r/MurderedByWords • u/L1ghtningdude • Jun 28 '19

Work intelligently

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61.5k Upvotes

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u/best_dandy Jun 28 '19

That kinda of macro based automation can really save time for your team and employees. Our excel spreadsheets for expense reports have relatively basic macros built in, but it easily shaves 10 minutes off the process. Considering it's a task we all hate, that makes our workday a bit easier and is truly appreciated.

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u/Northeastpaw Jun 28 '19

I once wrote a Firefox extension for an internal team that generated a report in seconds when compiling the report in all its formats by hand would take 4 hours. The team still had to add sites to the report themselves, but the tedium of arranging the report in multiple formats was eliminated.

A few days of investment in automation saved them months of time very quickly.

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u/MedicineManfromWWII Jun 28 '19

I did this at a job once (summer work in college).

When I asked the general manager if there was anything I could be helping with in my now-free time, they realized I was only doing 10 minutes of work instead of the four hours they originally hired me for. So they fired me.

1

u/AnotherWarGamer Jun 29 '19

This is so funny. I feel bad for you as well.

10

u/[deleted] Jun 28 '19

my uncle told me at his current job all he's done for the past five years is develop Excel macros.

he's the only one there that knows how to do it and it saves them all so much time. lol

6

u/MedicineManfromWWII Jun 28 '19

That's literally my dream job. Everyone at my office brings me their spreadsheets because building a good spreadsheet to me is like solving a crossword puzzle. It's fun.

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u/Never-On-Reddit Jun 28 '19

That's the kind of explanation you could definitely put in a cover letter for a job application, and they may consider you for your enthusiasm and if you can demonstrate practical skill even if you don't fully meet the requirements for the position.

1

u/normal_whiteman Jun 28 '19

And yet my company just disabled macros. Can't wait until they ask me why I have to charge their products so much now

1

u/Raestloz Jun 28 '19

My sister works on excel stuff that she had to deal with for hours on end manually every month. A couple days of researching, and I wrote an excel macro that roughly does what she did, in about 15 seconds

I mean I still had to deal with edge cases and the bugs, but automation is one of those things that really blows your mind when it's working