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Want a Job At Google? Better Know Microsoft Office!
theodp writes "After recent Slashdot discussions on Google's quest to unseat Microsoft Office in business and whether Google Docs and MS-Word are an even matchup, let's complete the trilogy by bringing up the inconvenient truth that numerous Google job postings state that candidates with Microsoft Office expertise are 'preferred' to those lacking these skills. 'For example,' notes GeekWire, 'when hiring an executive compensation analyst to support Google's board, the company will give preference to candidates who are 'proficient with Microsoft Excel."' Parents and kids at schools that have gone or are going Google are reassured that, 'it is more important to teach technology skills than specific programs' and that 'Google itself uses Google Apps to run its multi-billion dollar company.' Which, for the most part, is true. Just don't count on getting certain Google jobs with that attitude, kids!"
trol?
Is this a serious Google branding issue? I can kinda understand the confusion, just as I can the whole "Google Voice is trying to compete with Vonage!" crap - that's a voicemail and forwarding service on steriods service people, not a VoIP service (Google Talk is the VoIP service.) Though that said, if you don't actually use a product enough to know what it is, why mention it?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
The company I work for uses Google Docs extensively; in fact, we use it so much I wrote SAS scripts to interface with the API so we can easily share datasets in and out of Google Docs. While it's powerful for collaborative work over the Internet, especially with remote resources housed all over the world, it's no replacement for Office.
It doesn't have all the powerful tools Office does, it doesn't format documents the same as Office does (especially importing and exporting--and yes, I realize Office doesn't do all that well version to version), and it doesn't work all that well offline (if at all).
So it's no wonder a corporation dealing with other corporations would require Office knowledge. This is a non-story.
Google can push their own platform all they want internally, but they can't control the format of documents they receive. I've resorted to installing LibreOffice on my personal system to edit/collaborate/modify Office documents before sending them back. Doesn't work so well in Google Docs.
As opposed to a employee relations person, you understand.
The weasels want people with 5 years experience with Java in 1995, and then wonder why no-one but James Gosling applies.
Send the posting to Larry Page's office with a subject line like "Public relations blunder".
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
Google docs is good if you stay on the web but if you want to work with other big companies using Office then you're just better off with office. Google can't compete for now in what most managerial types want out of the office software.
I'm curious when it became in fashion celebrate those that choose to deliberatly not learn something (sometimes out of spite) and counsel other folks to do the same? Sure Google should be dog-fooding their own product, but not everyone needs to put on the Goggles (aka drinking the koolaid).
Sure, for something like "intro-to-computers" it may not exactly matter which word processor you use. But as some point reality will kick in. Of course time is finite and you can't learn everything, but Microsoft office is the standard bearer, so if you are going to fill your skills bag with some items, a quick reality check might confirm that being proficient with Microsoft office would be a good thing to learn if there is a chance that you might need to use it in a corporate environment. That's the difference between vocational training and a generic education.
Also on the hiring front, it might be prudent to choose to employ people (say as an executive compensation analyst) who are somewhat in tune with the real world vs out on their own crusade, dontchathink? Okay, maybe that was a bad example occupation to illustrate needing to be in tune with real-world, come to think of it ;^P
To me the story isn't so much about how "Those bastards at Google aren't even pushing their own product!" it's a story about how even Google can't really expect people to have skills in any other office product other than MS Office. Face it, outside of a select people in IT, and a few people who don't want to pay for office, it's a MS Office world. The story is really about how nobody can escape the power of the Microsoft monopoly on Office products.
Imagine if we lived in a world where for a job that involves driving, and GM had to put in the job requirements "Excellent experience driving Ford Vehicles".
Which is fine, until a client sends you a document from MS Office and wants you to send back your changes with change tracking turned on, so that they can see what has changed in the document. If you only use it for internal documents, Google Docs can be fine. However, once you want to communicate with the outside world, you had better have MS office, or things will break down quite quickly.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
"Because LibreOffice doesn't do everything MS Office does?"
I keep hearing this, but I never see a list of the "10%" that MS Office can do that Libreoffice cannot. Plus, how many items on this 10% list are actually used by 90% of the MS Office users, including Google employees???
Show me the list!
Ever heard of LibreOffice? If you claim you're unable to write "powerful macros" in any of these languages, then it is you who is the "idiot".
I don't think the problem is so much writing new Macros, but in rewriting all of the tried-and-true macros and formulas that the Finance exec has been using for the past decade. Sure, it could be ported and rewritten, but why have a $100/hour finance professional spend time learning a new macro language and rewriting and validating his old functions/macros for a new spreadsheet platform? It only takes a few hours of wasted work to pay for MS Office.
their own tech over "right tool for the right job." Dedication to any brand (even your own) over using the right tool is a sign of stupidity.
"Because LibreOffice doesn't do everything MS Office does?"
I keep hearing this, but I never see a list of the "10%" that MS Office can do that Libreoffice cannot. Plus, how many items on this 10% list are actually used by 90% of the MS Office users, including Google employees???
Show me the list!
Here are a few examples of financial functions in MS Office that aren't in Google Docs:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/excel-functions-by-category-HP010079186.aspx?CTT=3#BMfinancial_functions
https://support.google.com/drive/bin/static.py?hl=en&topic=25273&page=table.cs&tab=1240288
AMORDEGRC()
AMORLINC()
ISPMT()
OSSFPRICE()
ODDFYIELD()
ODDLPRICE()
ODDLYIELD()
VDB()
YIELDMAT()
I didn't look to see if Google has the same functionality in a different function, nor do I know enough about the functions to know if a trivial formula can recreate the functionality in Google.
