How to deal with coworkers who don't know basic computer skills
Working alongside colleagues who cannot use basic tools like email, calendars, or Excel forces others to constantly stop and teach them simple tasks. This extra burden makes everyday jobs significantly harder and prevents teams from working efficiently.
What the numbers show
Counted from the threads quoted below. How we count
- The most recent one is from September 2026.
- This comes up 58.8× more often in r/nonprofit than across the site as a whole.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Google how to do thingsDid this help you?
- 2having assistants or junior staff handle tech tasksDid this help you?
- 3trainingDid this help you?
- 4doing the work for themDid this help you?
- 5shifting focus to meta-thinking and prompt engineeringDid this help you?
- 6managing tech debt aggressivelyDid this help you?
- 7tweaking AI-generated results until acceptableDid this help you?
- 8Tell them where to go instead of letting them do it their wayDid this help you?
- 9Hard code single numbers per cell next to summary formulas so managers can verify the mathDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“A lot of my colleagues don’t even understand excel shortcuts”source ↗
“Examples include watching someone sum a row without using alt =”source ↗
“Seeing people navigate excel with a cursor”source ↗
“Seeing someone extract values from a 200 row spreadsheet without using xlookup”source ↗
“I once caught a staff doing a =a1+a2+a3… kid didn’t know what a sum function is”source ↗
“A list of numbers, the person was adding up on a Casio, and hard coding the value.”source ↗
“is it common for anyone else to have older coworkers who don’t know how to use their email or excel?”source ↗
“it makes my job harder when I have to show them to the calendar etc.”source ↗
“I know many people who can’t use Excel at all. And several people who can read and write emails, but somehow “don’t receive” or “can’t find” emails on the regular.”source ↗
“Our bookkeeper is the same. She works off of old and outdated spreadsheets that someone else set up for her. She cannot create new ones and doesn't understand how they work.”source ↗
“At my place of work we've recently hired several 'engineers' who have been exposed as frauds who know nothing but how to beg the chatbot to do things. When you bring actual issues that require critical thinking or technical knowledge, they fold like a stack of cards and meat-proxy a Teams reply to you.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 3Why don't students know how to type a web address?
- 2How to improve my Excel skills for work
- 7Why don't students know how files and folders work?
- 13Is it normal to have no training or supervision on a new job?
- 11Why are kids lacking basic life skills and independence?
- 3How to train new employees on technical work without repeating yourself