Who's thriving now?

The recent Reddit post “Who’s thriving now?” cuts to a core anxiety in data-driven professions: in an era of rapid technological change, how do we identify not just competence, but true adaptability and success? The accompanying image and discussion point toward a growing divide between those leveraging new tools and methodologies and those anchored to legacy workflows. This isn’t merely about technical prowess; it’s about mindset and the willingness to evolve. For our community, constantly grappling with practical spreadsheet challenges, this question hits home. We see it in the recurring queries about mastering fundamentals, like *how to use TODAY() to conditionally format due dates?* or debating *When people ask you, what’s your excel level?*—each post is a small indicator of where users feel confident and where they sense a gap. The underlying current is clear: thriving now requires more than knowing functions; it demands strategic fluency with tools that reduce friction and amplify insight.

This brings us to a critical perspective: the tools themselves shape who thrives. Traditional spreadsheets, for all their utility, often create friction that obscures insight. When users are mired in *making series specific categories on a box and whisker plot*, they are spending cognitive energy on formatting and workaround logic rather than on the analytical question itself. This friction is a barrier to thriving. It disadvantages those without the time or mentorship to develop elaborate macro-based solutions, effectively creating a hidden curriculum of spreadsheet mastery. The post’s implied challenge is to look beyond individual skill and examine the ecosystem of tools we invite into our workflows. Are they gatekeepers or enablers? The answer increasingly determines professional trajectory.

Our take is that the definition of “thriving” is shifting from solitary expertise to collaborative intelligence with technology. The users asking “what’s your excel level?” are often seeking a benchmark not for pride, but for survival—they want to know if their skill set will remain viable. The real answer lies not in achieving a mythical “expert” status on a linear scale, but in adopting platforms that are inherently more intuitive and powerful. This is where an AI-native approach to spreadsheets becomes transformative. By handling the tedious structuring of data and automating complex visualizations, such technology allows users at any nominal “level” to focus on higher-order analysis and decision-making. The goal is to make the tool recede, turning the spreadsheet from a document of record into a dynamic thinking partner.

Looking ahead, the question “Who’s thriving now?” will be answered by those who best partner with intelligent systems. The most valuable skill will be the ability to pose the right questions and interpret the outputs, not to manually execute every intermediate step. We should watch for a decline in queries focused on mechanical workarounds—like elaborate conditional formatting hacks or convoluted chart formatting—and a corresponding rise in discussions about model validation, scenario planning, and extracting narrative from data. The future belongs not to the person who can build the most intricate nested formula, but to the one who can most effectively collaborate with an AI to explore possibilities and communicate insights. The tools are changing; thriving will be defined by how readily we let them change us.