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I do not understand the mindset of not wanting to help other people. Enabling people to learn more about the software they use every day is better for everyone

• aclave1 8y ago
  Helping others is great and I think most people enjoy it. I think what most people don't like is when it impacts their own work. I've definitely had this issue in my own jobs.
• mynameisvlad 8y ago
  It's less "not wanting to help people" and more "once people know you're 'the Excel person' they come to you for everything to do with Excel". It's very similar to being 'the computer person' in a family/group of friends and everyone coming to you with all their various tech support questions. At a certain point, it starts ruining your productivity since you get taken out of your regular job to do these one time help requests.
  • css 8y ago
    There is a difference between "doing other people's job" and "enabling them to learn on their own" in my experience. Explaining to someone why it is better to use INDEX MATCH in lieu of VLOOKUP will never ruin my productivity.
    • wernercd 8y ago
      Explaining it to the same person for the 15th time though...
      • Loughla 8y ago
        As a career educator, and ruling out learning disabilities that are not appropriately accommodated, I believe that generally means you're not doing a good job of explaining in a way the other person is capable of grasping. Blame goes both ways. And the original point still stands. It is productive to teach someone to improve their own processes.
        • whatshisface 8y ago
          One difference between your experiences as an educator and the parent's experiences as an Office Excel Guy is that educators have a position of authority, and there is generally an ethos of paying attention and trying to remember what they're telling you!
          • Kagerjay 8y ago
            ^ This. Office Excel Guy is just glorified IT help desk. People don't want an explanation, don't want to learn how to use excel necessarily. They want want to push one button, and get a result. Spend longer than 5 minutes explaining it and you will be told you're wasting their time. You spend time explaining on what is essentially deaf ears, and being on call all the time
          • unsignedint 8y ago
            Educators tend to have alignment on students' skill levels too, and perhaps not so with "Excel support." It's actually easier to help someone who knows nothing about the subject. What I struggled in the past are those who think they know what they are doing, yet require help in narrower scope. They often have often accumulated bad habit, and won't listen to you because "I have been doing this way for years." Also, it's interesting to observe that many who struggle in Excel (or many of "consumer" applications) actually are struggling in basic computing skills. (e.g. can't tell difference between left and right mouse buttons, don't know how to copy files, etc.) It often result in infuriated people, pointing out that they need to learn basics of the operating system.
  • semitext 8y ago
    This is my experience working in offices like law firms that are filled with people that have limited technical aptitude for using software. Showing any sort of competency is a recipe for increasing your workload with no conferred benefits.
    • moomin 8y ago
      Yeah, it’s draining. They have no desire or intention to learn. You’re not helping them, you’re just doing their job for them. Yours, former excel guy.
      • debaserab2 8y ago
        I always looked at it as being great job security.
        • ALittleLight 8y ago
          "You haven't completed any of your assignments while your co-workers all exhibit improved productivity. For this reason, I'm giving you a poor performance review."
          • debaserab2 8y ago
            Never once seen it play out like that. Most people understand that your work comes before the help they need.
    • izacus 8y ago
      That's fine, the problem is that you also get all the blame as well. Once you "fix" a computer, everything that will break will suddenly be your fault.
      • maxxxxx 8y ago
        Very true. I once installed a printer driver in a friend's company. I got blamed for missing files by several employees during the following weeks.
  • 52-6F-62 8y ago
    The old "Can you fix my laptop?"
  • whatgoodisaroad 8y ago
    Since I work in technology, people would sometimes ask for my help fixing a computer, to whom I would clarify: no, no, no, I'm a Software Engineer -- I'm the person responsible for breaking the computers.
  • unsignedint 8y ago
    And it's one thing if they actually appreciate your help. In places that people don't realize it's part of their job to learn the tools, it often turns into complaints of "why they designed it that way?" going on and on with dissatisfaction of the system that doesn't read their mind. (And certainly, they will come back with the same question in few days...) I've been there a decade ago and it was DRAINING that I was just better off not offering the help altogether.
  • jpfed 8y ago
    So basically it's separation of concerns, but for people.
• Jorslu 8y ago
  The problem mostly lies in other people not wanting to learn. Anecdotally, I've found that people come to me with Excel questions because they want me to do something for them, not because they are generally interested in learning more or bettering their skills.
