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The Tools Don't Get You the Job
An anonymous reader writes: It's a trend that seems to permeate education across every discipline, from creative to technical: reliance on a single expensive, proprietary, vendor-driven tool. Whether it's the predominance of Adobe in design programs, of Visual Studio in many computer science programs, or even Microsoft Office components in business schools, too often students come away with education that teaches them how to be rote users of a tool rather than critical thinkers who can apply skills in their discipline across toolsets. Relying on knowledge of a single tool chain can create single point of failure for a student's education when licensing comes back to bite. What can we do to bring more software choice into education to give students more opportunity when they get out into the real world?
Random updates (downgrades) to the UI don't get you more readers (or clicks).
You mean like grinding my life away on SolidWorks?
At my school for my undergrad and grad programs we used a various set of IDEs and OSes. The only time we needed to be locked into a vendor for dev tools was when the class was targeted at that. A large % of the time we could use whatever worked for us.
-- Brought to you by Carl's JR
The Tools Don't Get You the Job
Well except for when the company hiring for the job only uses a certain set of tools and actually wants you to have experience in them, right? Because that is hardly an exceptional case.
This is not news, and we see it all the time. We are swimming upstream though. We are given multiple classes with over 100 people each by the administration and then expect the students to be interested. We do our best to provide students with the ideas and tell them that they need to be problem solvers rather than just trying to complete some rote steps to get their reward. Unfortunately, the system is set up so that the onus is on the students to understand that they need to take the initiative and get their education. That does not put money in the budget though and makes for unhappy students when you try to challenge them. Would not matter any way the student/teacher ratios are too big to give the students the support that they need. Students pay the money, teachers treat them like numbers, and the administrators measure the success in terms of revenue. The system is broken.
Our education system seems to be getting into a worse state. I don't remember seeing anything positive happening for a while. And no, I don't count free iPads or Chromebooks as positive.
See below for my very sarcastic remark that I decided not be my primary comment to the story. I figured it was still applicable though.
That would create chaos to make people think for themselves and outside the box. Why would we ever do such a thing?! I mean it's not like anyone ever needed to do that to be successful. Oh wait, there are "things" to do things for us now so why would we need to worry about those ever failing.
That has less to do with knowledge than how broken the screening system is. You've got to SEO your resume for the machines then add keywords for the HR people who pick up the ones that made it through.
Who put this thing together? Me, that's who.
If you are looking for MS office on a resume for DBA's you need to fire that HR staff. They should be looking for the part of the resume that says "I know how to use that damn database you bought"
Unless by DBA you mean 'microsoft access'.......
Nonsense. If the tools are used in 99% of software shops out there then it only makes good sense to teach kids how to use them. What doesn't make sense is trying to convince kids that the tools are going to be used in every place they go to work, and at least show them a few alternative ways to work. If you work for any of a large number of game studios you'll be using MSVS. If you work at Sony you'll likely be using MSVS and a bit of Linux. If you work at Facebook, Google or Amazon it's much more likely you'll be using pure Linux+LLVM toolchains. The more computers a place has the less likely it's going to use Windows. Fact, because licensing gets expensive and big shops can afford Linux specialists.
The question is whether we should insist on coursework being turned in as VCXPROJ files or as cc/h files with an LLVM backend. Common sense says that if we give them Visual Studio the results are much more likely to be reproducible. Open Source projects have a nasty tendency of requiring X compiler + Y patch + Z reconfiguration. There's a good chance they wouldn't be able to explain to their professor how to get the damn thing to build properly. The goal of CS isn't to teach about vague incompatible languages and nuances in standards implementations, it's meant to teach about the maths and principals of understanding computation and algorithms. It's a purist view of how code achieves a result without looking too much at code.
When you are learning "Hello World" in almost any language, you should be able to use any arbitrary text editor and fire off the compiler/linker/etc. from a command line, run your program, and go from there.
After you do this, then you can start playing with fancy tools like IDEs.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It's the process, not the tool.
Why did I click on this dumb article?
Critical thinking is like common sense, not so common anymore.
Kids coming out of college now have huge student debts which means they fail the first big test of life.
Most can't get jobs that pay enough to cover their student debts let alone proceed to raising a family and doing better than their parents did.
The next generation will end up renting their entire lives and retire on whatever is left of social security and still be paying on those student loans when they die.
