Soft Skills Engineering - Episode 441: Will working in healthcare hurt my reputation and precious wisdom

Episode Date: December 30, 2024

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I’m currently in the interviewing pipeline for an engineering position at a fairly large healthcare company. In light of the recent events surrounding UnitedHealthcare, there’s been renewed criticism towards the insurance industry as whole. I was interested in this position and the work culture seems good, but now I’m having second thoughts. If I were to accept an offer from this company, could it somehow negatively affect my career or reputation? I feel like I’m worrying over nothing, but let me know your thoughts. Also, hypothetically speaking, what would you do if you received a job offer at a company that recently had negative press? Hi! I’m an internal applications engineer, and after a couple of years of propping up a couple of different small and midsized companys’ intranets with duct tape and cardboard, digging through old, unmaintained code that nonetheless runs the business, and trying to decipher the intentions and reasonings of the Developers Who Came Before, I have landed what is perhaps the dream position: the primary internal applications developer at my new company is retiring, and the business has hired me on such that we have a few months for said senior developer to catch me up and hand things off. I’ve been brought through the basics; how to troubleshoot day-to-day misshaps, which clients need to be handled with care, and I’ve been shown the excel workbook that will make the finance department explode if it’s edited incorrectly. What other non-technical questions should I ask my senior before he leaves? Thanks and thanks also for an awesome show!

it takes more than restarting your services with a cron job every night to be a great engineer this is soft skills engineering episode 441 i am your host dave smith i'm your host jameson dance soft skills engineering is a weekly advice podcast for software developers who use cron to wake themselves up in the morning i feel like every service every platform that launches without cron adds cron they eventually build cron yeah you got some fancy new distributed system and they're like oh yeah we need to do things every monday at 1 p.m okay fine we'll use cron we'll support cron syntax yep like our ancestors like it's been a while surely there's some kubernetes magical yaml to do cron things in your cluster right undoubtedly like wake yourself up in the

morning. Yes, like wake yourself up in the morning. The most over-engineered Rube Goldberg wake-up routine. Yes. Have you seen Wallace and Gromit? Bits and pieces. There's some good stuff in there about morning routines. Want one like that? Drop out of your bed, the jam flies onto your toast, etc. Oh yeah, lovely. All right, I'm going to thank our patrons. Thank you so much to these people who contribute at the level that we say words they type in uh the patreon name field thank you to never gonna give you up never gonna let you down never gonna run around and desert you answer my question you cowards what is your favorite color i have to say blue but i don't actually know if that's my favorite color that's just what i say when someone asks me what my

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out because i see i see dollar amounts coming through in sorry not dollar amounts but i see amounts coming through in other currencies non-dollar currencies and when i go do the conversion in google it's like right around the level to get them the shout out so good for you guys hacking the system so you can make us say things or maybe patreon just does the currency conversion i don't i think it does that's what i'm saying that's well but does it convert yes I tested this with our API integration. It does correctly convert to USD so that when we get the list, it's there. But if you have contributed a non-dollar amount that you expect to get us to say something

and we're not saying it, please let us know because we would like to fix that. Yes. We want to say the words. All right. We want to say so many words. And Dave, I hope you say some right now for us. Will you read the first question? Yes, I will.

This comes from an anonymous listener who says, I'm currently in the interviewing pipeline for an engineering position at a fairly large healthcare company. In light of the recent events surrounding UnitedHealthcare, there's been renewed criticism towards the insurance industry as a whole. I was interested in this position and the work culture seems good, but now I'm having second thoughts. If I were to accept an offer from this company, could it somehow negatively affect my career or reputation?

I feel like I'm worrying over nothing, but let me know your thoughts. Also, hypothetically speaking, what would you do if you received the job offer at a company that recently had negative press? I would tell everyone I'm joining to fix it. They came crawling to me. Yes. The CEO was assassinated by a hitman in a wild thing straight out of a video game. And they said, you know what we need?

Senior software engineer to pull us out of this mess. With five to 10 years of experience. Yes. You know, we need fewer bugs and slightly faster velocity on our internal business system in this one part of the company. This one team out of thousands needs 5% velocity increase in their roadmap delivery. Yeah. What a delicate way to put this. In light of recent events, there's been renewed criticism towards the insurance industry.

