reality canvass: VBA as career? VBA as extra skill in another career?

[Matthew Dodds]

Hi folks,

Just fell victim to the recession and joined the unemployed, so
pondering my options. Among the more appealing is doing more VBA - the
idea is to write custom data-analysis tools to expedite analyses that
would otherwise be done slowly by hand in Excel. I've been hacking
solutions together for years as part of my job & wondered whether this
might be plausible replacement career (with emphasis slightly less on
the 'hacking' bit, obviously enough)

But I need a reality check - which is where as many members as would
care to reply come in ....
.... how many people on this group use VBA 'merely' (sorry) as part of
ANOTHER job?
.... how many actually do VBA AS their job?
- can I invite advice/reality check as to the viability of my
'brainwave'? I guess what I'm looking for is some hands-on advice from
those who actually make their living from VBA ... what does it take to
make this work? What's the going rate for projects of what complexity?
How do you identify your clients? How do they get charged? Am I asking
the right questions?

It's early days, I need to decide which way to turn, so your every
suggestion, observation and experience shared is welcome

Thanks in advance

Matthew

 

[Kyle Chastain]

Matthew,

I don't know about an entire career just with VBA, but I think you're on the
right track. I too am an economic fall out. I've convinced my self that
there is a market in automating many of the functions accountants and
controllers do. Having worked as a controller for 18 years, I know much
could be done, but I didn't have the time to fix it. Now, I'm working to
launch a company that addresses these issues as well as business process
redesign and simple business intelligence (light data mining, automated
KPI's and automated high level period-end reporting ).

Comments appreciated