I make spreadsheets for fun, what is wrong with me?

Literally dozens of spreadsheets just for fun, some I update daily almost like journalling

Also can't this get me a job? Like I don't know if I should do my hobby as a job but working in the spreadsheet mines in a cubical farm sounds like a dream come true

  • Llituro [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    If you use Excel and macros you can absolutely get a job doing this. Possibly even a "good" one. If you do this much Excel, you could also probably go learn about macros and have fun with it. If you level up to databases (SQL), you can really get a job doing this.

      • Necco [any]
        ·
        4 years ago

        data analyst positions are high paying and excel based

      • Llituro [he/him, they/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        specifically? no idea lol. but in general, it's still true that lots of companies that aren't huge tech companies have inefficient data entry and roles that are effectively data entry and processing. So the more you know, and in particular being able to demonstrate actual skill instead of the lie everyone puts on their resume should be helpful. And then if you know SQL well, that opens up jobs at all of the places that are sophisticated enough to make use of big databases. So between the two of those, we're talking about work that's being done at basically any place larger than a mom and pop shop.

    • Mindfury [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      The only macro I learned was the one that forces a cell change every few seconds so that my PC stays awake and my MS teams status doesn't change to away lmao

    • Windows97 [any, any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Everyone's favorite spreadsheet with shooty shooty pew pew starfighters on the side

  • mayo_cider [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    There's nothing wrong with you, it's just a form of structuring thoughts and information just like journaling or diaries are for some people. Like Llituro said, if you learn macros and databases your skills would be invaluable for almost any company. Every company needs spreadsheets, but most of them are just basically banging rocks together and getting by with some spreadsheets some intern wrote ten years ago, mostly because no one actually understands them (there are way too many people who fill the spreadsheets by hand, then calculate the results with a calculator and fill the results in to the spreadsheet by hand).

    My first office job was interning for a municipal office, and as a part of my job I did some very basic spreadsheets just to help my work (and learning it on the fly). I ended up helping people who had been working in the same office for 5-10 years whose actual work required experience with Excel. Everyone lies on their resume (as you should), but "proficient with Excel" is one of the most common lies.

    E: Also, when you get the job, the next step is to learn how and what you can steal.

      • mayo_cider [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Tbh I've come across this only a couple of times personally, but any non-zero number of these is too much. Also, you have to remember that quite a large portion of the white collar professionals learned to type on an electric typewriter, and any new technology is cursed and we got by with a physical notepad and a calculator just fine in the 90's. Youtube and search engines are way too high tech for people who got a cozy tenure 30 years ago.

          • mayo_cider [he/him]
            ·
            4 years ago

            I might've exaggerated a bit but I'm drunk and just spent a week teaching university students how to use command prompt when they were supposed to be learning about TCP and DHCP. Take anything I post about technological illiteracy in the next few hours with a grain of salt.

            • 420sixtynine [any,comrade/them]
              hexagon
              ·
              4 years ago

              Funnily enough, outside of excel, programming, and command prompt, I'm damn near technologically illiterate

    • 420sixtynine [any,comrade/them]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 years ago

      Oh so many things, I track my diet, my lifting, I've started tracking one like a journal of how my days are, chores, homework, albums I've listened to, apartments I'm looking at, car builds and costs and all that, calculators for different classes (bc to break things down into a way where I can just input them requires breaking the pieces apart and so it actually teaches me how to do the thing I'm making a calculator for), budget, groceries, modded minecraft combos for materials and calculators for the energy and materials to build things. I just like spreadsheets

  • Glass [he/him,they/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    The wonder of knowing that someone with a brain this diametrically opposed to mine exists is really brightening my day

    • 420sixtynine [any,comrade/them]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 years ago

      idk what it is but those cells rows and columns make me instantly hyperfocus, and i have no idea why

  • RandyLahey [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Working in an office job I see just how incredibly fucking bad most people are at spreadsheets, you could absolutely get a job with it I reckon. The difficulty is how do you actually prove your chops at an interview compared to everyone else who puts "advanced level Excel" on their CV cos they learnt SUM()

    And shit like nested formulas and table notation and pivot tables and conditional formatting are like astrophysics to most people

    • 420sixtynine [any,comrade/them]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 years ago

      nested formulas and table notation and pivot tables and conditional formatting are like astrophysics to most people

      Wait really??? Dang

      Also you're right about everyone putting advanced excel lol, but you can't exactly write "no but like actually advanced not like resume boost advanced" on a resume

      • RandyLahey [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        The number of people who look at me like I'm a wizard when I try to teach them index/match is astonishing (PS reject vlookup and index/match thought, embrace sumproduct and aggregate thought)

        Hundreds and hundreds of shared spreadsheets and not a single one in an actual table, stuff manually copied over between five different spreadsheets, manually highlighting duplicates etc etc

        I can't blame people, cos you're expected to know all this stuff but nobody actually teaches you, but so much of what goes on in an office is manual spreadsheeting that could be done in five seconds with a pretty basic formula. Of course the cruel irony of capitalist hellworld is that you don't want to automate someone out of a job, but damn

      • SerLava [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        4 years ago

        Yeah I do stuff with Excel and Google Sheets. I'm not a wiz on them or anything (everyone thinks I am), but I know how to Google and I can use logic to put stuff into columns and do peacemeal operations on them that add up to something more complicated. I have like, occasionally put some javascript into a google sheet that I got from Stack Overflow.

        This has been greatly helpful for getting good jobs and moving up. One time a couple of coworkers said they would need 60 hours over the course of 4 months to manually match two 10,000 row columns together, and just waiting 4 months would have been a bigger problem. It took me like 2 hours to figure out how to do it instantly. Excel fuzzy logic plugin.

        Most people can't use them to save their life. They can like, click the cell, edit the cell. Maybe 50% of people I've run into are at the level of like, "=A2+B2".

  • asaharyev [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I use spreadsheets to track beers I try, to plan roadtrips, to plan meals, etc.

    Spreadsheets are both cool and also good.

        • 420sixtynine [any,comrade/them]
          hexagon
          ·
          4 years ago

          I think I just have issues with keeping things together in a physical format but digitally I can click a button and it stays together and I can move things around a lot easier

  • Aube [they/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Oh it’s not weird lol spreadsheets are fucking awesome

  • Fakename_Bill [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    That would be a very valued skill under socialism.

    No, I will not explain

  • anthropicprincipal [any]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    Analytical chemistry and much of chemical engineering is run on Excel.

    Which honestly should terrify us all.