I worked at a financial services company that created portfolio analytics software. My job pretty much consisted of turning our analysts' excel models into high performance Scala code.
The company wasn't very successful, we just couldn't convince portfolio managers to pay for our software. Even the analysts at hedge funds didn't like to use our software. My theory is that a bunch of analysts need to justify their jobs with incredibly inefficient and error-prone excel workflows. Our software would have eliminated a lot of what they do in a day, and therefore, would eliminate their jobs as well.
It is terrifying that trillions of dollars of assets are run on excel, but the inertia is too strong.
The company wasn't very successful, we just couldn't convince portfolio managers to pay for our software. Even the analysts at hedge funds didn't like to use our software. My theory is that a bunch of analysts need to justify their jobs with incredibly inefficient and error-prone excel workflows. Our software would have eliminated a lot of what they do in a day, and therefore, would eliminate their jobs as well.
It is terrifying that trillions of dollars of assets are run on excel, but the inertia is too strong.