something where you bounce around in 1 - 3 month stints at various companies, improving their processes by way of Microsoft Excel? Anybody make (or know someone who makes) a living doing this sort of work?
There is such a thing although it isn’t usually presented exactly that way. MS Excel is a weird program. You can use it to develop anything from simple lists to full blown applications. The way that people usually get that type of work is to have advanced Excel skills including VBA (Visual Basic for applications). You typically need to have some business knowledge as well and interfacing Excel with databases such as Oracle and SQl Server are a huge plus if not essential for some of those jobs.
When you combine those things, there many companies that have Excel spreadsheets that have gotten out of control in size and complexity that need someone with expertise to combine it all and make it usable again. The finance industry has a common need for that but some other businesses do as well. The most complicated Excel project I ever did was a full-blown simulator of a production system for an HR benefits outsourcing company.
They handed me and the developers of the real system the same specifications and had us go out and build it on our own. Then, they compared the output step by step for any discrepancies. That wasn’t all I did but it took 3 months a year and the Excel application was as fully functional as the real system at the end.
Other companies want someone with advanced Excel plus lots of data analysis, statistical, or other specialized skills like tax work. If you frame it the right way (not just ‘good at Excel’), you should be able to be able to get something for short-term contracts. Dice.com is the best website for that type of work in my experience.
I’m willing to bet that most places use about 10% of Excel’s capabilities. Excel is a very powerful tool that is used primarily for only lists and cheap graphs in my experience.
I’m one of the dumb users, but I’ve seen applications that have made my jaw drop.
Nobody cares how well you know Excel if you don’t understand their business problems.
are they too arrogant to bother explaining? Or too dumb to answer specing out questions from a competent, systematic programmer-analyst?
Well, I was never in business selling Excel related services, so I wouldn’t know one way or the other.
That’s not necessarily true. Been trying to talk my boss into engaging an Excel consultant to refine and automate a lot of the models I have built. My stuff is effective, but can look and feel clumsy. A consultant like this would be of great use to me.
FWIW:
Perhaps you’re just using “processes” in a generic way but I see over-reliance on Excel making processes worse over time. Because of the row-column visual paradigm, it is intrinsically tied to 2-dimensional analysis. Sure, people try to to extend to 3-d or higher dimensions using redundant rows (or redundant columns), or try to fake it with multi-worksheets within a workbook via VLOOKUP(). However, doing all that is the start of what everybody calls “spreadsheet hell.”
On top of those problems, you’re hampered by Excel’s scalability limitations. It had 65000 row limitations until v2007. And even with new limit of 1 million rows, that’s still too small for many business problems.
There are a few guru specialists that are pure-play Excel guys but that’s not where the real high value is. It’s the business domain knowledge (as ultrafilter mentioned) that gets the well-paid gigs.
For example, a business domain expert in finance analysis would know how to look at gigabytes of corporate data to spot fraud or trends. He would use an array of tools such as Excel, R, and SAS. Knowledge of Excel is just a minor thing in the big scheme of domain knowledge.
I believe **ultrafilter **is pointing out the standard problem with all IT / Development.
If the tech people only speak Geek & are clueless about business, and the business people only speak business & are not rigorous thinkers, the gap in the middle fails most projects.
Which is where skilled BA’s come in. Somebody with one foot firmly in each camp who can bridge that gap. A crappy BA is a failure at both roles. A good one is worth 10x their weight in devs or business people.
For situations like the OP wants, i.e. to be a solo tech worker, they will only succeed if they are successes at both the BA and the dev role. The OP asserts he can play the dev role successfully.
**ultrafilter **reminds us all he needs to play the other role too. And be seen by the business folks who do the hiring as being able to play the BA role. Because that’s the only role they can interface with successfully. And they know it.
Also, many businesses are confused as to the purpose of Excel. At a government job I once worked, it seemed that everyone referred to their “Excel databases.” On occasion, being an angry young prick I’d respond with “what the f*ck is Access, then?”
On too many occasions (not so much of a problem with post-2007 versions), I’ve seen clients hit their 65k row limit
On one occasion, I had a client wanting us to compile access (lower case) permissions for millions interfacing user accounts… grumble, grumble, something about databases, grumble…
I have a good friend who worked for a number of years at a temp agency as an Excel programmer. He didn’t enjoy it, but he must have been pretty good at it, learning whatever a business needed, as Ultrafilter points out. After about ten years of this, one of his “temp” employers, actually a Japanese bank in NYC, liked him well enough to hire him. That was probably about 15 years ago and he is thinking of retiring, but he obviously has the job as long as he wants.
A good friend of mine was in partnership with his kid brother doing what you are talking about. But that was just one of the things they did; both of them had MBAs and in-depth Microsoft knowledge. They produced a lot of custom applications that ran on windows, IIRC. I remember him telling me once that the things that could be done with Excel were unbelievable.
The problem with Excel is that it is a jack of all trades and master of few application. You can do really impressive stuff with it. If you want to, you can make it do the basics of almost any other application in the MS Office suite. That causes businesses to build and build these monstrosities of solutions that Excel itself simply can’t meet the demands of anymore. The most common problem is that businesses use Excel to store data in a way that is better suited to a true database. MS Excel is not a true database but it has the tools in place to let users try to use it that way up to a certain size. After that, it is bad news.
One consistent consulting gig that some people specialize in is converting giant Excel spreadsheets into a true database application. The beginners version of that is MS Access and it can often do the job much better. More enterprise-wide projects would call for a conversion to SQL Server or Oracle. There is a constant need for that you have to know database theory and practical skills well to to do a good job with that.
Just curious but do you (or anyone else) have links to any cool or interesting Excel-based applications?
IIRC, my friend’s business consisted in large part of matching up MS product with customer requests—the customer thought he needed some custom program that MS could provide off the shelf. My friend had a very in-depth knowledge of MS products that I, for instance, didn’t know existed. He has been retired for as long as I have so I hope you won’t ask for specifics. He did a nice business, though.
and if I might add, where Excel may be one heck of a tool, Access is the powered version. I built several tools in access for my last regular job that got me some hefty awards. Also I regularly see specialized point of sale systems for businesses that are obviously just an Access DB built for the task, these POS programs often sell for thousands of dollars and command hefty annual support agreements/licencing fees. In this way, learning access programming can be a very lucrative business.
Was it for Hewitt?
No, their direct competitor Mercer. I worked with a bunch of former Hewitt people too. They may do the same thing there. I have never seen anything like that. Building a fully functional system simulator in Excel can be done but it is difficult. I taught classes on how to do it and only about 25% of experienced employees could pass it.
Yeah, they do the same thing. The wife works there, hence the question - I’m led to believe that there are only about 5 major companies in the industry, so I figured there was a good chance. Thanks!
Reported.