The motivation for this post/episode is a selfish one (scroll to the very bottom or skip to the end of the podcast to see why). As I thought about the framing of this post during my normal "thinking" moments (commuting, on the toilet, during useless meetings), I realized I'm going to take a different approach to why people should and shouldn't use Google Sheets. I'm not going to list all the features and do a pros/cons list. This episode is more about how software (in this case Google Sheets) makes you feel. Yup, that's right. The gooey emotions you feel from watching a rom com can also be applied to the software you use at work. This could be a stretch, but come along for the ride and let's see where the rabbit hole takes us. Reliability over innovation The title of this post is a rip off of the old adage "Nobody gets fired for buying an IBM." In the early to mid-20th century, IBM was selling their computers and mainframes to the government and the enterprise. They were seen as innovators and consequently grew to one of the largest corporations during that time. Their brand was associated with providing excellent customer service and of course top of the line machines. Source: Science Photo Library Over time, the innovation slowed at IBM. Nevertheless, companies continued buying from IBM. The brand and product was seen as a reliable choice over startups and new entrants. In a nutshell, you could de-risk the decision by going with a vendor that everyone else knew and trusted. Fast forward to the present, what are the IBMs of our generation? Microsoft Office? The Google Suite? Do we reach for Google Sheets because we know everyone else on our team uses it or because it's actually the best tool to get the job done? I think it's mix of both. Just good enough to get the job done Maybe your company doesn't have an Office 365 subscription and you need a little bit more of those collaborative and sharing features. So you reach for Google Sheets. It mimics enough of Excel's features such that you're comfortable with putting important company data in it. Like Excel, it's the most utilitarian tool and all you care about is that the formulas work and that Google Sheets doesn't go down. You don't want to feel anything from using Google Sheets. It's just good enough to be your CRM or event planner. What it's actually great for is modeling and financial analysis to help you make a decision. So it's a decision-making tool. But since so much of our work is about making non-financial decisions, we use Google Sheets for everything because it's just good enough. We're ok with it not having the bells and whistles of other tools. That's the rub. Good enough. It doesn't excite us like getting a match on Tinder does. It doesn't tickle our senses like a sizzling steak does when it comes out of the kitchen. Should we feel ok with "settling" with something we have to use every day? More data is being generated from our products and services and is the only way to make sense of it all is to put it into Google Sheets? For most people, settling with Google Sheets is absolutely fine. You don't want your spreadsheet to incite any emotions because it's there to do one job and one job only. Keep your data organized and help you make decisions. Anything more or less is a waste of your time. The allure of free No matter what function you work in, chances are you have to export your data from Salesforce, Jira, or some other internal tool into a Google Sheet. Your data is "trapped" in these SaaS tools and it's difficult to make decisions about what bugs to work on or which email...