Have You Seen the New Excel?

Adapt, or get left behind.

By Ibrahim Diallo

Published 3 hours ago ~ 5 minutes read

Stop coding. Stop hiring. Stop building.

While the tech world obsesses over large language models and neural networks, I discovered the real disruptor that has been hiding in plain sight. Mine was originally installed on my desktop in 1992. And now, it's about to change everything in the world. We are talking about Microsoft Excel, of course.

If you haven't looked at a spreadsheet lately, you are missing the most significant leap in enterprise capability since the invention of the corporation itself. We are entering an era of No-Code where the code was never needed in the first place.

My own job as a software engineer is not safe, and I'm looking forward to the future. Developers from every walk of life are afraid, and for good reasons. You hear the complaints constantly: "How can I ensure the code works? I can't possibly review a PR with a thousand files. It's unmaintainable." This is a crisis of confidence in the software engineering sector.

This specific anxiety has never existed in the Excel ecosystem. Code is called code for a reason, it is meant for the machine to read, not people. In Excel, we don't worry about "reviewing pull requests." We worry about results. The spreadsheet handles the logic and you handle the business outcome. It abstracts away the complexity so you don't have to pretend to understand it.

And let's talk about the intimidation factor. Have you ever opened a modern codebase? It's a labyrinth of directories, dependencies, and config files. Where do you even start? It's paralyzing. How do you get started with Excel? You double-click an icon. It opens. It is a file. It is a grid. You type. It works. The barrier to entry is non-existent, yet the ceiling is infinite.

If you are getting paid a high salary, and are watching how efficient excel is, you will be terrified. Companies are realizing they don't need distinct software solutions for distinct problems. They just need a grid.

We are seeing enterprises replace entire departments with a single file. That is not an exaggeration. The HR department? Replaced by an org chart linked to a payroll calculator. The supply chain team? Replaced by a real-time inventory tracker. The marketing department? Replaced by a pie chart and a mailing list.

Why pay for Salesforce? A well-formatted sheet with conditional formatting is a Customer Relationship Manager (CRM). Who even knows how to write SQL? SQL is legacy. A workbook with 1 million rows is a database. Jira is redundant when you have Gantt charts generated from cell dependencies.

On top of it all, it has AI. It comes equipped with Microsoft Copilot for 365 apps, not to be confused with Windows Copilot, Microsoft Copilot, Copilot for Teams, Copilot+, Copilot Chat, or Copilot Web. This is the Copilot. It sits inside your grid, ready to extrapolate trends from column D and write your VLOOKUPs for you. While other AI startups are fighting for funding rounds, this integration is already live, embedded directly into the tool that runs the global economy.

You aren't hearing much about Venture Capital funding or Series A rounds when it comes to Excel. Why? Because it is already profitable. It doesn't need a roadmap to profitability because it is the roadmap.

While other platforms burn cash to acquire users, Excel is the default operating system of business. It requires no adoption curve. It requires no evangelists. It requires only that you open it and have a Microsoft 365 apps subscription.

Oh, if you want to add support for crypto, just add a new worksheet. Batteries are included.

The Future is a Cell

The economy is shifting. We are moving away from specialized labor and toward generalized grid management. If your job involves inputting data, processing data, or presenting data, Excel has already automated you. It doesn't sleep, it doesn't ask for a raise, and it doesn't make calculation errors unless you tell it to. Best of all, it doesn't hallucinate.

The grid is absolute, it is infinite and the grid is the future.

Learn Excel now, or get left behind.

That’s what AI Hype sounds like to my ears. Yes, it’s a great tool. But I don’t think we are all gonna die and lose our jobs. The same way we didn’t die and or lose our jobs to Excel.

None of these things are jokes about Excel by the way, you can run entire companies from it. I'm tempted to just start hyping it everyday until everyone gets annoyed.