Coding for an insurance business is soooo boring
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I work the other side of the insurance game; I write software that helps people manage billables and file insurance claims. So frankly, I don't know how insurance software could ever have bugs, since from my experience, it's all basically this:
if (Claim.ChargeAmount > 0)
{
Claim.Status = ClaimStatus.Denied;
}
else
{
Claim.PaidAmount = 0;
};P
Oh, poop, now you've reminded me of having to write code to generate bills in EDI format... :sigh: back to therapy...
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WSDL, SOAP, XML, reports... Metaphorically, where as McCoy when he told Kirk he belongs in the Captain's chair of a starship exploring the galaxy, not sitting behind some desk pushing paper in a cubicle under florescent lights with no window in sight. What amazes me is that software that runs an insurance business can have bugs. I mean, it's all pushing numbers around, some conditional logic, and some math. :~ Marc
V.A.P.O.R.ware - Visual Assisted Programming / Organizational Representation Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
I'm probably swimming against the wave here, but I don't quite get the point of this post. ALL software has bugs. Why should insurance business be any different? In a way, everything comes down to ones and zeroes, so why bugs should exist at all, right? If you find the job soooo boring, I think it's time for you to find another job that you deem interesting, then. That would at least be better than publicly self-aggrandizing and condescending those who are employing you. :)
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I'm probably swimming against the wave here, but I don't quite get the point of this post. ALL software has bugs. Why should insurance business be any different? In a way, everything comes down to ones and zeroes, so why bugs should exist at all, right? If you find the job soooo boring, I think it's time for you to find another job that you deem interesting, then. That would at least be better than publicly self-aggrandizing and condescending those who are employing you. :)
Rajesh R Subramanian wrote:
If you find the job soooo boring, I think it's time for you to find another job that you deem interesting, then.
He started about a week ago.
Michael Martin Australia "I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible." - Mr.Prakash One Fine Saturday. 24/04/2004
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WSDL, SOAP, XML, reports... Metaphorically, where as McCoy when he told Kirk he belongs in the Captain's chair of a starship exploring the galaxy, not sitting behind some desk pushing paper in a cubicle under florescent lights with no window in sight. What amazes me is that software that runs an insurance business can have bugs. I mean, it's all pushing numbers around, some conditional logic, and some math. :~ Marc
V.A.P.O.R.ware - Visual Assisted Programming / Organizational Representation Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
I used to work for insurance company, then moved away and now I am back in to same domain. From my observation, most of the time we need to work on some old technology. Fight hard to convince business to move to something newer (which rarely happens as IT is not primary line of business). Another observation I have made is that most of the applications are really straightforward (exception: premium calculation with dynamic pricing). However, there are so many applications linked with each other that major part of work is to make sure your system does not harm someone else's. Note: Programmers in insurance world are nasty. Just like insurance companies themselves. :) As far as bugs are concerned, there are bugs in all professional level code. On the bright side, you will rarely run out of business.
"It is easy to decipher extraterrestrial signals after deciphering Javascript and VB6 themselves.", ISanti[^]
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OriginalGriff wrote:
ass
When did Wales join the USA? Was this one of the effects of Brexit that the BBC hasn't covered? :rolleyes: Google translate can't seem to find the proper Welsh word - does dinau work? Otherwise, stick to a proper English "arse". :)
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer
:thumbsup:
Follow my adventures with .NET Core at my new blog, Erisia Information Services.
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I've been coding for an insurance company for years. How not to get board? I solve the problems as abstractly as I can - they work for the insurance business, but only because they're a subset of the "everything" that they're made to fit. My fun is making it as generic as possible and as robust as possible. Now, I admit that sometimes they make me actually do the odd report - but even that's mostly taken care of with a "generic reporting" interface. The DBA can use it to create the reports that automatically go to table (with a too-Excel link, when appropriate), and generally, I palm the ugly work off onto the people who are supposed to do it. The method to this madness is to get the work for them done very well and reliably so - but on my terms. Those that understand (fortunately, that now includes the CEO!) appreciate stuff that's built to last through business changes.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
W∴ Balboos wrote:
I've been coding for an insurance company for years. How not to get board?
Insurance companies give you boards? What for?
Follow my adventures with .NET Core at my new blog, Erisia Information Services.
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If you want to know true boredom, get someone in the business to explain the difference between reinsurance and coinsurance :wtf:
Having an Englishman and an Indian explaining the rules of Cricket, in depth, worked for me as well.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
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Having an Englishman and an Indian explaining the rules of Cricket, in depth, worked for me as well.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
But cricket is so simple: There are two sides, one is in the other is out. There side that is in stays in, except the two players who are in and they go out with the side that is out. Each player that is in stays out until the side that is out gets them out when they go in and the next player who is in comes out. When all the players on the side that are in are out, except for the last player in who is not out, the side that was in are out and the side that was out are no in. Simple.
veni bibi saltavi
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But cricket is so simple: There are two sides, one is in the other is out. There side that is in stays in, except the two players who are in and they go out with the side that is out. Each player that is in stays out until the side that is out gets them out when they go in and the next player who is in comes out. When all the players on the side that are in are out, except for the last player in who is not out, the side that was in are out and the side that was out are no in. Simple.
veni bibi saltavi
I can (rather vividly) remember tea, and the break for it, being of utter importance. I also remember Gin being mentioned on several occasions. And whether its mixture with tonic water was considered to be doping or not, and for which team.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
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W∴ Balboos wrote:
I've been coding for an insurance company for years. How not to get board?
Insurance companies give you boards? What for?
