Episode 441: Will working in healthcare hurt my reputation and precious wisdom

Soft Skills Engineering

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. 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?

2. 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!