Want a Job At Google? Better Know Microsoft Office!

theodp writes "After recent Slashdot discussions on Google's quest to unseat Microsoft Office in business and whether Google Docs and MS-Word are an even matchup, let's complete the trilogy by bringing up the inconvenient truth that numerous Google job postings state that candidates with Microsoft Office expertise are 'preferred' to those lacking these skills. 'For example,' notes GeekWire, 'when hiring an executive compensation analyst to support Google's board, the company will give preference to candidates who are 'proficient with Microsoft Excel."' Parents and kids at schools that have gone or are going Google are reassured that, 'it is more important to teach technology skills than specific programs' and that 'Google itself uses Google Apps to run its multi-billion dollar company.' Which, for the most part, is true. Just don't count on getting certain Google jobs with that attitude, kids!"

can we mod summary as

[Anonymous Coward]

trol?

Re:can we mod summary as

[j-pimp]

Troll summaries are the norm here. slashdot is the fox news of tech journalism. There should be an article moderation flag for "not a troll".

You're talking to a Human Resources weasel

[davecb]

As opposed to a employee relations person, you understand.

The weasels want people with 5 years experience with Java in 1995, and then wonder why no-one but James Gosling applies.

Send the posting to Larry Page's office with a subject line like "Public relations blunder".

--dave

Monopoly power.

[Anonymous Coward]

To me the story isn't so much about how "Those bastards at Google aren't even pushing their own product!" it's a story about how even Google can't really expect people to have skills in any other office product other than MS Office. Face it, outside of a select people in IT, and a few people who don't want to pay for office, it's a MS Office world. The story is really about how nobody can escape the power of the Microsoft monopoly on Office products.

Imagine if we lived in a world where for a job that involves driving, and GM had to put in the job requirements "Excellent experience driving Ford Vehicles".

Re:In the workplace...

[CastrTroy]

Which is fine, until a client sends you a document from MS Office and wants you to send back your changes with change tracking turned on, so that they can see what has changed in the document. If you only use it for internal documents, Google Docs can be fine. However, once you want to communicate with the outside world, you had better have MS office, or things will break down quite quickly.

Re:this is stupid

[hawguy]

Ever heard of LibreOffice? If you claim you're unable to write "powerful macros" in any of these languages [libreoffice.org], then it is you who is the "idiot".

I don't think the problem is so much writing new Macros, but in rewriting all of the tried-and-true macros and formulas that the Finance exec has been using for the past decade. Sure, it could be ported and rewritten, but why have a $100/hour finance professional spend time learning a new macro language and rewriting and validating his old functions/macros for a new spreadsheet platform? It only takes a few hours of wasted work to pay for MS Office.

Re:can we mod summary as

[ArchieBunker]

Yeah god forbid they ask you to know an application that 100% of the world can accept. If you do business with anyone, they likely use MS office.

Re:this is stupid

[hawguy]

Sure, it could be ported and rewritten, but why have a $100/hour finance professional spend time learning a new macro language and rewriting and validating his old functions/macros for a new spreadsheet platform?

That's why you hire on some bright kid off the street for $10/hour part time to port it to the new macro language.

In a few hours, you have your ported macros, and you only need the newer shinier spreadsheet program.

And the $100/hour finance guy still has to validate the work and ensure that it's working as expected - he's not going to present numbers to the board of directors based on what some $10/hour kid did. And it's going to take more than "A few hours" - you'd be surprised at some of the corporate finance spreadsheets out there - some are pages upon pages of linked numbers with obscure calculations that have been refined over time. And when he wants to tweak it, he either needs to hire a new $10/hour kid to do the work, or sit down and learn the new system.

Your argument sounds kind of like the CIO that says "Hey, I've been reading a lot about dotNet and I think we ought to port our code over from Java to dotNet - we just need to hire a few $10/hour coders to do it, right? Then we'll be running on this shiny new platform, despite the fact that it was running fine before." The actual coding itself is a small part of the overall project - architecture, design and validation are all much harder.