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Give me a break. 2nd sentence of the article: "It had the number 40,335 in a random box, and payroll wasn’t clear why it was there." If you work with Excel wit

Give me a break. 2nd sentence of the article: "It had the number 40,335 in a random box, and payroll wasn’t clear why it was there." If you work with Excel with any regularity at all, it's immediately 100% clear that this is a Date issue. I can't emphasize enough how obvious and elementary this "mystery" is.

smcl 6y ago
I don’t use excel - could you explain what date this and why it’s obvious?
- jasode 6y ago
  >I don’t use excel - could you explain what date this and why it’s obvious? MS Excel internally represents dates as a floating point number from epoch of Jan 1 1900 So "40335" or "40335.0" is +40,335 days from that epoch -- which is June 10 2006. An experienced Excel user often runs into "mysterious 5 digit numbers" from 3xxxx to 4xxxx and will instinctively think it's probably a date that's inadvertently formatted/interpreted as a number. By switching the formatting of that cell to "Date" (Excel right-click "Format cells..." choose Category "Date"), the mystery number becomes a readable mm/dd/yyyy. Same idea as experienced programmers coming across a 10-digit number like "1602930678" in a JSON or XML data file and instinctively assume it's probably a UNIX timestamp rather than a phone number with area code (160).
Veen 6y ago
The article is written for a general audience that probably doesn’t use Excel regularly. It would be counter-productive to use an example the reader needs paragraphs of explanation to understand.
- listenallyall 6y ago
  It's not about the article, it's a criticism of a company so clueless that it was unable to decipher a date without calling upon outside consultants.
  - Veen 6y ago
    That describes thousands of SMEs and non-technical business units who use Excel to manage their accounts and business operations. For example, a small law practice might use it to manage salaries, but, in spite of being full of very smart people, employ no one who has a clue about the quirks of how Excel handles dates. These consultants exist to serve that niche.
    - listenallyall 6y ago
      I'm not criticizing the consultant, hell, I'll happily take someone's money to "solve" these types of problems. But nobody from "payroll" (as described in the article) should be authorized to cut checks, especially for $40,000+, if they haven't figured out a pretty basic aspect of the primary tool they use -- and in addition, don't have critical thinking skills to determine that, hey, the person's start date seems to be missing. If Excel is too challenging, either outsource payroll or go ahead and spend for a dedicated application. Being a non-technical business is no excuse to hire incompetent people. Good thing Excel doesn't use Unix time... payroll would likely have just written the guy a $1.6 billion check. Look at that, Excel just reduced the company's expenses by 99.997%!

smcl 6y ago

I don’t use excel - could you explain what date this and why it’s obvious?

jasode 6y ago
>I don’t use excel - could you explain what date this and why it’s obvious? MS Excel internally represents dates as a floating point number from epoch of Jan 1 1900 So "40335" or "40335.0" is +40,335 days from that epoch -- which is June 10 2006. An experienced Excel user often runs into "mysterious 5 digit numbers" from 3xxxx to 4xxxx and will instinctively think it's probably a date that's inadvertently formatted/interpreted as a number. By switching the formatting of that cell to "Date" (Excel right-click "Format cells..." choose Category "Date"), the mystery number becomes a readable mm/dd/yyyy. Same idea as experienced programmers coming across a 10-digit number like "1602930678" in a JSON or XML data file and instinctively assume it's probably a UNIX timestamp rather than a phone number with area code (160).

Veen 6y ago

The article is written for a general audience that probably doesn’t use Excel regularly. It would be counter-productive to use an example the reader needs paragraphs of explanation to understand.

listenallyall 6y ago
It's not about the article, it's a criticism of a company so clueless that it was unable to decipher a date without calling upon outside consultants.
- Veen 6y ago
  That describes thousands of SMEs and non-technical business units who use Excel to manage their accounts and business operations. For example, a small law practice might use it to manage salaries, but, in spite of being full of very smart people, employ no one who has a clue about the quirks of how Excel handles dates. These consultants exist to serve that niche.
  - listenallyall 6y ago
    I'm not criticizing the consultant, hell, I'll happily take someone's money to "solve" these types of problems. But nobody from "payroll" (as described in the article) should be authorized to cut checks, especially for $40,000+, if they haven't figured out a pretty basic aspect of the primary tool they use -- and in addition, don't have critical thinking skills to determine that, hey, the person's start date seems to be missing. If Excel is too challenging, either outsource payroll or go ahead and spend for a dedicated application. Being a non-technical business is no excuse to hire incompetent people. Good thing Excel doesn't use Unix time... payroll would likely have just written the guy a $1.6 billion check. Look at that, Excel just reduced the company's expenses by 99.997%!