Very well written. Yeah. You have a bright future in PR, if nothing else. Yeah. One might say the recent events were some of the criticism of the insurance industry. Yes, they themselves. I have a brother-in-law who works in insurance, and I do not wish death upon him. did you tell him he needs to hire a software engineer to help with that be his bodyguard i

guess yeah yeah i think he could do well with a senior software engineer on his team as well i don't think he does software stuff but i think never hurts senior software engineers believe that they are the best at everything because we're so smart so yeah it'll probably be fine we have good opinions on every topic yeah healthcare have you tried sitting at a desk for 14 hours in a row and never going outside yeah i don't think it would negatively affect your career or reputation how do i put it there's lots of like class conflict issues around health care and and and i feel like this is more of a class thing than a than a political thing and if you are around people who would think worse of you for joining a health care company in light of these events i

feel like you would know it already because they would be like sharing manifestos with you they'd be very active about their beliefs not to say that that's the only way you should decide whether to do something or not but it's whether the people who write manifestos approve of it that's like yeah that's what i do if yeah you approve of the manifestos no no i'm just saying i i before i take any job i consult with all my friends who have posted manifestos about yeah send me your manifestos yeah yeah it's like an rfc but it's actually an rfm yeah request for manifestos. Yeah. I joined a company and worked at a company that had many manifestos written about it. So I guess you can see my, I don't know, my street cred. It's not great for sticking it to

the man. No, I would like to help the man in exchange for money. So that's my bias here. You're going to encounter two types of people after you work at this company and those that are supportive of you working at the company and those who aren't. And for those that are supportive, you can just say, yeah, I'm glad. I'm also glad to contribute. And for those that aren't supportive you can say yes and i secretly try to make everything worse that i touch yeah i show up five minutes late to every meeting to drain the efficiency i am a member of the resistance i thought what you were gonna say is to those who aren't supportive you say please don't shoot oh jameson too too soon oh man yeah i think i think you are probably worrying over

nothing i think it is very fair to consider both your own personal beliefs and morals and ethics about the companies you join and if what they do and their overall impact on the world fits in with that and those are people you care about and are close to you you don't have to care about those of everybody of like randos on twitter that have strident political messages in their names etc you know like i don't know someone will be mad that you work there that you don't know right that's fine that's they won't be mad if they don't know you didn't work there that you don't know if you don't take that job so yeah yeah i i do think i think you're right jameson to focus on the personal ethical compass here moral compass because i you know i was thinking

like would i work for a company like this like i don't know probably fine but i did work for a company once and someone at that company said something that really stuck with me in a negative way i was chatting with a co-worker i won't tell you the name of the company and also you won't find it on my resume so ah not that you have my resume it's an old it's a long time ago this is actually over 20 years ago anyway i'm working i'm just chatting with this co-worker and his co-worker's talking about how what the what their business unit does and it was a a consumer-facing business unit that sells retail products that basically everyone agrees are not good for you but most people still eat them so i guess i just gave away what that a part of what that is anyway

cigarettes dave worked at a cigarette manufacturer so actually cigarettes were part of the things that this company sold. I didn't work. It wasn't a company that actually sell like manufacturer cigarettes, but it was one of their retail offerings was cigarettes and other things that are generally agreed to be not healthy to eat or put in your body. Anyway, long story short, this person said to me, and I kid you not, they said these words, when I come to work, I set my morals aside until I go home. And I sat there just kind of with my mouth open like I didn't think that was an option. I didn't know you could do that. And so I kind of resolved in that moment, I don't want to work for a company where I feel like I need to set my morals aside

for half of my waking hours. I don't like that. I don't like that at all. So that's why I would say look inward and decide if you feel like you truly think that the mission of your company is harmful or the operations of your company is harmful enough to where you need to say that i kind of admire the person who said that to you because i feel like a lot of people do that and just don't admit it to themselves exactly right say it out loud it's like yeah i'm pretty clear on where i'm pretty clear on what i'm doing here yep yeah oh this was on the east coast it's like i think that's a cultural difference between where yeah the kind of the western half of the u.s and the east coast you're like whatever i think it was the mob i'm gonna

Yeah, I worked for the mafia. I set my morals aside. Yeah. Well, have we answered the question? I think so. Good luck. I'd take the job, whatever. I mean, who cares what other people think?

