Recently, in our company there was a decision that everyone needs to fill out skillset spreadsheet, so we could better utilize our resources on internal and external projects. While the whole idea seems to be quite awesome from the manager point of view, I think standard skillset spreadsheets are mean to be faulty by design, because of at least few reasons. Here is my point of view:
There are no standard skills
In almost every business now, simply there are no standard skills. You can’t just say you know “Linux” because there’s a huge difference between knowing how to install required packages to set up a server and writing kernel patches to improve security, yet both require knowledge of “Linux”. Also, there’s huge difference between using Photoshop as a photo-editing tool and using it to do pre-printing fixes on the provided files. Tools we use have become so complex, it’s really hard to keep up with every possible feature they offer. And here we come naturally to my second reason…
