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When Anand Kalelkar started a new job at a large insurance company, colleagues flooded him with instant messages and emails and rushed to introduce themselves in the cafeteria.
He soon learned his newfound popularity came with strings attached. Strings of code. Many of Mr. Kalelkar’s co-workers had heard he was a wizard at Microsoft Excel and were seeking his help in taming unruly spreadsheets and pivot tables gone wrong.
“People would come up to me and say, ‘Hey, I hear you’re the Excel guy,’ ” said the 37-year-old metrics consultant from Oak Brook, Ill. Mr. Kalelkar said he has become “a little more passive-aggressive,” warning help-seekers, “Don’t come to me, go to Google first.”
Excel buffs are looking to lower their profiles. Since its introduction in 1985 by Microsoft Corp., the spreadsheet program has grown to hundreds of millions of users world-wide. It has simplified countless office tasks once done by hand or by rudimentary computer programs, streamlining the work of anyone needing to balance a budget, draw a graph or crunch company earnings. Advanced users can perform such feats as tracking the expenditures of thousands of employees.
At the same time, it has complicated the lives of the office Excel Guy or Gal, the virtuosos whose superior skills at writing formula leave them fighting an endless battle against the circular references, merged cells and mangled macros left behind by their less savvy peers.
“If someone tells you that they ‘just have a few Excel sheets’ that they want help with, run the other way,” tweeted 32-year-old statistician Andrew Althouse. “Also, you may want to give them a fake phone number, possibly a fake name. It may be worth faking your own death, in extreme circumstances.”
www.wsj.com
This article is not behind paywall.
He soon learned his newfound popularity came with strings attached. Strings of code. Many of Mr. Kalelkar’s co-workers had heard he was a wizard at Microsoft Excel and were seeking his help in taming unruly spreadsheets and pivot tables gone wrong.
“People would come up to me and say, ‘Hey, I hear you’re the Excel guy,’ ” said the 37-year-old metrics consultant from Oak Brook, Ill. Mr. Kalelkar said he has become “a little more passive-aggressive,” warning help-seekers, “Don’t come to me, go to Google first.”
Excel buffs are looking to lower their profiles. Since its introduction in 1985 by Microsoft Corp., the spreadsheet program has grown to hundreds of millions of users world-wide. It has simplified countless office tasks once done by hand or by rudimentary computer programs, streamlining the work of anyone needing to balance a budget, draw a graph or crunch company earnings. Advanced users can perform such feats as tracking the expenditures of thousands of employees.
At the same time, it has complicated the lives of the office Excel Guy or Gal, the virtuosos whose superior skills at writing formula leave them fighting an endless battle against the circular references, merged cells and mangled macros left behind by their less savvy peers.
“If someone tells you that they ‘just have a few Excel sheets’ that they want help with, run the other way,” tweeted 32-year-old statistician Andrew Althouse. “Also, you may want to give them a fake phone number, possibly a fake name. It may be worth faking your own death, in extreme circumstances.”
The First Rule of Microsoft Excel—Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It
In the workplace, spreadsheet experts face a constant barrage of help requests; ‘run the other way’
www.wsj.com
This article is not behind paywall.
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