I'm a Spreadsheet Miner

One of the many questions APR gets asked is what is APR’s profession. Astronaut? Movie Star? English Professor?

No, no, and are you kidding me?

APR is called many things at work, such as corporate whore, professional kiss ass, “yes man”, and middle management troll.

But none of that describes what APR does for a living.

After looking through APR’s work computer, APR found out that the most used application (next to Free Cell) was Excel. APR was surprised it wasn’t a web browsers too…

After looking at the fact that Excel was the most used application on APR’s work computer, APR is introducing a new term for the masses. Yes APR has created a whole new title for APR’s job function along with titles for those who interact with APR.

APR will like to introduce to you the professional title of “Spreadsheet Miner”

APR is a “Spreadsheet Miner” not to be confused with “Spreadsheet Manufacturer” which was APR previous job.

What is a Spreadsheet Miner?

A spreadsheet miner is someone who extracts precious data from huge database of information that can be used by spreadsheet manufacturers to build corporate spreadsheets that will be used by high level executives to trade for monetary funds and justify their big salaries.

Being a spreadsheet miner you have to sift through mountains of business data (such as: production cost, sales revenue, and accounting entries to name a few) and organize it in an easy to understand format so that others can take that info and process it into a finished spreadsheet with easy to understand pie charts.

Why is this job function so valuable? Because these spreadsheets are the raw material that feeds the corporate business world, especially the investment bankers. You can say that these finished spreadsheets are traded for money. Actually there are several steps in-between (involving accounting trolls, admin wrenches, and IT hobbits) but the goal is to show that your company isn’t a crappy investment so that you will get money.

Political spin doctors have nothing compared to corporate spin doctors. Or as APR calls them the Corporate Wizards because they use their magic speak and turn numbers into mystical tools for corporate investments. These Wizards can compared and contrasted so much that it’s hard to tell what is being said and what was the original data. Of course a good spreadsheet miner has to find the right info because the soulless auditors “Spreadsheet Wraiths” will come in and pick the bones dry of any unlucky miner who tries to pass off bad data as good data.

So join APR in the Spreadsheet Miner work song….

We dig dig dig dig dig dig dig in our database the whole day through
To dig dig dig dig dig dig dig is what we really like to do
It ain't no trick to get rich quick
If you dig dig dig with a spreadsheet and click
In a mine! In a mine! In a mine! In a mine!
Where a million data points shine!

We dig dig dig dig dig dig dig from early morn till night
We dig dig dig dig dig dig dig up everything in sight
We dig up data for spreadsheets by the score
A thousand rolls and columns, sometimes more
But we don't know what we dig 'em for
We dig dig dig a-dig dig

Height Hoooooo! Height Hoooooo! Height Ho Height Ho it’s time to launch Excel and go.