Not smart to major in english or art.
Granted most of my Education was during the 1990's where Microsoft was King, and using anything other than Microsoft was considered antiquated.
However the fix, is to teach the ideas and not the tools. How to use a Word Processor not Microsoft Word, How to program in C++ not Visual C++.
Most schools do happen to have multiple platforms available the teacher should try to have the students mix it up a bit. A Linux or Mac Guy should do some work on the PC, vice versa. Not to try to convert them to love the other system, but to show them where things are similar and where they are different.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Because HR Drones don't understand software, I am finding that quite often the tool DOES get you the job, and consequently, it's incredibly hard to break out of either the LAMP or Microsoft Silos when designing software. Sure, for a particular industrial robot, FORTH may be a better language, or for certain expert systems, LISP machines work well, but when doing such a project in the real world, there are only a few real choices- C#, C++, Java, or Python is all anybody cares about.
So make sure your students are exposed to a wide variety- but make sure they're EXPERTS in learning new frameworks and learning new syntax.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
1980's: Learn to use a computer
1990's: Learn to use a word processor
2000's: Learn to use Microsoft Word
2010's: ?????
2020's: PROFIT!
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
>A diploma is worthless if you can't think for yourself, but this isn't something that can be taught, apparently.
See: Philosophy
Comment Signature
put all office suites (Microsoft, Libre, TeX, etc) and all certs in the resume. somewhere in there, also squeeze in your specialized talents. if you don't win Buzzword Bingo, they don't call you.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
reliance on a single expensive, proprietary, vendor-driven tool. Whether it's the predominance of Adobe in design programs, of Visual Studio in many computer science programs, ...
Visual Studio is free for students, OSS contributors, and small teams. It's only larger enterprises that have to pay for it.
Visual Studio Code is free and cross-platform, runs great on Linux (and mac), and is a pretty handy tool for working in node.js and other languages.
(disclaimer: I work in the Visual Studio team)
Have you been to university? There were entire lectures that I would pay to sit through again. You can't magic up that lightbulb moment just by searching Google for a keyword. You're paying world experts for their time.
Maybe universities are different now but it wasn't that long ago that I was there. You can't self-educate to that level without 8 hours a day of hard work and experts on hand. And that's just a degree. Masters, PhD and beyond are a world apart again.
I can't even get close to understanding my girlfriend's after she's been through years of postdoc published papers. Just Googling something and thinking you then understand everything about it is not an education.
Looking for "MS Office" (or better generally "office suite") on a resume for DBA's is o.k., since some/much of DBA's work inside an organization/business is other than "use that damn database you bought" directly, like for example indirectly "use that damn database you bought" by communicating with other (human) resources of that organization/business ABOUT "that damn database you bought" - so HR staff must make sure DBA's can perform both duties.
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
If the students actually care about what they're learning
They don't.
unless they are blithering idiots
They are.
they'll use their critical thinking
They have none
go learn what extra they may need all by themselves.
They won't.
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
and switching to some other tool whether is proprietary or open source, is not the solution. You need to learn how the tool contributes to the end goal, and not just how to use its features. For example, if you learn the tenants of good design you are to limited to a single tool. You may use that tool and be most comfortable because it is and industry standard, but you could go back to pencil and paper and still turn out great designs. Similarly in business, you need to understand how to do financial analysis and may use Excel because that's what's installed on your computer but you could still do it the old fashioned way with a pencil, paper, and 11c. Knowledge outlasts tools. As my mechanic dad said "I started out tuning cars with a quarter and a wrench, later went to timing lights and now computers; but in the end it's still air spark and fuel..."
In the end, don't confuse with learning how to do something and how to use a tool.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
...most companies use the Microsoft stack and Microsoft Office. So, yes, being well versed in them could actually help you get a job.
Often times the commercial software comes with something the closed source stuff doesn't: expedited support. If I'm running a hospital and my EMR system goes down, I don't have days/weeks for some neckbeard wizard to find time to solve my issue between his Stargate SG1 marathons and WoW raid. I also want paid engineers/developers/customer service people on the vendor side who will work to ensure that I am getting my organization's money's worth of support. And if your answer is "well you can just do it yourself", understand that very, very few companies want to get into the business of modifying software, especially to make it work with their own organization.
