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In investment banking, one of the first things you are taught is excel formatting and how to write readable excel. How to write clear and concise comments, what
by aaavl2821 8y ago
In investment banking, one of the first things you are taught is excel formatting and how to write readable excel. How to write clear and concise comments, what color different cell types should be (black for formulas, blue for inputs, green for links to other cells, red for weird formulas), how to structure large files (when to make a new tab vs keeping a monolithic file), when to break up a formula into multiple cells so it is easier to understand, even that you need to hit "ctrl home" before you save so that the next person to open the file starts at the right place (the group that trained me called it "turning off the lights before you leave a room")
So if someone is good at exce you can easily understand what they're doing and why they did it
- joshgel 8y agoThey have standardized their mental models
- _pmf_ 8y agoWhich cannot be said for software engineers.
- askafriend 8y agoThis is called "Architecture" or "Code Patterns". It can absolutely be said for Software Engineers. It just can't be said of every Software Engineering Org.
- pimlottc 8y agoI'm intrigued by this, are these standard codified and documented anywhere? Would love to know more about Excel best practices.
- aaavl2821 8y agoI'm not sure if there is public documentation on this, but investment banks definitely have training materials that document it. A lot of it is just high level stylistic suggestions, sort of like the Python style guide, though some are more specific The strangest one I remember is: when you are summing a column, put one row in between the cell with the sum and the bottom-most number to be summed. Change the row height to something like 10% of normal cell height and in the cell in the new row, right above the cell with the sum, add a set of dashes (-------). I don't remember why we were told to do this but definitely remember doing it, and in my next job people laughing at that habit. I think that it ensures that, when you add a new row to the column to be summed, that your sum formula automatically picks up the new row
- lenkite 8y agoWould be nice if someone had documented these conventions somewhere.