I have a job offer on the table for a senior RE consultant position that pays fairly well ($150,000) in the Mid-Atlantic considering it would allow me to work from home after a 12-month intro period (not super high comp, but lifestyle of working remotely is hard to beat). Although, I'm only halfheartedly considering the offer because I have a better one likely on the way, I was interested in thoughts on the following: to guarantee job security (in the long run), the company said I would need to learn VBA for Excel because they are transitioning to it from simply Excel. They said they were blown away by how useful VBA is and are looking for expertise in it (although their immediate hiring need is for Excel modeling expertise).
I basically know zero programming. Would that be difficult for me to learn (going from 0 to 1), especially at a level useful for professional consulting? And is it going to be a useful skill in 5 years or a waste of my efforts (considered it's going to get replaced by other more useful languages)?
Edit: I'm mentioning comp and remote working to establish the relative value to the company/to me of Excel and eventually VBA skills
I have no idea how to program VBA but can record macros. Anyways, there was a colleague I used to work with who knew how to program with VBA. Literally reduced the time it took to complete his work by 80% and earned him 2 promotions and two comp bumps within his first year there.
Depending on what sort of role this is, it can be incredibly useful. Especially for repetitive tasks. If you're doing some role with unique tasks (e.g. underwriting complex development deals), its more or less worthless.
I don't know your age or history - but $150k working from home is a dream job in my book, at least at my age.
especially in the mid-atlantic. You could probably live a great lifestyle on that pay compared to the NE or west coast
True, but if I remember correctly @real_Skankhunt42" is in the NOVA/DC area, which is far from inexpensive. DC is one of the more expensive metros in the country. NOVA is slightly less and an area that's conducive to raising a family (good schools, more affordable homes, etc).
@real_Skankhunt42" - I don't know your background but is this a job that will help you grow your skillset or opportunities in your career?
Well, I think most of us dream of being a millionaire or mega millionaire. I guess the reality is, if that's your dream then not even $400k is particularly great comp. Just met a guy a few years older than me worth $50 million, so that was super emasculating.
Shit, go work with that guy.
What's the allure of working from home I see so many people have?
If VBA is anything like c# (which it looks like it is), then it's not that hard to learn.
Commuting sucks in this area, and people who live farther out can get mansions (literal estates) on $100k per year. But yeah, I've worked from home before and I got super fat.
Before I got into university I did community college online, but moved and lived in the town of the university I was transferring to. Mainly because it was it was fall and I was transferring in the spring, and how leases work around here it would have been easier to move then; plus I was living with friends. Anyway, while I was sitting around all day doing my online classes, my roommates were going to the university campus for all of their classes and would come back and talk about how nice the weather is, interactions, girls, etc. I felt like I was missing out a lot, and I feel like this is how working at home would feel like after a while.
People like the flexibility. If I was an employer, I would be absolutely certain that if a work-from-home-employee wasn't compensated with equity or some sort of revenue-based compensation, he or she would be significantly less effective than if they were in the office. I only say it because this is the case for every single person I know that works from home.
Oh yeah if I was a salaried employee that worked from home, it would be game over. Would definitely be procrastinating in some form.
VBA is very easy to learn...possibly the easiest programming language to learn...because it is so integrated with Excel.
Recording a macro will produce some VBA code. However, to be a VBA programmer, you will need to learn how to modify that code and write your own. Macro generated code is usually "bad code" (not flexible)....but it will show you how to access certain features of the Excel object model (no other programming language has this feature). This makes learning VBA very easy.
Learn it.
Say you'll dedicate 50 hours to learning VBA.
The 50 hours you spend learning it, will be worth more in terms of value and will save you that long over your career.
Also it'll help you get more familiar with programming logic, so that way if you try to dive into JavaScript or Python one day you'll at least have some programming logic under the belt.
Yeah I echo what UTD guy said above me - The real value is being able to parlay that into learning coding language later if you want. I know enough in VBA to be dangerous, and basically taught it to myself just enough to record macros and then be able to manipulate the code to get done what i need to get done. I'm at the point where I'm really starting to learn the difference between seeing what 'clean' coding looks like vs. 'sloppy'. In a lot of cases, it takes a while to be able to write a concise macro without a lot of unneeded code.
But yes, it saves a ton of time if you are able to cut down on the burn on repetitive tasks in UW or data modeling. In consulting that's obviously huge since it allows you to take on more clients/engagements.
