The Old Dog Still Knows a Few Tricks

In my 50's and contracting into the finance department of a very large IT company as my employer fell over this year. Was concerned that my IT skills might be a bit ancient compared with the kiddies I am working with (average age early 30's and lots of high powered finance degrees). Have spent 2 months teaching them how to use Excel to its fullest, have taken over their presentations as I am years ahead in Powerpoint but most astonishingly, to keep costs down, none of them have MS Access on their PCs. Many of the tasks they need to do for monthly and ad hoc reports would be a doddle using Access to sort and manipulate the data but none of them know how to use it, nor are they allowed to use it. Amazing. And as for MS Word, they are capable of no more than basic letters and reports. Me, on the other hand, I have had years of practice and have often had to teach my PAs how to use Word to do things like mail merge and such like. As for MS Project, again they are expected to develop and monitor projects but do not have this programme on their PCs.

I am feeling rather smug that the self-taught 'oldie' is more than able to hold his own. Am also surprised that all the useful software is not made available to the finance people when I expected an IT company to be gung-ho on all things IT.