I designed and implemented a very critical algorithm at work, advancing the state of the art for cluster schedulers.

I had to ask my coworker for help putting together a simple before/after bar chart for its perf gains in excel.

He couldn't believe it.

The world works in Excel. It's not usually the best tool for any one particular job, but it does do most jobs, and it is everywhere.

I wouldn't generalize this outside of the consulting world. But many junior consultants who say they aren't good at excel just haven't done any sort of quantitative analysis and they wouldn't know where to start.

I’d say claiming you are good at excel is a bigger red flag. Excel is a sprawling development environment with sprawling use cases.

It’s like saying “I’m good at computer keyboards”.

Claiming you're good at excel is a red flag since it's a fundamental tool for the profession.

Claiming you're not good at excel is a red flag since it's a fundamental tool for the profession.

No one is good with Excel. Only Socrates is, and he knows he isn't good with Excel.

This comment establishes its green flag of credibility by not referring to the unmentionable software by name.

The Scottish spreadsheet!

Kind of like resumes that list "GitHub" as a skill.