[jader201]

I see these complaints on HN a lot, and maybe it’s anecdotal, but I just don’t see this in the real world these days.

If someone shares a sheet with me, it’s for the intended purpose of sharing data and/or visualizations of that data.

I’ve always been a huge fan of spreadsheets, and the rare times I’ve encountered them being misused, it was a long time ago, and not near enough to make me an “anti-spreadsheet” person.

It sounds like these anti-spreadsheet people need to find a new place to work and/or new coworkers.

Either way people shouldn’t be anti-spreadsheets because some people misuse them. That doesn’t change the fact that they’re a great tool for tracking/sharing/visualizing data.

[abruzzi]

> I see these complaints on HN a lot, and maybe it’s anecdotal, but I just don’t see this in the real world these days.

It happens all the time where I work. I don't want to be specific, but we have lots of examples here. In some cases people don't like the core software, so they work around it by tracking things on a spreadsheet. And sometimes that spreadsheet disappears (in one case, it was being kept on an XLSX on a USB thumb drive, but the thumb drive got corrupted and we lost some very important data.)

[jacobr1]

The availability angle changes things quite a bit. Having a single source of truth online sheet is much different than a file that is passed around.

[mebizzle]

This is anecdotal bias even now. The number of these monster spreadsheets running organizations that should be more sophisticated than they are would most likely keep anyone here up at night.

[zdragnar]

I was part of a team helping a Fortune 500 company whose inventory system was basically a master spreadsheet that maybe 8 people in the company actually had write access to. Everyone reported numbers up to them and the spreadsheet had read only views for purchase order projections.

To say that it was a nightmare was an understatement. They were willing to dump vast sums of money to get something better, but they'd homebrewed so many human processes to deal with the spreadsheet that they struggled to adapt to a more conventional way of doing things.

[zer00eyz]

Found the GAP employee.

And if you aren't this story could have come from one.

[zdragnar]

Not GAP, not even clothing, but still retail.

[jofer]

This depends a lot on what you do. Try working with a decision analyst sometime. The entire economic model with a decision tree and monte carlo analysis of cost overruns, etc for a multi-trillion dollar decision will literally be a arcanely-complex spreadsheet or two on someone's laptop.

With that said, it's still a great tool for the job because the different stakeholders can inspect it.

[citizenpaul]

>I just don’t see this in the real world these days

Lol. Go to literally any bank. They all have a legion of accountant,analyists that's sole job is to maintain their little fiefdom of spreadsheets that only they understand.

If most people knew just how held together by string,tape and gum the banking industry is there would be a run on the banks.

There is also always some 75+yo part time guy that maintains some sort of critical system. He always says, "I want to retire but they keep throwing more money at me"

[Wojtkie]

My big gripe with spreadsheets is just that there's a lot of bloat on top of the spreadsheet which makes large datasets difficult to work with.

Otherwise, I find them to be great deliverables.

[gregates]

How large are you talking about? Have you tried https://rowzero.io?

[jamesnorden]

>but I just don’t see this in the real world these days

May be due to the fact you're a single datapoint and not omnipresent at every company. What a weird argument.