Programmer/Analyst

by Danae F. Beck

Part I: Background and Job Description

My responsibilities that come around every 24 hours include the following: ensure the integrity of nightly data runs, apply my level of system authority to situations identified by technicians, troubleshoot with the help desk on recurring end-user issues, liaison with back office professionals at customer and client sites, and interact with the QA staff that is responsible for auditing tasks. Occasionally, I get a day when all I have to do is work on my current list of programming requests. That doesn't happen very often. In an office that has over 70 users, someone is always causing a crisis. Fire fighting has always been a favorite of mine.

My responsibilities that come around every 30 days include the following: month-end processing and its smooth execution (I'm the first call for any problems encountered by the operations staff), the preparation of monthly tasks that feed into electronic filing for year-end tax reporting, the review and installation of off-the-shelf and custom software and preparation of supplemental end-user documentation, the scheduling and management of industry-specific education issues (under the auspices of LOMA, Life Office Management Association, Inc.), and, occasionally, I actually get to write some code.

As you can see, my job description requires people skills as well as technical skills. Those in my industry and job classification who cannot combine these skill sets often find themselves stuck in a corner, writing code, and wondering what happened during the last round of promotions.