Thread regarding Centene Corp. layoffs

@5v7: Agree wholeheartedly. !!!

@5v5 Totally agree. You’re right to call out that both sides make assumptions. We all know it’s rarely malicious, but it’s exhausting when we don’t stop to clarify intent, logic, or downstream impact until we’re deep into UAT (aka too late).

You’re right: it shouldn’t be a game of “Simon Says” or “gotcha” but when the BRD does spell it out and it’s still missed, that’s when it gets maddening. And on the flip side, when something is so fundamental that it feels like it goes without saying, but still gets misinterpreted… also maddening.

At the end of the day, BTS can’t pretend we’re just ticket-takers, and the business can’t assume we’re mind-readers. It has to be a collaboration - early, often, and curious.

Let’s normalize asking: “What do you mean by that?” Even when it feels obvious. Especially then.

@4xr - There are assumptions made on both sides about who understands what and at what level of detail.

BTS assumes the business knows what it means from a systems perspective, but that very same requirement can mean something entirely different for a business owner. Nobody checks until the code is done.

I only wish I had a dollar for how often I’ve heard “that wasn’t in the BRD!”

Do I really have to play a game of gotcha?

Do I need to look at requirements and try to think of EVERY CONCEIVABLE WAY this could be misinterpreted just so we don’t get sc--wed during UAT when inevitably there is no time left to fix anything?

It’s like a shell game with requirements. Might as well label it a game of “Simon Says” because if I didn’t include one phrase in a requirement because it seems so fundamental then I get the “Nope! LOL. It’s not in the BRD so Simon didn’t say!!”

I hear the frustration but we need people to lean in on both sides. You shouldn’t assume I know how the code works, and I can’t assume you know how core pieces of business function.

@4xr you’re one of us. You see it the way we do. Welcome aboard. We like you.

@4k1 look at this standard reply - diverting attention. Yall see this? “You have a point I can’t refute so let me go for grammar”

So let’s assume I laid off the caps. What would your response have been? Or would it have been silence?

BTS here - And let me say what a lot of us are too burnt out to keep repeating: Operations doesn’t know sh-t. Requirements come in half-baked, vague, or flat-out wrong. Or you blindly approve BRD’s with incorrect requirements. The amount of rework we do is unreal. I shouldn’t find out during UAT that you wanted a line level denial vs a claim level one. It was in the BRD. It clearly started - APPLY CLAIM LEVEL DENIAL.

And lately? Business leadership is greenlighting massive projects (👋 Duals!) without even engaging health plans. No reviews, no approvals, no UAT sign-off. Just “go configure it like one contract” - like we didn’t all pass 6th grade and know Medicare Medicaid. You still need to generate encounters. You still need to follow state rules. Just because CMS doesn’t deny it doesn’t mean the state won’t. Come on.

But the best part? The same people who can’t write a coherent user story will @ me five times for a story status when you could literally search it yourself. Especially when your request impacts 7 claims a month and somehow you still expects top priority. If I had a dollar for every time someone emailed me about a Jira story they could've just looked up themselves, l'd fund a full-time training program on basic tool usage.

That said - yeah, some POs are trash. People rolling out “modernized” systems with less functionality than what existed before, just because they never bothered to understand the actual need. You don’t need to mimic the old thing - just ask the business what they want tomorrow to look like. Wild concept, I know.

And please… don’t IM me asking where to find a procedure code description. You have Google. Use it.

@47n I'm proud of you for letting off the caps lock.

@3q3 👁️👁️

@3q3 wanna dance? 💃🏻

@3mz You mad bro?

I mean they weren’t
And then they were
And then something about 3 French hens 2 turtle doves and a dozen things in a pear tree.

Understandably so.

Can yall play nice? BTS replier has half a bakers dozen directors reaching out to them in the past week. They ARE CLEARLY going through our frustrations too.

Someone from BTS replied who has a perfect PO and is offended the responses aren’t going in their favor. Even though this situation doesn’t affect them but perhaps their experience is going better than the rest of us are going through?

Lol.

HEY GUYS! Damn I thought this thread died down. Apparently not. Wassasssup

“On a high performing team, where our PO does a solid job of understanding most of the who/what/when across a wide spectrum (and does do the UAT). I hate being a team with no upward mobility whatsoever, but perhaps it's better than what most of the replies are going through?”

THAT YOU? CLEARLY THIS DOES NOT RELATE TO WHAT OP AND OTHERS ARE COMPLAINING ABOUT BUT LETS WATCH YOU GET OFFENDED.

desperate for attention much? Stay OUT of it if it doesn’t apply. I mean HOW DESPERATE FOR ATTENTION ARE YOU?????

“So guys hey guys this doesn’t apply and let me end my response with a question to seem relatable. Guys. Guys? Hey guys? HEY GUYS I got my participation trophies!”

GOOD FOR YOU THAT YOU HAVE A SOLID PLACE.

Guess you can just get out of this conversation cause your replies aren’t really resonating with what we’re going through?

@3mx 😂😂😂😂

@3kk summarized your responses for ya:

“This clearly doesn’t apply to me but I need attention so let me share my experience that doesn’t apply here to what others are talking about”

Also: https://giphy.com/gifs/throwingshade-tv-land-tvland-xUA7aKBLGjQepNy6PK

@3kk this isn’t teams. Don’t try to external link gifs. Id--t

@2yf RE: "Stop relying on the PO for the answers then and try talking to operations. Oh wait that’s right. You can’t. If your PO is great then get the fu-k out of this thread and stop taking it so personally that folks in your area are causing problems"

I can, and I do. I have 2 separate Directors in Ops reaching out to me personally over the past week and no less than a half dozen from various states over the past few months.