If you like the job, you think it's a good company and you like the prospects and the paycheck is sufficient to overcome having to set your morals aside. Yeah. Who cares what other people think? Me all the time, every waking second of my life. But I will happily give you the advice that you should not care as much as I do or a ton in general. Paralyzingly caring about what other people think. That's like Jameson's middle name.

Examine your thoughts. You know, I set my morals aside when I go to sleep. So I have a life of debauchery and madness in my dreams. Yeah, it is kind of insane. Stand up and put on my tie and go about the world. Should I read our next question? Yes, let's do it. All right. This is from an anonymous listener who says,

Hi, I'm an internal applications engineer. And after a couple of years of propping up a few different small and mid-sized companies intranets with duct tape and cardboard, digging through old unmaintained code that nevertheless runs the business and trying to decipher the intentions and reasonings of the capitalized developers who came before. I love that. I have landed what is perhaps the dream position. The primary internal applications developer at my new company is retiring. and the business has hired me on such that we have a few months for said senior developer to catch me up and hand things off. I've been brought through the basics, how to troubleshoot day-to-day

mishaps, which clients need to be handled with care, and I've been shown the Excel workbook that will make the finance department explode if it's edited incorrectly. What other non-technical questions should I ask my senior before he leaves? Thanks, and thanks for an awesome show. What should I ask? Yeah. I do want to zoom in on, I've landed the dream position, and their dream position is primary internal applications developer, my new company. And it just goes to show that there's a lot of different satisfaction in software, because some people, this would be their nightmare position. And their dream position would be like, I don't know, Greenfield, brand new product, nothing is out there. And yeah, I'm glad there's variety and a breadth of different experiences available in software. What do you have to ask the departing senior engineer before you lose access to them forever? I thought of two things I would ask. I don't know if there would be good questions or good answers to them, but I would want

to know when you have been surprised in the past. Not that you'll be surprised in the same way as they were, but it could give you a, could help outline some unknown unknowns, right? Like, I don't know, the CEO called me one night in the middle of the night and said, hey, we got to fix this thing. Now, you know, like, oh, that's the kind of thing that could happen here, I guess. Not that the specific fix or circumstances of the fix will likely reoccur. And then the other question I would ask is, what are you scared of, both people and technically?

Like, I don't know, what parts of the business are scary or a pain to interact with? And what parts of the code are you like, man, anytime anything comes up around thing X, I just shudder. Another way to ask that question is, what breaks every time you touch it? And if you're me, the answer is everything. Everything I touch. I've got that opposite Midas touch. The inverse Midas touch. Every Jira ticket I close turns into at least one more Jira ticket.

What's that? The Sorcerer's Apprentice? Is that the Disney movie where he chops up the brooms? Yeah. Yeah. That's actually a really good metaphor for software development. Yeah, totally. You freak out, you do a wild flailing refactor with an axe, and then it comes back to, yeah.

And then like the wizard senior engineer comes and shakes his head sadly at you. Anyways, the question, what breaks every time you touch it? Yeah. How do I talk to you if I'm scared? Can we have a key word that I say, like a code word that I say, which means I'm about to lose my mind. I need you to hold me for a minute. metaphorically metaphorically cuddle me yeah what are you glad to be rid of yeah what okay how about

this so glad i don't have to think about this anymore if i had a question i could ask one question i would probably say is if you had a bunch of free time which systems would you try to delete which would what things would you try to get rid of what's the lowest value internal system that you've been maintaining that you'd like to delete a really easy question to ask that might get you some good answers is what would you do if you were me um it might not get you good answers also because they might say well i would retire but they might have some thoughts on what a newly entering engineer could do and obviously you i don't know you bring your own ideas and vision and abilities to it so you don't just write it all down and then go do the thing

they said but it could be useful how to trouble shoot day-to-day mishaps which client i mean i yeah they asked about which clients need to be handled with care so they're already kind of trying to figure out how to work with the people that are important for the the app to run i like that yeah excel so you know the excel workbook that will make the finance department explode do you know the excel workbook that will make you have the budget to just hire more engineers you're not necessarily cooking the books it's more like sauteing them i think putting a little spritz on them pan searing pan searing yeah pan searing the books put a light glaze on the books we haven't talked a ton about just learning the code base and we have talked about this in general