• thrmsforbfast 8y ago
  I think it's less "not wanting to help other people" and more "wanting to do what is valued". Value could manifest in many ways: * purely intrinsic ("doing cool work" vs. "de facto IT guy") * purely extrinsic (the year-end perf review won't give me kudos for helping with excel documents) * a mixture (I want this organization to succeed, the best way for me to do that is by doing X, and instead I'm helping debug excel sheets). Often it's a mixture since people often enjoy doing what brings the most value. I do volunteer stuff for a charity. A lot of the stuff I do is very interesting and challenging and valuable to the charity's core mission. But I'm also expected to help other volunteers with mundane helpdesk stuff like connecting to the wireless network. I don't enjoy it and also it distracts from a much more valuable use of my time.
  • css 8y ago
    I don't disagree with you but I was speaking to the premise of the article, which exposits that one should "run the other way" when people come bearing questions.
• rhodysurf 8y ago
  There is definitely value in teaching others, but first they have to want to learn. I work with a lot of mechanical engineers and I am the only real "software guy" in our office. Most of the time they don't want to learn how to do computer things themselves because (mostly the older engineers) consider it to not be their job or out of their scope.
  • PascLeRasc 8y ago
    At my previous job in the power industry we had to clean up our shared drive and move all the CAD files of one type into a certain new folder, and the CAD files of the newer type into another, and PDF outputs in another, GIS exports in another, etc. Three people were dragging-and-dropping by hand for hours until I had some free time and made a Python script in 10 minutes to do this all. Got a few free drinks that day.
    • 3rdAccount 8y ago
      It's amazing what scripting allows one to do. If I was in charge of hiring any technical roles, any non-developer job would still require basic coding proficiency, or at least a candidate who agreed to seriously give it a shot and try to learn.
• stronglikedan 8y ago
  In many companies, once you touch something, you own it, regardless of who's responsibility it was prior to your involvement. In that type of environment, it's often best to feign ignorance, while sending them links to resources while saying something along the lines of, "I think this may have something to do with what you're trying to accomplish."
• drspacemonkey 8y ago
  >Enabling people to learn more about the software they use every day is better for everyone involved I agree, but the flaw in your assumption is that the people who want help from "the office Excel guy" want to learn more. Much like being the "family computer guy", the person asking for help is really asking for you to just fix the problem.
  • yashap 8y ago
    Indeed. I actually really enjoy teaching and mentoring, and do a lot of it. I’m also quite experienced with Excel, used to be an analyst before I became a dev, so I’m often the “Excel guy.” When other devs come to me for help, they generally want to learn, and I’m happy to teach them. Most devs are really into learning technical skills. Same goes for MOST product managers, sales people, etc. But there are definitely SOME people on the business side who actively DON’T want to learn technical skills. They have some report they have to do, it involves Excel, and they just want me to do it for them, they don’t want to learn how to do it themselves. Generally I’ll help these people once or twice, but after that it’s “Google it.”
• matwood 8y ago
  > I do not understand the mindset of not wanting to help other people. I love helping people, but I also want them to become self sufficient. My first question when someone asks me for help is "have you typed into Google exactly what you just said?"
• simonbyrne 8y ago
  There is also a lack of what is considered "Excel best practices", for want of a better word. The only resource I've seen along those lines is Joel Spolsky's "You Suck at Excel" video (which is excellent, and should be necessary viewing for anyone who use Excel on a regular basis): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c
  • css 8y ago
    Yeah, great video. I often send this to colleagues. Another blog I recommend to others is https://itsnotaboutthecell.com/ https://itsnotaboutthecell.com/
• hobs 8y ago
  Then you clearly dont have a lot of help parasites. What do I mean by help parasite? Asks you to do the work for them, instead of asking for help solving the problem. Asks for the same answer to the same problem over and over again to the point where any person would have pattern recognition. Uses imprecise language even after being provided it to diagnose and troubleshoot an issue. While there's plenty of people who are well meaning and want to learn, being the "thing" guy is not that - its a slow death to the choking off of your job description by others using your time and resources to do their jobs.
• analog31 8y ago
  I think there are jobs that people need to have done, and know that they can't do themselves, but that they consider to be menial and lower class. Like being the bass player in a band. (Disclaimer: I'm the bass player in a band). They may think that the difficulty and expertise are gratuitous -- if software were written right, it wouldn't need an expert.
• jiveturkey 8y ago
  > I do not understand the mindset of not wanting to help other people. You, sir, have not been the victim of help vampires. > A lot of people struggle to find answers specifically because of this lack of community around using Excel as a tool I am unaware of this lack of information. Perhaps I am not doing the really, really, really exotic stuff but every question I have ever had on Excel has been answerable via Google.
  • eric_h 8y ago
    The ability to compose queries and sift through google results and find the answer to a question in a timely manner is a skill in and of itself that not everyone has.