Often times it's also fairly easy to reach out to a vendor and have them revert a UI change or at least improve the issues with a change they made previously. Most vendors are in the business of keeping their customers happy -- especially those with deep pockets. Meanwhile if I go, let's say, Drupal's site and say "Hey, I hate how the system is designed so that it's really complicated to get news article submitted and reviewed differently than an editorial" without hearing how my suggestion is just "stupid" or that I just don't "get" how the software works or how the command line is an obviously superior interface to the UI.
I can't even get close to understanding my girlfriend
You could have stopped there; that describes the entire population of boyfriends and later husbands once girlfriend becomes wife...
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
If I have to put all unnecessary keywords in my resume just to get through the company's screening process, I would not want to work for the company. The reason is that if that company hires inefficient people and/or uses inefficient hiring process, I can't imagine how bad situation would I be to deal with their HR in the future...
That makes the difference between those who can do a job, and those who are really good at it.
The latter are rare to find.
home
I don't know. This is kind of true. Being an expert in Adobe products won't "get you the job" by itself... unless you happen to walk into a job where they're looking for an Adobe expert, in which case, it might.
But also, in all honesty, if you want a job doing design work and you only know how to use Adobe tools, that's probably totally fine. Can't use GIMP? That's fine. Nobody uses GIMP. I mean, yes, some people use it, but go around to professional design firms and ad agencies, and they all are using Adobe. Knowing Adobe isn't enough-- you need to have a work ethic and a design sense and whatever else, but it's not like you really need to know other tools.
I haven't read the entire article, but the beginning (and the summary) seems to imply that the purpose of education is to further your career, and I feel that belief is a bigger mistake than training on industry-standard tools. Ideally, if you go to college, you shouldn't just be learning how to use Adobe, but you shouldn't just be learning how to use graphic design tools (open source or otherwise). You should be learning about things, and not just how to do things. Like, you should learn about history and science and literature and art. There should be trade schools and vocational schools that teach you how to use Photoshop or GIMP, but a real college should teach you about the concepts design and aesthetics.
Business says they need Java programmers so everyone should be a Java programmer. Hope you got in early because if you're behind the curve, you might not get hired. Take a look at every trend and you see this pattern. It's not just IT. It's everywhere. Nurses, construction, whatever. That's why I wish schools would think more before pushing people in to occupations. Chances are if there's a high demand for something when you enter school, the demand won't be there when you graduate.
As for tools, if someone needs a C# programmer, they don't hire COBOL programmers. I've met plenty of programmers and non-programmers that could do the job if the company was willing to give them time. But now everyone has to hit the ground running. The problem is that in places I've worked the toolset is determined by the senior (most favored) developer and not logic or need.
A blacksmith will typically create an anvil for personal use, rather than buying one. It's a part of the process of becoming a real blacksmith. It's not unique here, many craftsmen make or customize their own tools. I see hardware engineers doing this a lot as well, jurying rigging up some device to help them out.
This used to be true with programming too, there weren't many tools so you had to write your own or modify someone else's (and you shared them with others). If a new type of computer came out you would port the tools are maybe even write some from scratch. Today the kids can't even begin to imagine this: if there's not a button on their IDE's to do what they want then they don't do it, they don't bother learning a scripting or shell languages to do what they need. I mean it's a frigging computer, the whole point of it is to be able to program it to do what you want it to do!
In the end, many people will find that dropping a few buzzwords on their resume is easier than going into business for themselves.
...the only quotable I've ever liked or ever will like:
Words learned by rote a parrot may rehearse; but talking is not always to converse, not more distinct from harmony divine, the constant creaking of a country sign.
Why would you need MS Office to communicate with others. That's what we have e-mail and phones and a number of other tools for. Using a Word document to communicate something generally gets ignored. Also, most people have evolved to be able to use more than just MSOffice, they can use LibreOffice, Google Docs etc. If your HR drones fail to recognize the technological process since 2000, their performance needs reviewing.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Why would you need MS Office to communicate with others. That's what we have e-mail and phones and a number of other tools for. Using a Word document to communicate something generally gets ignored.
"Communicating" was just an example (it may also be a need from managment to connect Excel and DB), but even that is often done with reports (a form of "communication", like the Word document you mentioned).
Also, most people have evolved to be able to use more than just MSOffice, they can use LibreOffice, Google Docs etc.
