The Foundation
Swipebetween chapters.Chapter01/14
The Foundation
Swipebetween chapters.Chapter01/14
1991 — 1998 · Health Insurance
Systems Analyst, Developer, Health Claims Processor
I came to Prudential through my mother, who worked there for years; for a while we even shared an office. I started nights paying dental claims, left for a bit, then came back full time paying medical ones. I had been writing code on a TRS-80 Color Computer since I was about ten, so I watched for a systems job the whole time I was there. When one finally opened I applied, and I got it — at their headquarters, at twenty years old.
I came in as a QA analyst and worked my way toward engineering from there. The timing was ideal: I saw the very beginning of enterprise web development from the inside, and they gave me all the training I needed to start the career I had wanted since I was a kid. I'm extremely grateful for it.
I worked Y2K there as well, writing the test plans and then executing them, from early 1996. We started early enough that the grind everyone remembers never arrived for us, and I got to watch from the inside why the date itself turned out to be a non-event. The problem was real. It got fixed because people fixed it.
Shipped the health insurance industry's first web-based benefits management system in 1997, working with Oracle, Netscape, Sun Microsystems and a team of four analysts
It let members review their claim history, search for doctors on their plan, add beneficiaries and order ID cards — everything you would expect from a health insurance website, in 1997
Worked closely with clients including Cincinnati Bell, Johnson and Johnson and PSE&G to shape the product with them and integrate it with their internal systems
Wrote and executed the test plans for Y2K remediation, working on it from early 1996 — early enough that the crunch everyone else remembers never arrived
Spent three years as a teenager processing health and dental insurance claims, then moved into systems at Prudential's headquarters at twenty years old
Came into engineering through QA, developing test plans and running quality assurance on changes to the claims systems
Worked as a liaison between business units and programming staff, specifying changes and enhancements to the claims systems
Built reports on the production and quality of 48 claims offices across the United States, used in the analysis behind their consolidation into 4 regional centers