Now I’d agree that civilizationally we’ve kind of lost the plot on layers on layers of spreadsheets and nobody left to do the actual thing but having said that, the entire human civilization does actually run on spreadsheets. If you don’t have 8000 guys whose pig job is staring at a computer kind of mopey it all falls apart
Humanity on the whole is a cybernetic organism whose neurons are xlsx files being emailed back and forth until QUARTERLY_REPORT(1)(1)_FINAL_V2_Q1.xlsx finally lands in the right spot to move us forward.
The thing is that human society has reached a level of complexity that it pretty much requires the existence of multiple spreadsheets and really complicated logistics to just barely keep things working. And it has been largely a good thing, we have a much better capacity to produce and move things around to where people need them. Those logistics make so many people’s lives possible.
The problem is not that there are spreadsheets to help manage the complexity of the world, but that the spreadsheet has been reified to stand in for the world, and sometimes it’s treated as more real than anything that cannot be quantified and tabulated. That, and that 99% of the spreadsheets are looking at the wrong variables and maximizing the wrong goals (profit)
human history was 50K years of running round hunting and gathering until agriculture allowed for cuneiform to be invented, and then immediately the quarterly report happened. the next 5K years was just refining the formula.
the ultimate craft awaiting its ultimate practitioner
I thought i knew the misery of spreadsheets at my old job. Not once did anybody tell me that the program can only do a certain amount of rows and thats why we only do this report a month at a time and copy paste them together.
In my new job I’ve seen spreadsheets with 25k plus rows and with columns going into C. As in A-Z is used up so then it uses AA to AZ, went through the B and is into C . These are some crazy big and complicated spreadsheets.
But they let me work from home 2 days a week and 2 days in an office much closer then my last job was so ill take that, the other day is in the city in a corporate office on the 25th floor of a building which kinda sucks as I’m kinda scared of heights and hate the feeling going up the lift, so I find the most crazy brutal music to get me over that om the lift ride up. I wear hearing aids so it comes in direct via Bluetooth so I’m not bothering others with it
![New "bullshit jobs" test [cw: meat]](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/a97fca8d-1775-4916-a329-4282e63df034.jpeg){kind=link}
Now I’d agree that civilizationally we’ve kind of lost the plot on layers on layers of spreadsheets and nobody left to do the actual thing but having said that, the entire human civilization does actually run on spreadsheets. If you don’t have 8000 guys whose pig job is staring at a computer kind of mopey it all falls apart
Humanity on the whole is a cybernetic organism whose neurons are xlsx files being emailed back and forth until
QUARTERLY_REPORT(1)(1)_FINAL_V2_Q1.xlsxfinally lands in the right spot to move us forward.I feel like one should not say this but it is correct
The thing is that human society has reached a level of complexity that it pretty much requires the existence of multiple spreadsheets and really complicated logistics to just barely keep things working. And it has been largely a good thing, we have a much better capacity to produce and move things around to where people need them. Those logistics make so many people’s lives possible.
The problem is not that there are spreadsheets to help manage the complexity of the world, but that the spreadsheet has been reified to stand in for the world, and sometimes it’s treated as more real than anything that cannot be quantified and tabulated. That, and that 99% of the spreadsheets are looking at the wrong variables and maximizing the wrong goals (profit)
the death of civlization will be in a surprisingly large part the refusal to look at data holistically instead of KPIs only
human history was 50K years of running round hunting and gathering until agriculture allowed for cuneiform to be invented, and then immediately the quarterly report happened. the next 5K years was just refining the formula.
the ultimate craft awaiting its ultimate practitioner
The final stage of civilization is a perfectly configured PostreSQL server.
Agreed.
I’m constantly ranting about tables to friends and coworkers. In my head canon, that’s the joke behind the ITYSL “Driver’s Ed” sketch.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I thought i knew the misery of spreadsheets at my old job. Not once did anybody tell me that the program can only do a certain amount of rows and thats why we only do this report a month at a time and copy paste them together.
In my new job I’ve seen spreadsheets with 25k plus rows and with columns going into C. As in A-Z is used up so then it uses AA to AZ, went through the B and is into C . These are some crazy big and complicated spreadsheets.
But they let me work from home 2 days a week and 2 days in an office much closer then my last job was so ill take that, the other day is in the city in a corporate office on the 25th floor of a building which kinda sucks as I’m kinda scared of heights and hate the feeling going up the lift, so I find the most crazy brutal music to get me over that om the lift ride up. I wear hearing aids so it comes in direct via Bluetooth so I’m not bothering others with it