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In 2008 I wrote some VBA scripts and built an Access database as part of a dashboard used by suits at an insurance company to track sales stats. Pretty sure it'

by sverige 10y ago

In 2008 I wrote some VBA scripts and built an Access database as part of a dashboard used by suits at an insurance company to track sales stats. Pretty sure it's still in use. The suits also made a decision to open a third call center based on some staffing and cost analysis done by me and my boss. We used two totally different models (and argued a lot about which model was right). The director said, "The conclusions you guys came to were within 1% of each other, so it must be right. We're going to move ahead with the new center." That center is still up and running. The thing that gave me chills was that no one told me the analysis would be used to make a $25M decision. I thought it was just skylarking and hacked it out with some formulas in a 3-page Excel spreadsheet in about three hours.

pkroll 10y ago
That's intriguing... Some obvious questions are: if you had known, would you have spent more time or just been "more serious?" Would you have had better answers after more time? Did the other person do the same level of rough estimate, but with a different model?
- sverige 10y ago
  I wouldn't have spent more time, and I was serious. I had done a lot of similar work for a different call center in the late 90s so I knew my model worked. I did it in Excel because I remembered the calculations but I'd forgotten how to code in whatever it was we used back then. (Now I can't even remember what it was we used. I think it was Lotus 1-2-3, maybe. I'm getting old.) The other person's model used a different approach to the problem, using variables that I completely ignored. Turns out he had been sweating over this problem for a couple of weeks, googling for methods and models and massaging some complicated VBA program he'd built. (He loved VBA, go figure.) When he got to his answer, I said, "OK, now add 10%." He exploded, "That's what drives me nuts about this! Every paper takes you through all this complicated math and detailed calculations, then at the end they say, 'Add 10%'! What the hell!?"

by sverige 10y ago

pkroll 10y ago

That's intriguing... Some obvious questions are: if you had known, would you have spent more time or just been "more serious?" Would you have had better answers after more time? Did the other person do the same level of rough estimate, but with a different model?

sverige 10y ago
I wouldn't have spent more time, and I was serious. I had done a lot of similar work for a different call center in the late 90s so I knew my model worked. I did it in Excel because I remembered the calculations but I'd forgotten how to code in whatever it was we used back then. (Now I can't even remember what it was we used. I think it was Lotus 1-2-3, maybe. I'm getting old.) The other person's model used a different approach to the problem, using variables that I completely ignored. Turns out he had been sweating over this problem for a couple of weeks, googling for methods and models and massaging some complicated VBA program he'd built. (He loved VBA, go figure.) When he got to his answer, I said, "OK, now add 10%." He exploded, "That's what drives me nuts about this! Every paper takes you through all this complicated math and detailed calculations, then at the end they say, 'Add 10%'! What the hell!?"