Comments on: Oh the Irony

By: Simon

Simon — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 12:21:34 +0000

I’m not convinced any feature of Office 2010 is going to have any noticeable job market impact for at least 2 or 3 years. Possibly when O2003 expires in Apr 2014 there might be a move to the then current Office. Most large cos that I know are just starting to evaluate O2007

By: Türkh Web Tasarım

Türkh Web Tasarım — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 09:18:57 +0000

Totally agree Dashing – makes it a steady opportunity I reckon

By: Marcus from London

Marcus from London — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 14:05:02 +0000

As for work volume I’m definitely finding London a freelancers market, your mileage may vary. The number of roles is way up, as are the rates. Having said that, I’ll add two caveats.
Firstly Excel is not an island – typically, Excel itself is just one piece of the development puzzle. While there has been database (relational and multidimensional) interaction from some years, the composite skill set Excel/VBA/.Net/C# is very much in favour.
And secondly is domain knowledge – there’s a huge discrepancy in rates between IB and non-IB roles. However the usual Catch-22 condition applies in initially gaining IB experience.

5 millions of lines
Noooooooooooo. Sadly further incentive to retain unwieldy spreadsheets in a format in which they don’t belong.

“…IT grad is gonna want to sully his/her hands on … vba”
I’ve witnessed this first hand. Young, smart, the world-is-my-oyster grads resentful that they’re subjected to VBA development. To add insult to injury, they rarely know Excel well enough to develop effectively.
One recent grad at an IB confided that he turned down a role at Google ‘for this’. Meanwhile, the lack of fresh blood should keep existing players busy for a while.

By: Bob Phillips

Bob Phillips — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 07:51:16 +0000

I appreciate that, but in most organisations I now, there are no Excel guys, just users who use Excel. The development guys, including those SS guys, wouldn’t let these users anywhere near what they do.

By: David Hager

David Hager — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 00:39:00 +0000

A PowerPivot cube can be used as a data source for SSAS and other OLAP tools. It will be the Excel guys that clean up that data and add DAX formula columns and measures [learn DAX!] for initial analysis. The SS guys will find that data quite useful for later massaging with the real power tools.

By: Bob Phillips

Bob Phillips — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 14:28:22 +0000

I think you are right Dick. Although I too see PowerPivot as a big deal, Excel usage will mainly be restricted to users doing ad-hoc querying. The SQL-Server guys see it more as a prototyping tool, test something out before you do it ‘properly’ in SSAS.

By: Biggus Dickus

Biggus Dickus — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 14:09:02 +0000

I agree. And PowerPvot SHOULD be a major if not THE major part of that story. It will drive Excel deeper into the “Data-Centric” core of corporations and if spreadsheeters get it it will allow us to “up-sell” the capability of Excel generally.

One concern I have is that PowerPivot is part of SQL Server at MS not Office (??). Although there is definitely a kinship there, PowerPivot is not under the Office banner and so may not be included in Office promotion and marketting and so may miss the general Office (rtead Excel and Access) communities worldwide.

I hope I’m wrong and you’re right :-)

Dick

By: David Hager

David Hager — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 22:24:43 +0000

All this work appearing, and no one has even mentioned the potential impact to the job market by PowerPivot. I do not think I am going out on a limb by predicting a doubling of Excel-related job offerings within a year.

By: quant BA

quant BA — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 22:04:01 +0000

In the derivatives world of banking – excel is still the best front-end for the majority of tasks. Although major projects may be use .net/java, you will always need VBA for its speed and flexibility.

By: Simon

Simon — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 20:21:34 +0000

Totally agree Dashing – makes it a steady opportunity I reckon.