Thread regarding Humana Inc. layoffs

How to live the dream on the IT side at Humana

Lets start from the top, first at C-suite level, you're constantly lectured in Town Halls by executives working in DC about how Humana is constantly trying to survive in the industry, ignoring the hundreds of billions of profits the past decade - oh and the stock options the lecturers give only reported in local Louisville news in WDRB that this or that exec just pulled out $10 million plus in stock every few months while telling others that we need to meet our 'reduction goal.'

Then down to the VP level, and if you work on the IT side in infrastructure, networking, security as an engineer or admin - it's really all the same with a different coat of paint with the VPs. Lots of boot licking about what Bruce or Bob or whatever first name to make it seem like the C-Suite and SVP's are just 'one of us' and comes the canned usual out of touch powerpoints prepped by middle managers and assistants on why the next unicorn to chase is really modernizing Humana. Throw in some self-enlightened insight how they met with the out of touch Directors/Associate Directors, and flew everyone in to Louisville to really hash it out through other series of Powerpoints and superficial buzzwords.

You know the usual suspects: Cloud, microservices, and now AI is the trendy one. Lots of out-of touch corporate buzzwords in between about how it's all going to be solved by this combination of vendors and contractors Humana dishes out million dollar contracts for rather then listening to their own engineers and admins. Why do that, when you can just pay a Deloitte, Kyndryl, IBM/Microsoft, etc to come in and have a magic wand and fix it after years of C-Suite and VP neglect?

Meanwhile at the lower level, whether you're Lead/Senior/Whatever Engineer or Admin, you actually have to deal with the real problems. Why doesn't ______ work for this business team? You try to solve a problem, make things better, and you've met your doom. Once you touch it, it's yours, and you're probably surrounded by career guys who failed upwards all around you - and the good ones are smart enough not to speak to get stuck with the pulled grenade at this point as well. Then, the middle managers drop more micromanagement on you in the forms of being 'Agile' or with project managers to crack the whip, since they're too busy trying to move up the corporate ladder than actually manage the work.

So, you even up learning through experience the underground minority network of disgruntled and tired people throughout each team and department who have all the knowledge, do all the work, to get things done until they burn out and decide to leave.

And underlying all the problems is the true cause: leadership in Humana is too id--tic to realize the source and solution to the problems isn't some pie-in-the-sky vendor contract that's going to provide technology or knowledge to fix everything - but within the engineers themselves who do all the work and know that the system is nothing more than a veiled undocumented cobbled together dungeon of years and decades old scripts, old failing applications, and a security disaster waiting to happen.

Welcome to Humana. Don't forget to accept the mandatory Zoom invite for fun team get together at the end of the week and to finish your performance review where you'll get the same as the guy across the county rocking the yellow in Teams all day all day drooling in his cup unless he woken up by an Outlook reminder. And the contractor who works their a-s off for pennies as your lone help, we'll have to let them go, we've gotta meet that goal.

Oh, and remember to not leave that Thrive Together value empty, that was a big focus at our meeting at Waterside. Appreciate you.

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| 2161 views | | 8 replies (last January 27, 2024) | Reply
Post ID: @OP+1qEzN9JW

8 replies (most recent on top)

Well don’t forget friends hiring friends who are not qualified. So long term something has to give. One suggestion is to just replace 10% of every team for a few years including mgmt.

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Post ID: @8zkg+1qEzN9JW

offshore help (less) desk costs billions not only in direct cost but the indirect cost of putting humanas employees through he-l. Hope the new pres will see this.

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Post ID: @5voh+1qEzN9JW

To "AI will replace IT".

As a current Developer working at Humana, in their case that would currently be impossible across many of their systems.

AI can only replace that which it is programmed to do. People coding AI today weren't even alive when much of Humana's technology (especially mainframe structures and languages) was written. If you don't know a technology or a language - you can't code AI to do anything with it or replace it.

While new development can be done with pre-built structures and AI, program/code maintenance will likely be done by humans (which at times even includes offshore Indians) for a long time to come. Humana has thousands and thousands of programs and jobs that AI (currently) can't begin to replace.

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Post ID: @3dis+1qEzN9JW

AI will replace IT

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Post ID: @3wfr+1qEzN9JW

Add our mostly useless "offshore" IT brethren whose sole goal is drawing things out as long as possible, employing family members, enjoying their 30-60 National Holidays per year, and staying employed at all costs.

Letting that camel's nose into the tent was a gigantic (yet apparently intentional) mistake.

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Post ID: @1jsr+1qEzN9JW

Omg so right. It’s the perfect way to explain Bruce’s whole reign. He was so busy chasing butterflies and wasting millions of dollars you on vanity projects, we took our eye off the core business. DHA, ECOM, platform pipe dreams, even buying Home Health Care business which is a dud. It’s caught up with us now

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Post ID: @1txg+1qEzN9JW

Sounds like there needs to be a muskisizing of upper management.

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Post ID: @dcd+1qEzN9JW

That sums it up to a T.

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Post ID: @and+1qEzN9JW

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