That is why i wrote '(or better generally "office suite")', but "MS Office" is the standard.
If your HR drones fail to recognize the technological process since 2000, their performance needs reviewing.
And if DBA's fail to include in their resumes (or worse: use) "MS Office" (or better generally "office suite") in our current times... their performance needs reviewing!
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
"... HR will throw away your resume if it doesn't say Microsoft Office."
I was lucky enough to have started my career in the late Sixties, when new recruits routinely were first introduced to the technical manager who had initiated the 'req'. He (yes, always a he in those days) would then make sure that HR was kept out of the loop until the hire decision had been made, whereupon HR would be invoked to process the paperwork. I would be walked over to HR on the first day to pick up my parking permit and sign an NDA.
Later, the HR departments of the tech world found a way to save themselves from extinction. They became the local arbiters of gummint regulation, thereby gaining back their lost power.
The problem is that buzzword bingo doesn't get you anywhere. A while back, I had basic networking on my resume [1], got asked to apply for a UNIX position... and lo and behold, they handed me their router configs and asked me for my CCIE cert ID. When I reminded them that I was there for a position that was DBA/OS related, the interviewer went in his office and slammed the door, and I was shown the exit door after that.
[1]: A UNIX admin is assumed to know how to do networking, just comes with the territory. Same with logging onto the SAN and cutting LUNs or troubleshooting some issue with AD schema because the tape silo isn't allowing users in the "foo" OU to log on.
As a former teacher, the following is in order:
They don't.
It's up to you to give them a sufficient reason to care. The incapable or the apathetic can find another career field, and the defiant can go spend their careers at McDonald's.
They are.
No, in general they are not: ignorance != idiocy.
They have none
So teach them how to gain the ability to think critically, and then show them how to use it. The sufficiently clueful will put it to use, and the others are no longer your problem.
They won't.
...so long as you give them the impression that they shouldn't, they won't. One of the first things I warned new students about was that the learning never ends, but the rewards can more than make up for it. I also told them point-blank that if they didn't want to buy into a lifetime of learning, they would be better served by transferring to another class immediately.
Out of the couple of thousand students, most likely never got far in CompSci. Of those that did, they're doing extremely well nowadays, if their LinkedIn profiles are any indication. It's been 10 years since I left academia, and seeing a decent number of formerly snot-nosed high-school-aged kids raking in six-figure salaries? It's pretty damned satisfying.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Whether it's the predominance of Visual Studio in many computer science programs
I must have missed that.
You have a far too positive opinion of most students. Sure, the smart ones will do as you say, but they are a minority at only around 10-15% or so. The rest does what is needed to pass and not a bit more.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Or Microsoft SQL Server, whose T-SQL query language appears to have a fairly active question and answer community on Stack Overflow.
The premise is correct, but why would that need to be on your $deitydamned resume? Anyone with a pulse can do the basics of any office suite (or work it out in half a day).
Do you also mention that you're toilet trained and can tie your shoelaces?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
At the uni I learned about my own psychology (Psychology courses), learned how to write documents, learned about how people operate in groups (Sociology), basic electronics and electrical systems (Physics), basic Chemistry, Statistics, and foreign languages. All of which have helped me over the years and all of which self-taught or a trades course would not have given me.
If you do not learn at least the first 3 in your course work outside of your STEM education you were ripped off. You only got half an education. And an education which gives you little flexibility in life.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
That post brought tears to my eyes, brining up fond memories of the old /. I know and love. Now, where's tub girl?
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I don't think most companies choose the tools on the basis whether the source code is available. If open source tools are used, the motivation is usually that they are free, or that they simply do the job well.
I think the world is simply too complex to properly learn everything ground-up. Even mathematics is largely teached with applied concepts. Here's this cool formula, someone invented it centuries ago, but we won't spend time deriving it down to bits and pieces. You can just add water and heat it in microwave.
I was thinking more or less this. The reality is that some people are just one trick drones. Many of the office dweller jobs have become ridiculously narrow and monotonous in scope, just to prevent anyone from being able to fail short of blatant negligence or malice. It's beyond the point of specialization to the point that college degree requirements need to be scrapped and replaced with a "you have no experience, so for the first 90 days you work at reduced salary and subject to abrupt termination for poor performance" pseudo apprenticeship system.