Follow my adventures with .NET Core at my new blog, Erisia Information Services.
Board? Water you talking about?
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
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Board? Water you talking about?
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
Yes, otherwise I'd get bored.
Follow my adventures with .NET Core at my new blog, Erisia Information Services.
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I used to work for insurance company, then moved away and now I am back in to same domain. From my observation, most of the time we need to work on some old technology. Fight hard to convince business to move to something newer (which rarely happens as IT is not primary line of business). Another observation I have made is that most of the applications are really straightforward (exception: premium calculation with dynamic pricing). However, there are so many applications linked with each other that major part of work is to make sure your system does not harm someone else's. Note: Programmers in insurance world are nasty. Just like insurance companies themselves. :) As far as bugs are concerned, there are bugs in all professional level code. On the bright side, you will rarely run out of business.
"It is easy to decipher extraterrestrial signals after deciphering Javascript and VB6 themselves.", ISanti[^]
Insurance companies are very loath to change things they have been using for years unless there is an overwhelming justification. This is exactly where my current project sits. We are trying to pursuade a number of insurance companies to use our software but they cannot justify the cost of integrating it into their old, old systems. In a few years they will be trying to update their old, old systems just as a large number of financial institutions are trying to move from mainframes to more compact servers right now. In the words of the old Flanders & Swann song, "It all makes work for the working man to do".
We're philosophical about power outages here. A.C. come, A.C. go.
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Donathan.Hutchings wrote:
but also everything had to be written in VB6.
Happily, it's C#. Other positives, the people are really really nice and as a contractor, the pay is great. Marc
V.A.P.O.R.ware - Visual Assisted Programming / Organizational Representation Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
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WSDL, SOAP, XML, reports... Metaphorically, where as McCoy when he told Kirk he belongs in the Captain's chair of a starship exploring the galaxy, not sitting behind some desk pushing paper in a cubicle under florescent lights with no window in sight. What amazes me is that software that runs an insurance business can have bugs. I mean, it's all pushing numbers around, some conditional logic, and some math. :~ Marc
V.A.P.O.R.ware - Visual Assisted Programming / Organizational Representation Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
My first programming job at 19... Insurance Rating Systems. Ahhh... And just as I was getting "cocky" I was informed that the last programmer had made and published an error, which caused the company to pay a $10,000 fine, and company policy is that flows to the programmer. Over the coming months, I developed a wonderful set of back-testing to compare the results of ANY changes to what they were producing so they could be "signed off by management". The UPSIDE was that as a young programmer, I learned that QUALITY not SPEED was singularly important. I also learned to NEVER trust a salesperson, ESPECIALLY when he is selling you on the benefits of joining his company! LOL
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Oh, poop, now you've reminded me of having to write code to generate bills in EDI format... :sigh: back to therapy...
Oh gads, EDI format... Not so bad once you get to know it, but ye-gods, what a learning curve...
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OG was just proving that he is (at least) biligual, he can speak both English and American!
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
In the same sentence as well!!!
If your neighbours don't listen to The Ramones, turn it up real loud so they can. “We didn't have a positive song until we wrote 'Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue!'” ― Dee Dee Ramone "The Democrats want my guns and the Republicans want my porno mags and I ain't giving up either" - Joey Ramone
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If you want to know true boredom, get someone in the business to explain the difference between reinsurance and coinsurance :wtf:
Thank god my dad pegged out ten years ago. He was an insurance man would spout that crap at the drop of a hat.
If your neighbours don't listen to The Ramones, turn it up real loud so they can. “We didn't have a positive song until we wrote 'Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue!'” ― Dee Dee Ramone "The Democrats want my guns and the Republicans want my porno mags and I ain't giving up either" - Joey Ramone
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I'm probably swimming against the wave here, but I don't quite get the point of this post. ALL software has bugs. Why should insurance business be any different? In a way, everything comes down to ones and zeroes, so why bugs should exist at all, right? If you find the job soooo boring, I think it's time for you to find another job that you deem interesting, then. That would at least be better than publicly self-aggrandizing and condescending those who are employing you. :)
Rajesh R Subramanian wrote:
but I don't quite get the point of this post.
I flagged it as rant, which gives some leeway in the "pointless, nothing to understand" category.
Rajesh R Subramanian wrote:
Why should insurance business be any different?
Because technically, it's so mind-numbing simple. Building, address, material, square footage, age, occupancy type, yada yada, fire off some rules and you get a number. It's not like there's complicated hardware that has to be dealt with and that can fail, or task management, or complex queries, or data collisions if more than one person is editing a policy, or performance bottlenecks, it's just data that gets translated/reduced into other data. Yes, granted, that's pretty much what all software does, it's just there is so little to go wrong.
Rajesh R Subramanian wrote:
I think it's time for you to find another job that you deem interesting, then.
I've done a few of those, I was hoping this one had some interesting aspects to it. So far, connecting to a web service that doesn't seem to actually support WCF and helping to automate a task because the company deems certain developers too stupid to use TFS are the most "interesting."
Rajesh R Subramanian wrote:
That would at least be better than publicly self-aggrandizing and condescending those who are employing you
Quite so. I didn't intend to be self-aggrandizing, I just wanted to rant. I didn't intend to be condescending of my employer, though I can see how it comes off that way. On the other hand, the responses have been quite entertaining, interesting, and enjoyable to read, which was basically the point of the rant -- elicit some humor, wisdom, and camaraderie. Granted, at the expense of ranting about a particular industry / job. Marc
V.A.P.O.R.ware - Visual Assisted Programming / Organizational Representation Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