Learning specially VBA won’t be the hard part, but rather learning the logic and flow of object-oriented programming is the hard part. If you have a lot of experience with the more advanced corners of excel you should have a good basis.
As far as the usefulness - I find it incredible useful. It requires more unfront work to create a ‘toolset’, but once you’ve made it, it can really streamline a lot of time intensive processes. I also have found that it really blows people away. Not a lot of people know how to utilize it and it is just another skill to separate you from peers.
It takes time to become proficient in VBA because you need a LOT of practice. It’s like getting a good stroke (golf, tennis, sex, basketball, etc). You can’t just learn about it.
Beyond experimenting with recording macros, does anyone know any good tutorials for learning VBA?
i crap you not...i learned from "Excel VBA for Dummies"
Good looks, might as well just pick it up.
This will get you started.
https://openeducation.blackboard.com/mooc-catalog/courseDetails/view?co…
I automated 80% of a college internship with VBA. The work was mundane, lacked variability on a day-to-day basis and leveraged only the MSFT Office. I was discouraged to continue my work because people were afraid of losing their jobs to VBA programmers who could automate entire careers.
Learn it. Why wouldn't you? The upfront investment of learning VBA and writing the initial applications saves you multitudes of time for the rest of your tenure with that company. Automate your day job, free up your mind for entrepreneurial ventures.
How did you find this opportunity? Would you PM more details?
I guess you don't have any programming experience?
In your position I'd take a LinkedIn course or something. Assuming you are more than 10 years away from retiring you will most likely have to learn it at some point anyway better now then layer.
Also I am interested to know what company did just found out about VBA for Excel being super useful. Feels like they are a little late on that one.
Haha. The kind of consulting company whose primary client is the U.S. federal government. :p
bump...i've found some other threads about how VBA relates to real estate specifically (importing Argus runs, some reporting, formatting, etc.).
Does anyone else have specific examples of how VBA has helped with real estate modeling/Excel work, and how an employer might think VBA is a useful skill that puts you over another candidate that you're neck-and-neck with?
VBA is a programming language built on top of Excel....it is used for automation. So, anything done in excel that is repetitive, that can be automated (even with complex logic), can be done in VBA. It is indeed very powerful....but first you must identify tasks that are repetitive.
VBA is great for -importing data from a variety of external sources -database access...pulling data from a database, inserting data into a database, and updating the data already in the database (if you have the access privilege to do so) -complex calculations that require loops, conditional logic and repetition
Every industry and firm has different needs...first i suggest you do an audit of the tasks that people at the firm do...as well as compile a list of information things that employees wish they had. Very often, VBA can be used to make the information lives easier for many people...as well as allow analysis that was otherwise too time consuming to attempt.
Does VBA work well with SQL?
I'm seriously considering learning a programming language to help in the field of finance/real estate finance. Is VBA the best programming language today for that application or would Python (or something else) be more useful? Thoughts?
They are different, and honestly learning them doesn't have to be mutually exclusive. Like I stated above, the most difficult part of learning programming is just how object oriented programming works. There really isn't anything like it that you interact with in everyday life. Once you learn that it isn't difficult to pick up other languages as mostly just the syntax differs.
With that said, I think VBA is more useful for the everyday analyst. Its less computationally efficient, but it is integrated directly into excel and can edit spreadsheets on the fly. You can also create custom functions, which I find incredible useful.
VBA is really only useful for excel. It'll probably take 3-6 months to get good with...it's not that complex.
It's not very useful as a programming language but its not a terrible intro to coding if you have never coded before.
If you can use both SQL and VBA, you're already miles ahead of most analysts and associates. A huge percentage of analyst and associate work can be automated. Things like linking financial statements or doing an accretion/dilution analysis are repetitive and formulaic. If your VBA is good enough, you can automate all of that.
This is VERY basic automation, but it's a great example of why so many low-skilled professional services jobs are at risk. How many people have a job where they essentially just move numbers around in some repeatable way? How many of them know how to code? And how many of them are essentially dinosaurs waiting for the next meteor?
If you're going to try to make a career out of conducting some sort of analysis and providing recommendations using that analysis, it makes sense to learn some VBA and SQL. Neither language is going away any time soon, and as far as I'm concerned, an analyst who can't learn both languages in a couple months is basically useless to me since SQL is used for virtually all databases and VBA just makes life so much easier in Excel.
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