CFO says "Everyone uses Excel, definitely not Sheets. Get over it". True? | Hacker News Reader

CFO says "Everyone uses Excel, definitely not Sheets. Get over it". True?

3 points0xWTF6 comments

Using Microsoft or Google products for an office suite is generally a company decision. Where I work, we use Excel, and the rest of the MS Office suite. Any time we have interns I have to drill this into their head, as they continuously try and use Google Docs. This is a problem, because it can mean sensitive information goes to an untrusted server not bound by company security policies. It would also mean employees using their personal Google accounts would retain company information after leaving the company. These things are bad.

If the CFO is saying to use Excel, you use Excel. This isn't the hill to die on, and fighting it makes a horrible first impression if you're new.

We use sheets at Odoo, but also our internal version of the Spreadsheer app. It boils down to preference. Zealots will preach their side.

Where I work, it's not a matter of preference, it's a matter of security policies. If we had the enterprise version of Google Docs, with the policies applied there, and managed corporate accounts, that would be a different story. In that case, the policy would push us to Sheets instead of Excel. Same story, but a different destination.

The OP didn't really frame how this question came up. But using what all your co-workers use and staying in the same ecosystem has a lot of value, even without sensitive data involved. If the whole company uses Excel, no one wants to deal with the one person using Sheets, and vice versa.

> The OP didn't really frame how this question came up.

Hey, OP here. Valid. It's a pre-seed, pre-revenue start-up going through the motions to get the company on the right footing ahead of seeking funding. We have a company Workspace domain, but one of our advisors is a grizzled old CFO and did not enjoy seeing one his formulas borked by a difference in how Excel and Sheets handles xlookup().

I work with multiple financial firms. No one uses sheets. Everyone lives in Microsoft.

For serious work, it’s Excel. It doesn’t translate well to a web app.

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