6 ms·
Powerpoint skills are where the money is, in large businesses that aren't FAANG. And probably even there, somewhat. I've come to this conclusion after seeing a
by asark 7y ago
Powerpoint skills are where the money is, in large businesses that aren't FAANG. And probably even there, somewhat. I've come to this conclusion after seeing a lot of not-especially-smart-or-effective people-person folks with Powerpoint skills making serious money.
[EDIT] it also seems to me that good presentation and communication skills are how you achieve "you don't apply for jobs, jobs apply for you" status without top 1% tech skills.
- black6 7y agoThe best advice I ever received re: PowerPoint was: "Don't present with PowerPoint. Use it to create a PDF from which to present."
- invalidOrTaken 7y agoI'm not sure I fully understand. Would you mind expanding on that?
- NikolaNovak 7y agoI'm curious too, but from related personal experience: 1. One of the best communicators I've met strongly suggested never to present from powerpoint on screen, but rather create a brochure to print and hand off to participants. His claim was less that it impresses, but rather that it changes dynamics of "presenter vs audience" and makes it more of a "discussion group / workshop", which tends to be a more productive dynamic, especially in sales/persuasive setting. 2. Alternatively and more prosaically, dear gawd, 99% of people using PowerPoint don't know how to use it. They don't know how the slide show view interacts with a Webex presentation, so they end up sending a small thumbnail to projector, presenter view to remote audience, but hey things look ok on their screen so they keep going. PDF would alleviate some of those issues :P
- black6 7y agoA PDF is more portable, smaller file size, and it brings along the fonts it requires to display as-you-created-tt on another computer, which may not have them installed. Plus you don’t have to worry about the errant slide transition working its way in, and it tends to load faster. I don’t, as a rule, include video or other fancy effects in presentations ( they’re still referred to as “slide decks” where I work ), so PDFs are perfect. YMMV
- cambalache 7y agoMeh, I worked for one of those Fortune20 behemoths (Not tech) and all the presentations from a fresh intern up to the CEO were made in Power Point. 99% of business analytics? = Excel. Same in a big government organization (non US), I am as much a nerd as most people here, but being outside in the real (non-tech) world helped me to realize how much the tech world can blind you.
- lyctc 7y agoI use PDF for high-level conversations. It appears more polished. I use PPT for low-level conversations. You can double click on graphs to see the numbers.
- asark 7y agoNot that you're necessarily emailing these, but on the "appears more polished" thing, you may be surprised how many C-level (and somewhat under) folks don't read email attachments unless they are .ppt(x) files.
- bdamm 7y agoWell, knowing your audience is a thing too. If your C-level eyeballs only read pptx, then do that. But honestly I wouldn’t count on C-level at any company to understand what I’m saying unless I say it directly to them and answer their questions in person.
- randcraw 7y agoHow do you compose the document / slides that you use to present via PDF? Using powerpoint or something else? I'd love to find a tool that composes more attractive presentation media than does powerpoint. But I'm too blinkered by my and everyone else's use of powerpoint to know what that could be.
- _emacsomancer_ 7y agoPowerpoint seems designed to lead people to create poor presentations. NOT learning Powerpoint would seem to give one an advantage.