AI fuels the war of talent in Silicon Valley, but one of the industry's most coveted skills is more than 40 years old.
First released in 1985, Microsoft Excel is the most cited skill on the employment list.
A course report tracking the technology education industry, including bootcamp coding, has recently reviewed over 12 million technology job postings to identify the most popular skills. Excel appeared on 531,000 times and 67,000 times, far beyond Python, the key programming language used in AI, and came on 67,000, while SQL far surpassed Python, another programming language used in data management.
AI-related expertise was not very common. Machine learning appeared on the list of 31,000, while AI itself was mentioned at just 25,000.
The tech industry still needs Excel Whizzes to manage the backbone of the AI boom: data. The hunt for unique data is so intense that even major AI companies are pushing boundaries. Sometimes there is a risk of copyright violations. Others are turning to artificial data, artificial data generated by machine learning algorithms, more than the seeds of the original data.
Rajoshi Rhosh, co-founder of PromptQL, a tech Unicorn that helps Fortune 500 companies build hallucination-free AI systems, told Business Insider that Excel expertise has been in demand for a long time.
“The interface is deeply ingrained in the way business users think and operations. What changes is how data enters Excel,” he said in a text message. “As AI matures, its real role is to deliver accurate contextual data directly to tools people already trust: like Excel.”
Pukar Hamal, CEO of security survey company SecurityPal, said that behind the gloss of chatbots and agents, old fashioned Excel is superior.
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“We continue to pretend that the future will arrive through a new interface,” he told Business Insider. For most B2B companies, “the last miles are the same. Dress up the Excel model in the UI or provide Excel to buyers to get back their data.
This proven skill remains essential despite the tech giants fighting for top AI talent.
Companies pay premiums up to $200,000 for candidates with machine learning skills. Tech giants like Meta, Google, Amazon and Openai offer $1 million pay packages to AI professionals.
Even job seekers with no deep technical skills have acquired lucrative roles with skills such as vibe coding and rapid engineering. This essentially protects the best responses from chatbots, agents and other AI tools.
While Excel may not be that flashy or will not bring you a salary comparable to a professional athlete, it remains a highly relevant skill in the technology frontier.
The other top skills employers are looking for in the tech industry:
