Anybody here work exclusively as a VBA contractor?

**Ardesco** · 25 September 2006, 10:53

I doubt you'll get far in finance with access. When i worked for Barclays about 6 years ago the story that always went round when they were scoping a new project was the one about an access database for thier insurance side of the business installed in the early 80's.

This database was happily ticking over for a couple of years until they hit the data limit in access and the db corrupted. Barclays (not having any decent backup procedures at the time) lost a shed load of data and had to find all the original paperwork and reneter it into a new system. Since then they are very very paranoid when it comes to access

Looking at your skill set as stated I would say you don't have the skills to be an IT contractor and you are wasting your time. How good is your SQL? can you do inner joins or optimise tables? or just SELECT * FROM table;

**ViolentCheese** · 25 September 2006, 11:10

hmm..so much for that then.

I had a feeling that all those VBA type contracts on jobserve etc.. were just roles looking for people with other skills with strong VBA, and not really "vba programmer" roles.

Ah well nevermind then.

**BoredBloke** · 25 September 2006, 16:05

I do, but you have to go for niche work. I tend to work on projects in a project support capacity/data analysis

**thunderlizard** · 25 September 2006, 18:39

That's how I started out, but after a year and a bit I'd moved on to bigger boys' toys. And it was back in 99, when you could get a decent contract as long as you could claim to have sat next to somebody who may have used VB5 once.

You can make a living doing pure Excel/Access/VBA but you tend to get the crummier contracts e.g. keep this multi-million-pound three-hundred-user 24-hour back office clearing system involving 4 access databases and 900 spreadsheet macros on its last legs for another 3 months until we get our bonuses.

So I slightly disagree with Ardesco: the big corporates secretly love Excel and Access, and for every big banking spreadsheet replacement project, there's another 50 spreadsheets and MDB's that the analysts are desperately trying to keep the IT departments from finding out about.

On the other hand, if you're mainly an industry expert/data analyst/BA type who is also very nifty indeed with automated PivotTables, a brighter future beckons.

**hyperD** · 25 September 2006, 18:48

Yes, Credit Suisse use alot of XL + macro/VBA spreadsheets but you need to have alot of banking finance experience.

I tried to get into this work through a contact of mine but it's a dead end as the finance guys owning the spreadsheets are pretty much a closed shop and even though you could be a VBA guru that could shape up the work, there's the old control principle in operation:

They're thieves! They're thieves! They're filthy little thieves! Where is it? Where is it? They stole it from us, our precious. Curse them! WE hates them! It's ours it is, and we wants it! We wants it, we needs it. Must have the precious spreadsheet. They stole it from us. Sneaky little contractors. Wicked, tricksy, false!

**ViolentCheese** · 27 September 2006, 01:20

Do the rates for VBA work make it worthwhile being a contractor?

**BlasterBates** · 27 September 2006, 07:51

The answer to your question is quite simple, check jobserve.

Perhaps even apply for a few and see what the response is, you can always pull out.

**Lockhouse** · 27 September 2006, 11:33

Spreadsheet jockeys are always in demand by most investment banks but it's a crap job - as mentioned previously - often working on the trading floor on inherited spreadsheets held together by bits of string that are always "mission critical". There's usually a very high turnover as people get stressed to bits and go on somewhere else for the same thing to happen again. Business knowledge (or at least a few buzzwords) is essential.

**lilelvis2000** · 4 October 2006, 20:56

Originally posted by ViolentCheese

Do the rates for VBA work make it worthwhile being a contractor?

rates are just OK. no where near what a C++ or C# guy would make though.

But nearly every company needs a excel and/or access guru. Last client I had ran their entire operation on Access. They split the database everytime they got to the 2GB limit! I converted it to SQL Server.

Current client is using several Access databases to run the Change Management group. I'm converting one of them onto Oracle - with a Access front end for now.

Another project is to stop using several hundred excel sheets pretending to be a database. yuck! that group can't seem to get their act together. - wonder why, eh?

So far its been steady money. rather addictive.

Anybody here work exclusively as a VBA contractor?