Isn't that criticism of bad ideas?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
If you have spent 2/3 of your job doing those two things and still have not figured out the nuances then I suggest that you may actually be the problem. But no, of course, it is the tools you use.
I kid... Or do I?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
In the post couple of companies I've worked at, HR will throw away your resume if it doesn't say Microsoft Office.
Yeah, it is weird how HR types have such a hard on for Office skills. I applied to a job a few weeks back for a security analyst position, they emailed back to set up a phone interview.
Get to the phone call and the person on the other end is asking about my familiarity with everything in Office. Every part of office, by name and asking if I am an expert in it.
Them:"What is your skill level with MS Word?"
Me:"I am familiar with it"
Them: "Would you say you are an expert with it?"
Me:"Yeah sure"
Mean while I am wondering if I am interviewing for a secretary position or something. But nope, that was the initial interview for a security analyst position: how much do I love Office. Seriously, if someone has a career in IT can we just assume they might have run into an office suite or two in their time and move on?
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the (supposed) good of its victims may be the most oppressive
"You cannot use that technique, we have no learned that in class yet!" THIS is the reason why there is a lack of critical thinking, not the tool chains themselves. Far too often students are punished for self-learning and creativity. While no, this isn't a problem in all classrooms, it is far too common to NOT be an issue.
Unfortunately not weird, it's what they have themselves so they see it as important. Twenty years programming C but no skills with MS Office - not much of an IT person they will say.
It used to be worse when they demanded WordPerfect as well as MS Word experience for anything related to computers, one place even asked for a list of at least three word processing programs (I added ChiWriter to the list).
With respect, the commercial software does involve even MORE waiting for some neckbeard wizard to find time to solve my issue between his Stargate SG1 marathons and WoW raid because you have a choice of one or two in the entire fucking world allowed to work on the issue after it has spent a month going through a trouble ticket system. I had to wait six months for a single line of code to be changed in an application after I had reverse engineered what it had to be changed back to. For that six months an expensive laser printer plotter sat idle.
Also, most people have evolved to be able to use more than just MSOffice, they can use LibreOffice, Google Docs etc.
Yeah screw application compatibility. Who needs all those 3rd party vendor plugins that seamlessly connect to Excel when you can wave the FOSS flag that doesn't work with anything...
The reason is that if that company hires inefficient people and/or uses inefficient hiring process, I can't imagine how bad situation would I be to deal with their HR in the future...
You don't get out much do you? All companies have crap hiring processes, and in the dozens of jobs (multiple dozens) I've had, the HR dept had precisely zero bearing on the rest of the company. But if you want to get all precious about it, all the better for people like me who get those jobs.
"That makes the difference between those who can do a job, and those who are really good at it."
But still, as you say, you need to encourage it.
"The latter are rare to find."
Not only because good professionals at any trade are difficult to find (after all, no matter the average, the top performers are always a tiny minority), but because that's not what people look for.
It's difficult to defend oneself as being a 'jack of all trades, master of no one', when the one making the hirings specifically looks for something "with two years experience on, say, VMWare 5.0" instead of "virtualization servers and IaaS". No wonder the prospective employees specialize in being good at what the employers are looking for: tools instead of principles.
Why would you need MS Office to communicate with others. That's what we have e-mail and phones and a number of other tools for.
You open up excel, enter fields, take a screenshot, include that screenshot in a word docx, then attach that docx to an outllook email, asking the recipient to edit the excel cells. That's why many in the business world need MS Office.
If your DBA can't pick up new "MSO skills" on an as needed basis, they aren't competent to be your DBA.
This is not a front desk receptionist position we're talking about here.
The HR staff isn't competent to determine what the technical candidate is capable of. That's rather the whole point of this sub-thread.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I've never encountered a 3rd party plugin for Excel at any company I've ever worked for.
Most people simply don't use it that hard.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Nope.
Beaurocracies scale poorly. ALL of them do. This includes corporations. The larger the corporation, the more BS you're going to have to deal with. The larger the corporation, the more likely you will have to put up with "HR professionals". Them filtering out good candidates for no good reason is just the tip of the iceberg really.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Some of us get out plenty.
You're just repeating a variation of the Microsoft fallacy. No. Not everything is total crap. You can escape the crapulence by finding a better option and staying away from the obvious crap.
