Thread regarding Cigna layoffs

Really great conversation. There's more insight here than anything I've heard in the past few years. Agile can work but it's been a disaster at Cigna, fostering mostly complacency. Even before Agile, Cigna IT was a slave to too many people in leadership positions who never should have been promoted. Agile made it so much worse, slotting people into the Agile positions regardless of their skill set, especially the Product Owners not really driving innovation for the businesses and everyone else just showing up to get through the Agile busywork and then do what they've always done.

So many comments here nailed the issues. The current Agile model doesn't bridge the gap between tech and business, and the few SMEs who take initiative to provide clear requirements and feedback, UAT, training, and documentation that can actually be utilized by end users are overworked and underpaid. There is a huge need for new official roles to coordinate between business and technical teams instead of taking these rare employees for granted.

Offshore contractors have access to prod and can test. Engineering teams keep quiet about this.

@dr+1jrv2s094

It's a shame that Cigna has largely cut (on shore) testing resources who used to be SMEs in their business areas. Business testers are better than no testing, but still should not be relied upon to catch everything. That's what IT quality analysts provide, particularly when they are embedded in the business processes. Sigh. It's a dying art for Cigna. To their detriment.

"Also testing is done using these same people who really don’t know what they are doing. End result a product the end user hates"

This was an amazing point. I was arguing with a PM last week who was trying to get on offshore contactor team to test an application we developed. Trouble is they don't know the business, don't know the product and aren't allowed to look at actual data. I cannot think of a less qualified group of people to test and I refused to do it. I said we need UAT by the people who will be using this day to day with copies of actual data they will be using. One, we need to know it functions how they need it to and two, if they don't have real data how on earth can they tell us something is incorrect? We have just created this arbitrary red tape and erected additional hurdles by offshoring so much. It has been a master class in how not to do things.

Thankfully in this case I got them to agree I was right and it needed to be tested by the users not a random offshore team. It's just ridiculous that it isn't standard practice.

I'm just here to say this is a great conversation with spot on insight. So many great points, and this one in particular "and a culture where nobody wants to own decisions and it all fails", I don't remember when this happened, but somewhere along the way, literally NO ONE wants to take responsibility for anything at all.

I started at Cigna over 10 years ago and innovation was encouraged. Ownership was encouraged.

Something changed. Maybe it was when Boxer left? For all his negativity there was a different culture in technology.

Now band 5 and above are out of touch with no real checks and balances. IT Principals are marginalized at best and laid off at worst. No one knows how to use them.

Directors can talk gud long time but rarely understand the tech at a deep level. SMEs are being let go or are leaving at an alarming rate.

Cigna SLT leadership seems to just be looking at how to save face with the failed "Drive to 2025."

This is how companies die. The board needs to take actual ownership of their failures instead of offload the negative consequences of their failed strategy to the actual SMEs.

They need to invest harder in technology on-shore but are doing the opposite. If you don't have the money to pay well in the US (let alone India) transition to a remote work environment and get rid of your real estate.

Cigna isn't attracting top talent because at some point it stopped fostering innovation. Now innovation has become risky and in that type of environment you will never attract talent.

All of this adds up to bad digital products... yea... no sh-t lol.

In my career I was most always the middle man, jack of all trades master of none. Here is my observation I’ve seen across multiple companies. The business and technology have a communication gap. Business doesn’t know how to ask and technology doesn’t know the business to deliver. The middle men usually are good talkers that get them promoted but in reality are a detriment to quality products. Also testing is done using these same people who really don’t know what they are doing. End result a product the end user hates.

Lack of strong and technical leadership. Lot of current set of managers are non technical or have lost touch over time. With no vision on cutting edge technology and ability to enforce best practices , things seem fine on the surface but rotting inside.
Technical leadership is not the only thing but strong product leadership. No one seems to be innovating anything or Cigna is too big that the innovation gets lost in Silos.
I have known some good leaders in the past. Well , they weren’t great managers and kind of toxic but honestly they knew how to run things.

Agile isn’t the reason why, though Cigna’s attempt to implement Agile was a joke that just led to wagilefall/classic project management. Project Managers shouldn’t be Product Owners, but ELT seems to think that PMs, and DMs and APMs are all the ones who should guide product, but then you get a million middle managers stuffing in their asks, and a culture where nobody wants to own decisions and it all fails.

The problem is Cigna is not a tech company that sells insurance, it’s an ancient insurance company that was forced to adopt technology as time went on. Digital isn’t the deep driving force underlying decision making. You combine that with understaffing and then offshoring IT to HIH, and it’s tough to maintain basic apps, let alone innovate. I’ve seen a few innovative projects, but they always fade away due to lack of investment. Since Cigna can’t innovate, they buy companies that do (Brighter, EviCore, etc.) and then those tech companies are folded in and become anemic like the rest of IT.

There is definitely a talent problem but that talent problem exists largely due to poor work methodology Cigna uses. The disastrous Agile implementation makes it nearly impossible to produce quality work since no one knows who really makes decisions on things now. So you end up with a ton of Project Managers with zero technical experience or capability deciding what is produced by technical teams. Those PMs feed features to low level coders who do what they are told. No one is trying to innovate or build something great, they're punching tickets so they can justify their project funding.

What the first reply said. You offshore IT Talent and layoff the rest - what do you expect?

I mean.... Cigna is getting rid of top talent and hiring low-tier talent at HIH.

Why anyone wouldn't connect how good the apps are with the quality of talent that Cigna is laying off is beyond me.

Rolling layoffs for years based on a plan DP and the board made a few years ago means no job security. Increased risk to job security means you lose high level talent even when you don't start laying them off.