‘Your Excel Skills Suck’: The Power Users Turning Spreadsheets Into a Spectator Sport
Excel, long seen as a dull but essential office tool, has become the unlikely subject of a growing online subculture where influencers build huge followings by showing off high-speed spreadsheet mastery. Creators such as London's Dan Kidney and Los Angeles-based Jonathan Tristan post "speedrun" videos racing through self-designed obstacle courses and teach keyboard-only techniques, turning a mundane workplace skill into a form of competitive entertainment. Their appeal reflects both genuine productivity value, since faster Excel use saves real time in demanding jobs, and the prestige that comes from visible technical flair.
Kidney, a 32-year-old former insurance data analyst, began posting Excel tutorials on TikTok during a career break and saw one obstacle-course video reach a million views within days; he now has 300,000 combined followers across Instagram and TikTok, with his templates even used in a German classroom competition. Tristan, a 29-year-old ex-investment banker with roughly 700,000 followers, promotes mouse-free navigation and unconventional shortcuts, such as removing the F1 key to avoid accidentally opening the help menu, arguing that shaving minutes off Excel work matters when working long hours in finance. Beyond individual tips, the community has spawned formal Excel championships offering prize money, with participants driven as much by camaraderie and rivalry as by practical efficiency gains.
- Excel power users are building online fame via spreadsheet speedruns and tutorials
- Creators like Dan Kidney and Jonathan Tristan have amassed hundreds of thousands of followers
- Community includes official Excel championships with prize money at stake
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Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet programme used to organise information, make calculations and analyse data. It is common in fields such as finance and insurance, where people may spend long hours working with large tables and figures.
Some users learn keyboard shortcuts and other techniques to move through spreadsheets faster, and online creators demonstrate these skills in tutorials and timed challenges. People such as Dan Kidney and Jonathan Tristan have helped make this expertise visible to large audiences.
Excel competitions turn that skill into a spectator activity, with participants racing through set tasks and sometimes competing for prizes. The interest also reflects the value many workplaces place on handling data efficiently, as well as the appeal of learning and comparing techniques.
Both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
These communities represent genuine skill development with authentic productivity value, particularly in data-intensive and finance-focused roles where marginal time savings accumulate meaningfully over demanding work schedules. The intrinsic satisfaction of mastery, combined with supportive community and friendly competition, creates positive motivation that encourages others to develop practical expertise. The creators democratise technical knowledge through accessible, free educational content, and the celebration of visible competence promotes skill development rather than passive reliance on default workflows.
The case against
This phenomenon epitomises toxic hustle culture, where optimisation of mundane tasks becomes a professional status symbol disconnected from substantive work outcomes. For most workers, basic spreadsheet competency suffices entirely, and the time invested in advanced techniques yields negligible returns whilst diverting energy from skills with genuine career impact. The competitive gamification of routine work promotes unhealthy workplace values that conflate visible busyness and technical theatre with actual professional competence, encouraging workers to mistake impressive spreadsheet skills for meaningful productivity.