Also: https://giphy.com/explore/calmer-than-you-are

@2za I like people like you. I really do.

@2za+1jtwgqsgg can I? God knows I’d love an answer.

@m2 institutional knowledge

@2ca here wassup? Are POs gatekeeping you from DEV because you can hit me up on teams and I will get you an answer? Maybe my org is different I won’t say what but we treat business like customers that fund our work.

“BTS here - I was the one who replied that my PO was pretty solid.”

Stop relying on the PO for the answers then and try talking to operations. Oh wait that’s right. You can’t. You’re not allowed to cause your PO will have a fit over it. If your PO is great then get the fu-k out of this thread and stop taking it so personally that folks in your area are causing problems.

@2r8+1jtwgqsgg

“So innocent”

BTS here - I was the one who replied that my PO was pretty solid.

Full disclosure: (without completely giving up who my team is) unless you're the business side of the UAT or the original requestor, we don't always know who is/isn't effected downstream.

Piggybacking off OP - POs giving us updates on the tickets we made is all fine and dandy... But if that’s all we’re getting then POs are worthless to us because we can go look that up ourselves.

Our PO does not communicate when there are changes that affect our team that we need to know about. If dev or even another team catches something that is being updated/fixed that impacts US (that our PO knows about) then we NEED to know about it. FFS.

OP here. Thank you for the responses. It appears I am not alone in how I feel. We can let this thread die down now.

Take the survey (I suspect some bad ones in BTS are the ones telling us not to cause they don’t want to be exposed…) Make sure you add your comments because some of BTS is amazing and helpful. But the POs make it very hard to see that so look for them and think of them.

POs… the following is for you bad ones… if you close a ticket you weren’t supposed to close - you should resubmit it and give ops the new ticket number to track. Your dainty little fingers can do that instead of shoving it on ops to fix YOUR SC--W UP.

You should be involved in QAT and UAT. You can’t “own” a product unless you understand it from both the dev side and ops side. And you need to listen to what we (ops) have to say. If you’re gonna be a middle man, be that instead of thinking one side knows more than the other.

Finally, please give more context in what you learned from dev in the calls you don’t invite ops into. Stop copying and pasting what is put into Jira and calling it a day for ops. Give us insight. Give us CONTEXT. That means LEARN the systems you’re owning. And if you don’t want to do that, well I certainly don’t feel sorry for you if you get laid off.

Well aware there are solid POs. But boy do the bad ones really frustrate both ops and dev more than they realize.

No one from BTS has replied. Probably cause they’d get ripped apart in the replies.

Understandably so.

I’m not taking the survey. They DO NOT care. Even if you give them the feedback I’ve seen in this thread. They DO NOT CARE. They only care about their TAT and closing tickets as fast as they can.

They have closed my ticket after giving a response I didn’t agree with or approve. And they told me to make another ticket. Why should I have to make another ticket when you didn’t resolve the one I first made?

Fu-k BTS. Fu-k your TAT too. Since you don’t care about mine I don’t care about yours. BTS has no idea the frustrations they have caused our team.

@2b8+1jtwgqsgg This is a great example of the disorganization that is in BTS. They don’t know what they’re doing but it’s on operations to resubmit it when they sc--w up.

All I had to do was open the ticket and copy the info from one window to another. Sure it was easy but it took me from other tasks I have and because POs refuse to do that cause “it’s not their responsibility”

“Hey can you resubmit this ticket for ABC?
Thanks!”

………….

😈

BTS has lots of meetings that do not include operations. This I can attest to. Until they make some kind of change don’t expect a change. And I am fuming right now over being requested to do double work because a PO did something they were not supposed to do. Even with the org they don’t communicate.

And it falls on operations to fix their mistake.

Make another ticket cause a PO one closed something they weren’t supposed to? Oh that is on operations to fix.

“POs don’t make tickets but if we close one we weren’t supposed to yall just make another one. We don’t DO that”

I mean….. I clearly see the frustrations in this thread. Apparently operations has all the time in the world to fix BTS mistakes.

I mean…. Damn.

“Omg - spill the teaaaaa - what products have terrible POs? Product was disbanded in Q4 2023. Most PO’s were RIF’d or had their titles changed to BSA. I didn’t think we had very many PO’s left.”

Omg…. Shut the fu-k up…. The tea is here.. for those of us who know what is going on… omg….. take that survey…. Stop fishing…… omg….. tea….”

Got something to say? Here all day :)

Do NOT take the survey!!!!!!!!!!!!

“Rage bait. There are no POs left. Senior leadership says reach out to your closest market contact; problem solved.”

OP here. Rage comment reply. But the second half of your comment speaks truth on BTS. This part “problem solved” seems to be the typical BTS response. Oh it wasn’t? Submit another ticket sorry we closed that one.

FU-K BTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! FU-K EVERY GODDA-N LAST ONE OF YOU!!!!!

Business Technology isn’t solutions..

Are these comments getting your attention?

So… happy to be here. Thanks for the invite.

You all operate as though business and operations don’t exist.

I mean….

FU-K!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LISTEN TO OPERATIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!! FOR GODS SAKE!!!!!!!!!

business technology solutions is the most disorganized area in all of centene.

They do NOT care about operations.

BSA my product owner writes our stories for us we refine. Is it just me but is the workload untunable? I get dragged in 5 different directions and my stories aren’t traced but they keep me around because I do not have deep subject matter expertise I just know some esoteric sh-t about everything, niche data sets . Who here is building the foundation layer ? Next step member level RLS we can’t even identify duals reliably.

Also , great people.

HOO
HAH
HAY

:)