Was it good enough? I would argue that if it enabled your firm to make $12M before being the proximate cause of losing $10M, and the alternative was "we don't win $12M nor lose $10M because we can't afford the project" then I agree it was good enough.
Pretty common for finance in the 00s and 10s to be honest. It's slowly getting better, but until you fire everyone who isn't on board with this and replace them with people who can at least script - at every level of the business - you're going to have the same problem.
That would be good. But to be honest, Excel is scripting - in a 2D FRP REPL (something structurally more advanced than most programmers are using day to day). If we're changing hiring requirements to test for bash/Python/Powershell competency, why not actually test for Excel competency?
Maybe that's the problem? Excel is so easy to start with that people with no experience think they've mastered it, and the industry doesn't seem to have specified any best practices, much less testing the interviewees for their knowledge of them.