    • grigjd3 8y ago
      You never learn if you just depend on others.
    • sgt101 8y ago
      But - this is a skill that will repay the learner in gold and good times. And no one is prevented in the learning.
  • 3rdAccount 8y ago
    Agreed. Most Excel stuff is extremely well documented on Stack Overflow, numerous blog sites, and message boards. I wrote a fair amount of VBA today(something I've only done a few times before) and found it to be quite straightforward.
• Varcht 8y ago
  If they haven't learned how to "Google" for the solution and help themselves by now, they are lazy and do not deserve help.
• grigjd3 8y ago
  It isn't about being helpful or not, but about letting yourself be abused or not. Often times, the only difference between myself with a technology and the person asking me for help is that I am willing to read the documentation while the other isn't. Often, the person seeking my help doesn't even realize they are abusing me but still, if I point out that they can read the documentation as well as I can, I get a look of disgust. There is countless sources of documentation, howtos, and useful tricks in both document and video form on Excel available for free on the internet. People just refuse to use that, even when I point them to it. More over, if I hold firm and say you can read this yourself, the person often will just ignore me and try to find someone else to do their work for them.
  • grigjd3 8y ago
    On the other hand, if somebody asked me what resources they could use to figure something out, then I'd be more than happy to help.
  • chaos_emergent 8y ago
    My high school history teacher used to say "there is such thing as a stupid question: it's one that you have the resources to easily answer" and went so far as to tell people that she was not going to answer a question that they had in class because it wasn't a good use of time. I feel the same way about technology questions. I'm really glad to help when someone asks something that they have looked into ahead of time, or if they're interested in learning a skill that they know I have rather than just getting me to do their work. It really annoys me when someone has just not put in enough effort and would rather have me expend the effort in solving their problem.
• commandlinefan 8y ago
  > I do not understand the mindset of not wanting to help other people. Not to pile on or anything, because that phrase seems to have touched a nerve - but, I don't mind helping other people at all. I do mind when I spend 8 hours at work helping other people, and don't have time to complete the work that I was actually supposed to be doing, and then get criticized for not getting the work I was assigned to do done. It doesn't help to err in the other direction, either, though - once everybody knows that you know how to do "x", even if you're swamped with other work, you can't turn them away, or it'll haunt you on your next performance review. Hence the article's original advice: never let anybody know you're good at "x".
  • robotresearcher 8y ago
    Write down the hours you spend as a consultant to teammates. Then discuss with your boss how you should best spend your time. It’s not complicated. Source: am manager who deals with this every day. Edit: I understand this advice is worthless if your manager is a dolt. In that case run for the hills.
• intended 8y ago
  >Excel lacks the community programmers have and also lacks the learning opportunities given by open-source software. Source needed. There’s crap tons of excel help, and the amount of excel queries+answers will easily put other languages to shame. The difference is that excel is not usually treated as an engineering tool, with the various rituals that go with it. In contrast, take a look at how financial analysts learn excel - a field where excel IS an engineering tool. It’s the differences between being a home cook and a professional chef.
  • grigjd3 8y ago
    Agreeing with you: just Google excel howto, then see results.
  • css 8y ago
    So, yes, there is content that exists. What does not exist are real-world examples of problem solving a la open source. As I said in another comment, debugging Excel is incredibly opaque (#NA) and most people will never find what they are looking for when they Google "=GETPIVOTDATA #NA error." There is no GitHub for Excel workbooks where people build and extend generalized solutions that people can read, understand, and learn from. There is also a total lack of comments in Excel formulas (short of VBA custom functions) so good luck deciphering the 5 line SUMIF in the 10 year old model you inherited.
    • intended 8y ago
      You can get many, many excel sheets and examples which highlight problems and provide solutions. You can dowload a 3D graphics engine in excel if you so desire, as well as more mundane examples and videos. It’s not couched in engineering terms, but effectively a body of work and reference does exist to help people use excel - I’ve constantly used it to improve myself. It is definitely not made by engineers and coders, but by normal people and excel jockeys.
  • clausok 8y ago
    >excel is not usually treated as an engineering tool This is a good point. I've seen C# & Python devs who read the release notes and adopt new features of C#\Python with alacrity while at the same time their Excel development work, which they spend considerable time on, evolves not at all. E.g., still using IF(ISERROR(...)) rather than IFERROR; VLOOKUP rather than INDEX(MATCH()); slow & brittle array functions rather than SUMIFS; employing many intermediate columns to clean out errors rather than using AGGREGATE(); doing things in VBA that they would never do in their primary programming language (v = Worksheets("pnl").Range("N22:N77").Value).
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