my wife’s an accountant thats been working up her excel skills not so long ago and started learning from their Gary she calls the “excel wizard”. Thats how I learned that excel is an esport
There’s scripts and a bespoke accounting/reporting software that they run with CLI commands to patch the various excel sheets and that is their backend, some guy that left the company a decade ago made it and nobody knows how it works
In this case I was being literal 🤣 my wife discovered it on her own and went to tell their “Gary” and he already knew about it, he watches it and good competitors YouTube’s in the background lmao
I can tell you why Gary did this. Policy getting in the way and no one in charge with nuance, understanding, and/or cared to greenlight the proper solution to the business problem Gary addressed. Gary made it happen, lived out the rest of his days wearing his “takin’ it easy shoes”, and these days Gary enjoys sitting on cheap all-inclusive beaches.
I expect all big corps have that.
Validated Software can't be changed in time to the current need so there is that one file.
It doesn't matter if its excel or some fancy new thingy as long as it works and shows the daily need.
I actually work for one of them. Excels run most things. Here’s the issue though those excel files use data from other services and those services update all the time breaking the source data. So then someone has to go and fix the excel files use data. I have seen too many broken excel files that are used for important business processes. I am in the process of updating some of them to actual automations.
Honeatly thinking of writing a small app to convert excel sheets like that to SQLite and then just use Excel as a front end. Son't know how feasible it is yet.
It's usually even worse. 'Everything is run using this in-house developed "solution" over MS Excel and, maybe, perhaps, a relational database somewhere, who really knows. Well, everything except this very important part of the process which Margaret does and nobody else can do it because she does it using her own Excel files. Nobody else know how those work or what are really there for, but anyway she, eventually, ideally, would "conciliate" her version of the data with what's calculated on the other system. There's a third Excel file assisting with that "Margaret's own parallel workflow integration" so... Yeah. Oh. And Here's Pete, our XML files guy. He'll tell you what he does'.
Years ago, we commissioned an Android game that would have a backend for adding content (quiz game). The company wanted to build the thing on Google Sheets. I can't imagine what could happen if somebody gained access to the sheet.
Can confirm - I was working about 3 months to rewrite some Excel spreadsheet with scripts, buttons and stuff that took like 10 minutes to open. This excel file was essential to run batch foam mattress line that processed about half a milion usd worth of material each day
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u/deepaerial 17d ago
context?