance seems interesting

No. Starting a new career while not being from a target school and having no finance degree/connections will make it hard to get the good finance jobs. I have a relative in PE and it's all about networking and going down the finance path.

Originally Posted By MajorTendonitis⏩

Hey all , I could potentially have a new job ,but they would like applicants to be experienced in excel . The most I’ve done with excel in the past is fill in my expenses .
It’s a logging company , and they need a guy in shipping and receiving. Not really something that is in my ballpark , but I’d love to have full time work again .

Excel is everything from filling out a spreadsheet to doing crazy **** like building websites and running calculations on a billion metrics for the next 5 years. The rabbit hole is deep as hell.

12-20-2023, 12:00 AM

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#18

outfoxxed
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Originally Posted By ErnieMccracken⏩

I have at least 10k hours using excel at the highest level for all kinds of modeling and data analytics (including VBA, SQL, monte carlo sims, live data warehouse, etc.), but every once in a while I'll come across some super autist who is doing things I had no idea were possible. The ceiling is infinite.

lmao yeah that sound about right. I've heard stories of the autistic things people have done with excel. I watched some japanese dude create paintings in excel the other day. I've heard stories of people building websites in excel. Microsoft Excel is turing complete as well so you could theoretically program anything with it lol

12-20-2023, 08:03 AM

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#19

DustinTheHuss
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Originally Posted By ErnieMccracken⏩

I have at least 10k hours using excel at the highest level for all kinds of modeling and data analytics (including VBA, SQL, monte carlo sims, live data warehouse, etc.), but every once in a while I'll come across some super autist who is doing things I had no idea were possible. The ceiling is infinite.

My questions are actually using multiple sheets in Quip using Excel formulas. The data I'm looking for in terms of counting say, the number of times the word "Apple" appears in a column in one sheet, using Excel formulas, so perhaps I will put in some screen shots on here for reps.

Basically I need to provide metrics on the number of times the word "Apple" appears in the column in January, the number of times the word appears Banana in January, etc.

I've created a separate sheet to reference with all of the dates of the year: January 1, 2024 January 31, 2024, which was annoying. I'm sure there is an easier way to do this.

The metrics sheet is a separate sheet from the data sheet which has "Apple" and the Dates sheet. This is where I need to add the formulas so that management can see the metrics in a table format.

12-20-2023, 08:22 AM

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#20

higginsworks4me
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Originally Posted By EvanStroud⏩

Am in finance and can confirm this is exactly correct.

Self-licking Ice Cream Finance Crew checking in.

Quads for the broads

12-20-2023, 08:29 AM

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#21

bsmit107
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I've been working in Excel since 2009.......At least 1-2x a week I pull up Google and look up how to do something.

It's not hard to learn, pretty straight forward and it's more capable than you will ever use at a logging company.

Company I work for is cheap and I have to use Excel workbooks (some of them are huge) to track costs on $100M Commercial Construction jobs.

12-20-2023, 08:37 AM

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#22

Rul3
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not hard, what's interesting is they purposely left out features but gave you the option to add them back through scripting, so you can get better at multiple things just using excel

12-20-2023, 08:53 AM

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#23

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Originally Posted By TugOfPeace⏩

Ay is it worth entering finance in my mid 30s if my comp in engineering is 150+? Finance seems interesting

It's super hard to get into especially as you're older. I know people always say it's never too late to start a new career but that doesn't really count for finance. Seems like they want young high performers that already had internships or experienced analysts. I applied to a whole bunch of jobs and haven't heard back but my buddy who has 2-3 yrs in the field gets hounded by recruiters. It's one of those things that's hard to break into but once you're in you're in.

Do not think that what is hard for you to master is humanly impossible; and if it is humanly possible, consider it to be within your reach.

12-20-2023, 09:34 AM

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#24

N0stradamus
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Originally Posted By iamdetermined⏩

It's super hard to get into especially as you're older. I know people always say it's never too late to start a new career but that doesn't really count for finance. Seems like they want young high performers that already had internships or experienced analysts. I applied to a whole bunch of jobs and haven't heard back but my buddy who has 2-3 yrs in the field gets hounded by recruiters. It's one of those things that's hard to break into but once you're in you're in.

It's a catch 22 - every employer wants experience, but how does one get experience if there are no entry-level jobs?

If someone is trying to transition into the field, the only way to do it is to target smaller companies and temp assignments and then work your way up to the big companies. Once you get to the big companies, you'll be getting fatty bonus checks every year for contributing nothing of real substance.

And you're lucky enough to get into a Silicon Valley tech giant, your fatty bonus check will be even fatter. It's an endless money loop each year.

Everything I post is satire.
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12-20-2023, 09:40 AM

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#25

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12-20-2023, 11:48 AM

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#26

RICARDOFUERTE
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No es difícil aprender, todo está en el youtube amigo

Si no hay tortas no me importa

12-20-2023, 11:53 AM

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#27

Wayne Evans
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Originally Posted By MajorTendonitis⏩

Hey all , I could potentially have a new job ,but they would like applicants to be experienced in excel . The most I’ve done with excel in the past is fill in my expenses .
It’s a logging company , and they need a guy in shipping and receiving. Not really something that is in my ballpark , but I’d love to have full time work again .

Howdy M....

I don't think Excel is that difficult and I'm parsecs away from being a computer savant.
What gets deep into the learning curve abyss is when all the various'formulas' are a large part of your work day.
It can be tricky and very involved.

Hope it turns out to your expectations.

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12-20-2023, 11:57 AM

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#28

BigDeeps01
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You can learn most of what you need from excel in an hour or two watching YouTube tutorials OP

I never had a formal excel class and I’m basically an excel wizard now

12-20-2023, 11:59 AM

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#29

JoeDelts
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If you dont have time to learn before applying ( which it sounds like you don't) the best thing you can do is be honest with them but tell them you'd be willing to learn and/or get any training that you'd need to be able to do the job.

Worst thing you can do is overstate your abilities and get called out on it or they end up finding out after they hire you.

Excel can do so many things that "competent in Excel" can mean a million different things.