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> until they're load-bearing This cannot be stressed enough. I've outlived generations of finance teams at many startups, and I've seen firsthand the masterpie

> until they're load-bearing This cannot be stressed enough. I've outlived generations of finance teams at many startups, and I've seen firsthand the masterpieces/abominations left behind in Excel. Imagine a dozen sheets with ad-hoc queried data copy/pasted from System A/B/C/D into Excel, with formulas that feed formulas that feed formulas. Sometimes columns are inputs (seasonality adjustments for monthly forecasts), sometimes their outputs (modeled growth * last year * seasonality adjustment) and more often than not their right next to each other and maybe they have different cell background colors or a black separator line. Maybe. And this is just finance. For many e-commerce businesses, planning is done in Excel with equal zeal.

sam_bristow 6y ago
I remember hearing about a mythical spreadsheet floating around for modelling something to do with our national grid a few years back. It would take about 12 hours to calculate, and would error out before finishing about 30% of the time. It needed to be run once a day for something reasonably important. I don't use Excel much these days, but I do point people to a video if they do plan on doing anything: * [You suck at excel - Joel Spolsky](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c)
rvba 6y ago
Someone who does not use Excel nice will probably make spaghetti code as well.
- larrywright 6y ago
  I'd rather reverse engineer spaghetti code than a spaghetti Excel spreadsheet.
  - JackoM 6y ago
    Most probably because you do not know Excel !? But for someone who do know well Excel and understand finance concept it'd be easier to understand the spaghetti Excel spreadsheet and find where it doesn't work properly !
  - empthought 6y ago
    You’ve been lucky with your spaghetti code experiences, then.
    - larrywright 6y ago
      At least with spaghetti code I can set a breakpoint or add print statements and get an understanding of the execution path.

sam_bristow 6y ago

I remember hearing about a mythical spreadsheet floating around for modelling something to do with our national grid a few years back. It would take about 12 hours to calculate, and would error out before finishing about 30% of the time. It needed to be run once a day for something reasonably important. I don't use Excel much these days, but I do point people to a video if they do plan on doing anything: * [You suck at excel - Joel Spolsky](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c)

rvba 6y ago

Someone who does not use Excel nice will probably make spaghetti code as well.

larrywright 6y ago
I'd rather reverse engineer spaghetti code than a spaghetti Excel spreadsheet.
- JackoM 6y ago
  Most probably because you do not know Excel !? But for someone who do know well Excel and understand finance concept it'd be easier to understand the spaghetti Excel spreadsheet and find where it doesn't work properly !
- empthought 6y ago
  You’ve been lucky with your spaghetti code experiences, then.
  - larrywright 6y ago
    At least with spaghetti code I can set a breakpoint or add print statements and get an understanding of the execution path.