The High Corvid of Progressivity
Chance favors the prepared mind.
~ Louis Pasteur
This is almost exactly what happened to me on Monday, resulting in a fifteen hour day.
My particular jenga piece was an Access query that none of my predecessors had deigned to document or even tell me about… but was critical to run monthly or you had obsolete data embedded deep within multi-million dollar reports.
Thank god I don’t work on salary anymore, or I’d be really upset.
It depends on how long you use it:
Year 1: Ok, this is kinda cool, but why does it keep fucking breaking?
Year 2: How is it still fucking breaking?
Year 3: I just don’t fucking care why it keeps breaking. I think I hate this program.
Year 4: I hate this program
Year 5: Let the hate flow through you, consume you. Feel the dark side flowing through your fingertips. Yes. Good. Why is it breaking? It’s the end users. Yes… they’ve been plotting against you from the beginning - hiding columns, erasing formulas and even…
merging cells
Que heavy breathing through a respirator.
Year 6: It’s a board meeting. They ask you if you can average all the moving averages of average sales per month and provide an exponential trendline to forecast growth on five million rows of data.
You say “sure, boss, I can knock that for you in Excel in about an hour or two.”
Your team leader interjects “I believe what he was trying to say was we’ll use Tableau and it will take about a month.”
You turn to him with a steely glare.
“I find your lack of faith disturbing.”
Year 7: Your team leader is gone after you pointed out he fucked up one of your sheets that run the business by merging a cell. All data flows through you and the holy spreadsheet, and the board is terrified of firing you because no one knows how your sheets work but you and their entire inventory system would collapse if you leave.
But then the inevitable happens. Dissension in the ranks. The juniors talk of python, R, Tableau, Power BI - anything to release your dark hold upon the holy data. You could crush them all with a xlookup chain faster than they can type a SELECT statement. The Rebellion is coming, but you’re ready. You’ve discovered the Data Model, capable of building a relational database behind the hidden moons of Power Pivot, parsing tens of millions of rows - and your Death Star is almost complete.
You’re ready to unleash your dark fury when the fucking spreadsheet breaks again.
Year 8: New company. They ask if you know Excel. You just start cackling with a addictive gleam in your eye as tears start streaming down your face.
They hire you on the spot.
All they use is Excel. And Access.
You think, ok, this is kinda cool, but why does it keep fucking breaking?
“Suck who? I’m gonna do what you tell me.”