I never get enough
There's not a lot that I'm doing at work at the moment that I can say is really fascinating, or challenging, but there is one thing I've really enjoyed: creating a margin analysis calculator.
For example, say a government department says "Wolfram & Hart! We have X project, tell us how you'll do the work, who'll do it and how much it will cost us!" The practitioners can enter into the calculator (an Excel spreadsheet) the practitioners they want, the hours each will do, and any discount they want to offer. The sheet will look at those practitioners' cost rates, how much we're charging them out for, and tell them how much of a profit margin they can expect to make on the project.
Anyway. Surprisingly, Wolfram still doesn't have a systematic way for practitioners (and BD) to determine whether or not it's worth doing a particular project. So, Canberra BD decided to make one. And I took ownership of it, since I've basically had a lot of time to play with Excel documents when I was in Adelaide (and gained an appreciation I never had before), and because it's actually the sort of thing I want to learn.
Unfortunately I can't show you what I have so far, because it (obviously) contains a lot of sensitive financial information. I'm pretty proud of it, even though we've got a while to go before it's deemed 'presentable'. I've taught myself how to pre-fill boxes based on other inputs by indexing, how to create drop-down lists, and I've become more confident with VLookup (and HLookup) functions. I love Excel*, and I really want a job where I get to create these sorts of management tools on a regular basis.
In any case, we presented a draft of it to one of the partners here, who seemed quite enamoured of it. We've now sent it off to one of the financial analysts to double-check the calculations (I am a bit nervous about what she'll say, but I can only learn more from her). It'll be rolled out to the partners more generally once we have it in working order, and I feel like it'll be something that can be useful going forwards.
This afternoon a lawyer came to me with some Excel spreadsheets he's working on for a financial services client, and asked if I could help (perhaps the partner we showed the document to has been mentioning it already). I've gone through them now and am fairly confident I've settled the problems, but the reason I started on them tonight was I doubted my own ability to get it done in time for him (as he wants to send it out tomorrow). I am better at this than I think I am.
I think I've found the career I really truly want but I'm not getting to do it (much) at the moment and it is frustrating.
* Never thought I'd say that!
For example, say a government department says "Wolfram & Hart! We have X project, tell us how you'll do the work, who'll do it and how much it will cost us!" The practitioners can enter into the calculator (an Excel spreadsheet) the practitioners they want, the hours each will do, and any discount they want to offer. The sheet will look at those practitioners' cost rates, how much we're charging them out for, and tell them how much of a profit margin they can expect to make on the project.
Anyway. Surprisingly, Wolfram still doesn't have a systematic way for practitioners (and BD) to determine whether or not it's worth doing a particular project. So, Canberra BD decided to make one. And I took ownership of it, since I've basically had a lot of time to play with Excel documents when I was in Adelaide (and gained an appreciation I never had before), and because it's actually the sort of thing I want to learn.
Unfortunately I can't show you what I have so far, because it (obviously) contains a lot of sensitive financial information. I'm pretty proud of it, even though we've got a while to go before it's deemed 'presentable'. I've taught myself how to pre-fill boxes based on other inputs by indexing, how to create drop-down lists, and I've become more confident with VLookup (and HLookup) functions. I love Excel*, and I really want a job where I get to create these sorts of management tools on a regular basis.
In any case, we presented a draft of it to one of the partners here, who seemed quite enamoured of it. We've now sent it off to one of the financial analysts to double-check the calculations (I am a bit nervous about what she'll say, but I can only learn more from her). It'll be rolled out to the partners more generally once we have it in working order, and I feel like it'll be something that can be useful going forwards.
This afternoon a lawyer came to me with some Excel spreadsheets he's working on for a financial services client, and asked if I could help (perhaps the partner we showed the document to has been mentioning it already). I've gone through them now and am fairly confident I've settled the problems, but the reason I started on them tonight was I doubted my own ability to get it done in time for him (as he wants to send it out tomorrow). I am better at this than I think I am.
I think I've found the career I really truly want but I'm not getting to do it (much) at the moment and it is frustrating.
* Never thought I'd say that!