before but it's very different to learn the code base when you have someone very senior and experienced around that knows it well yeah versus when you're trying to figure it out on your own and part of what's very different is it's you you get to take a lot of shortcuts of like oh this thing's over here instead of like racking your brain forever another big part of the difference is you get a lot of why's why is it like this so the more you can ask those why questions and and kind of try to navigate around and then go turn to them for help and where to find this thing while they're still there i think the better off you'll you'll be absorbing that from them for sure and you know knowing the departing engineer and spending a couple months

with them before you are on your own that's actually a pro and a con i mean it's great that you can extract a bunch of contextually relevant information from them but also it's going to humanize them and that's gonna make it hard for you to have like unrighteous rage when you look at some of this code you're gonna be like oh yeah but i know that person it's a human being no i would rather have them be like this disembodied vague like villain of the past just a name and a blame yep exactly blame that's all you are is you're a get blame entry and i hate you you can operate with a little bit less encumberment so i'm able to overcome that and hate everyone's code even if i know them and i believe that this question asker can still do that

overcome the humanization they've applied to them and build up their righteous rage overcome the human yeah i love it but it is i'm thinking more about that two-edged sword thing it's going to be a lot harder to make changes that this engineer does not want to do or does not think should happen while they're still there that's fine because there's only a couple months of overlap but it's possible you'll come in and see holy cow i really think this thing needs to happen and they just are against it or think it's wrong or don't care about it or kind of apathetic instead of supportive it's probably good overall to not roll into a code base and just like day one start ripping stuff out and making big changes but there might be some chafing while you know as

soon as they're gone i'm gonna do this thing that they would have hated but i'll just wait till they're gone whatever i think it's still probably better to be a little bit have that that bridle on you to to keep you from running wild while you know the least you'll ever know yes trying to think of what else it is a a truth of the universe there are a ton of things that we're not thinking of. But yeah, I think the theme of what I would want to know is unknown unknowns. What's the kind of stuff that I just could never have known would even be a thing I would have to wonder about. And those are hard to uncover because they're so unknown. Yeah, by their very nature. Yeah. And it's also hard for an expert to put themselves in your mindset and think about,

well what would i not know if i were not me but instead a brand new engineer because they're so used to their fluency with the system and both the technical and the the people systems but wouldn't it be awesome if we could somehow put two brains side by side and do a diffing algorithm where it's like what's in there that's not in there yeah i think if you say like and i'm going to use ai to do it you could probably go raise a bunch of money definitely we'll hook the electrodes up to an AI and it'll work. I don't know. Have we answered the question? I think probably about as good as we can. I think that it's great to take advantage of this time, but it's just not that big of a deal. You're going to have to learn new things on your own. Yeah,

you're going to make some mistakes. It's fine. Be a learning experience for you. Just don't worry about it too much. I would get everything you can try to expose yourself to as broad of a set of topics as you can within this experience of this code base. Like go out of your way to do tasks in the code that maybe are unnatural to do in the priority order just to increase the breadth of your exposure and that'll create natural opportunities for good questions to come up and then when this person leaves you're still going to have stuff you don't know and that's fine it's just kind of the way software development goes you'll eventually improve your efficiency and be able to do things on your own independently it'll be great i like that suggestion to be

deliberately broad while they're still there so you can you can expose yourself to the most surface area of the code while you can easily ask questions because you could just naturally like i don't know pick up a feature that is in one part of the code and just work on that while they're there and the business would be pumped about that i'm sure so yeah it probably would take some deliberate effort do what dave said all right the show that's what the show we're gonna rename it to do what dave said do what dave we all know i'm just that's what i repeat to myself i think we've answered it yeah what can people do if they want their own questions answered go to soft skills audio and click the ask a question button thank you so much to everyone who does that each week

we love getting your questions we read them we we pour over them i study them i critique your grammar mistakes silently and also i want to say happy new year this show is going to come out one day before new year's eve so i hope everyone has a wonderful 2025 my resolution is to do a podcast with dave all right i'll take that i'll take that same resolution excellent all right thank you we will catch you next week We'll be right back.