I don't know how frequently these are used, but if the finance director can't open the forecasting spreadsheet that he's used for 5 years because one of these functions is missing, he's going to demand MS Office. At least, that's what happened in my last company when we tried to see if we could save money by moving away from MS -- the Finance department couldn't open any of the spreadsheets they used in their day to day work.
I've used LibreOffice/OpenOffice with track changes to work on documents with multiple MS Office users and not had a problem.
Of course, the Google Docs collaboration features are much nicer than the cumbersome "track changes" but it is possible to work with people stuck with MS Office.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Competent programming teams will look at MS word on your resume and go,"If this guy thinks Office is something special, he must not know a lot."
Corporate HR on the other hand might have struggled to learn MS Office as it is one of the few applications they ever used. They think putting MS Office on a resume is a badge of honor. So if you don't put MS Word on your resume in some corporate places, they think you're not cut out for the job."What this guy doesn't know Office? He must not know much."
This has bugged me for many years as I have a hard time getting interviews. If someone is a programmer, it should be assumed they know how to use most every piece of software they come into contact with. Yet, a lot of HR departments don't get it. It is hard to tell who is competent and who isn't, so the question you ask is,"Do I put the Microsoft Office on my resume?" I've come to the conclusion,"I don't want to be hired by an incompetent organization, so I'll just leave the Microsoft Office off my resume."
God spoke to me
I don't think anyone will hold it against you for knowing something, even something with is not really at the core of what I do to pay the bills (Java dev mostly) but could be required from time to time. Not knowing something however will always be a problem so I do put office on my CV in small writing, near the end.
"XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, use more." - Anonymous Coward
Which is fine, until a client sends you a document from MS Office and wants you to send back your changes with change tracking turned on, so that they can see what has changed in the document. If you only use it for internal documents, Google Docs can be fine. However, once you want to communicate with the outside world, you had better have MS office, or things will break down quite quickly.
When you want to communicate with an 800-lb. gorilla, you speak the language of the 800-lb. gorilla. If you want to do business with IBM, you use IBM's document formats. If you want to do business with Google, use Google formats. When IBM and Google want to do business with each other, they can either play document tag or agree on a common format.
The one question that nobody's asking here, is "Do they really mean explicitly MS Excel?" Or do they mean Excel as in "Kleenex"? If they're really just asking for spreadsheet proficiency and genericizing a brand name, we're getting all excited over the wrong things.
I used to work as an engineer at Google. I did not work in a data center, but I did interact enough with the people working there to know that they are much more intelligent than a robot. If somebody had come to our team with a robot telling us, this robot can do the same work as a person in the data center at a fifth the price of a person, we would have responded: "Go away, we don't want your robot."
I worked at Google for multiple years, and during that time I did not even once need to work with a Microsoft product.
I interviewed lots of people applying for jobs at Google. I may have come across resumes, which stated that the candidate could use Microsoft Office. I always considered that a pointless piece of information to waste space on in a resume. I don't care which office suites the candidate knows. I would judge candidates on skills that were more important to the job than the use of an office suite. Sometimes phone interviews would cover some programming skills, and we would have the candidate write code to solve a specific task. In order to let the interviewer see the code as the candidate was writing it, this was done using Google Docs.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
Sure, it could be ported and rewritten, but why have a $100/hour finance professional spend time learning a new macro language and rewriting and validating his old functions/macros for a new spreadsheet platform?
That's why you hire on some bright kid off the street for $10/hour part time to port it to the new macro language.
In a few hours, you have your ported macros, and you only need the newer shinier spreadsheet program.
And the $100/hour finance guy still has to validate the work and ensure that it's working as expected - he's not going to present numbers to the board of directors based on what some $10/hour kid did. And it's going to take more than "A few hours" - you'd be surprised at some of the corporate finance spreadsheets out there - some are pages upon pages of linked numbers with obscure calculations that have been refined over time. And when he wants to tweak it, he either needs to hire a new $10/hour kid to do the work, or sit down and learn the new system.
Your argument sounds kind of like the CIO that says "Hey, I've been reading a lot about dotNet and I think we ought to port our code over from Java to dotNet - we just need to hire a few $10/hour coders to do it, right? Then we'll be running on this shiny new platform, despite the fact that it was running fine before." The actual coding itself is a small part of the overall project - architecture, design and validation are all much harder.
It's a bit of a joke though - once you've used any spreadsheet (including visicalc, lotus, MS works, oocalc, MS excel) the others all do the same thing no matter what ribbons they are wrapped up in.
If it were up to the IT people to write every single business critical application, nothing would ever get done. Let the finance guy write his spreadsheet and should said spreadsheet turn out to be a good investment of time, let the programmers take over and build it into a proper database-driven application.
No.
They gave up on not being evil some time ago. Google's constant trolling of linked-in with the assumption that anyone with a few years of unix knowledge would kill their own children just to work for them is sickening. The way they abuse customers with their adwords pricing setup is sickening. The information they are collecting for the truly wicked people of this world is more than sickening.
It's time slashdot got past the drolling over google stage.
Or do they mean Excel as in "Kleenex"?
I think the mean Excel as in "Charmin".