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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 parag

• 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%!