Not all companies are the same.
You seem jealous and butthurt that some of us have managed to avoid whatever torment you've brought upon yourself.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
This has gone on since the industrial revolution, think buggy whips and slide rules. When I attended business school it was Wordperfect, Lotus123, and dBase. They didn't survive the Microsoft onslaught very long. I had to adapt or falter. I guess its progress?
I equate computer expertise to a mastery of tools. We all have a word processor. How many of us have actually written a book?
I'm finally getting to sit in on interviews and post interview discussions with my superiors focus on communication and thought process and nearly nothing about what tech they've used.
troubleshooting the basic database connectivity and usage profiles
Again, get decent programmers.
80% of a DBA's job should be administrating the DB servers. The other 20% should only be working with other people who know what they're doing, but need to coordinate with the DBAs. DBAs helping clients and "the rest of the organization" is like your building architect helping people paint the walls. Unless you're talking about a small company where each person has multiple roles.
Excel is pretty good at doing a quick sanity check on a CSV before handing it to an importer. These tools would not have survived as long as they have or be considered as indispensable as they are without being at least marginally useful.
Only if you only use the comma to separate your fields. I use an export from a database that has commas in the fields so I use the pipe (|) as my delimiter. Excel will not properly open that csv file and will only split the fields on the commas. Open/Libre Office let me select the delimiter - best feature ever.
You forgot to include the yearly $400 for Adobe so that they can create PDF's of said screenshots and Word documents so people with other versions or missing fonts can also see the Outlook e-mail.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I've never encountered a 3rd party plugin for Excel at any company I've ever worked for.
Most people simply don't use it that hard.
Probably says more about the places you've worked. If you've ever had any experience in Financial Services, ie the industry that runs the world, then Excel is king.
You seem jealous and butthurt that some of us have managed to avoid whatever torment you've brought upon yourself.
I have a great job that pays well with a great work life balance. You're one crying into your milk because HR don't like your skills. As you said "I can't imagine what it's like...". Instead of using your flawed imagination, take it from someone is is not using imagination but real world experience, even great companies and great jobs have crap HR processes. It'd be foolishly to think that is how the entire company operates based on your experience with one person/team.
I never said they don't have to know how to use office. I said you shouldn't be looking for it on the resume.
Seriously? HR sees 15 years Microsoft SQL server exp and goes "Well, he doesn't say he knows how to use excel...."
I wish that was true. I'm a sysadmin / network admin. The number of system admins (Unix or Windows) I encounter with little to no network understanding is truly staggering.
Cheap storage VM.
Also, the women we hire, while good, are a waste of training time since due to AA they typically change jobs for a large promotion about the time that they start being productive.
Also, the people we hire, while good, are a waste of training time since due to ambition they typically change jobs for a large promotion about the time that they start being productive.
FTFY
Good people are hard to find for low level jobs, they always move up.
Cheap storage VM.
Excel is pretty good at doing a quick sanity check on a CSV before handing it to an importer. These tools would not have survived as long as they have or be considered as indispensable as they are without being at least marginally useful.
Only if you only use the comma to separate your fields. I use an export from a database that has commas in the fields so I use the pipe (|) as my delimiter. Excel will not properly open that csv file and will only split the fields on the commas. Open/Libre Office let me select the delimiter - best feature ever.
Untrue. Excel will open a text file using any symbol of your choice as a delimiter. Maybe old versions didn't use to be able to or something.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Yeah, it is weird how HR types have such a hard on for Office skills.
It's just a way of weeding out people who are either so stupid that they couldn't cope with their school Powerpoint lessons, or so arrogant that they think they are above mundane tasks like formatting reports in an acceptable manner..
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Excel is pretty good at doing a quick sanity check on a CSV before handing it to an importer. These tools would not have survived as long as they have or be considered as indispensable as they are without being at least marginally useful.
Only if you only use the comma to separate your fields. I use an export from a database that has commas in the fields so I use the pipe (|) as my delimiter. Excel will not properly open that csv file and will only split the fields on the commas. Open/Libre Office let me select the delimiter - best feature ever.
Untrue. Excel will open a text file using any symbol of your choice as a delimiter. Maybe old versions didn't use to be able to or something.
2010 doesn't and doesn't give you the options that I can tell. And I don't control the version.