Joseph Haefling
Developer at CVS Health/Aetna
Joseph found his time working in social care to be very difficult but in many ways rewarding work. He has supervised and organised dances, summer camps, and special Olympic events for those with developmental disabilities. He finds that all of these experiences have helped him greatly in his transition to software development.
Early Career & Interests
Joseph (or Joe, as he prefers) grew up in Tampa, Florida. He’s currently working as a Developer at CVS Health/Aetna, but comes from a blue-collar family in which his father was a truck driver and his mother worked as a teacher’s aid.
Having been a big music fan and a musician himself, the history of music piqued his interest growing up. He decided to study history for his undergraduate degree in a community college. However, he was constantly working throughout it and was unable to complete his degree due to the timetable clashes between the two. At the time, he wasn’t too sure what direction he wanted to take with his career, believing that he would be satisfied with anything.
Hard life lessons were learned through working in banks during the financial crisis of 2008. He worked in the collections department issuing orders to repossess the belongings of those who were unemployed simply because there was no employment available. He recalls the impact these experiences had on him as he made a pact with himself that he would get out of there as soon as he could.
Joe moved on a year or two later to work in the developmental disability community. He found this to be hard but rewarding work and that helping others in meaningful ways was something that really drove him. He would teach job skills, supervise workers with developmental disabilities, and also enjoyed organising events. However, this work could be emotionally exhausting too. He often found himself in difficult situations and was working long hours with very poor compensation.
Transitioning to Computer Science
Seeing his wife completing a computer science course at Turing School of Software & Design piqued his interest in software development, finding that as a musician he really enjoyed the art aspect of programming and the opportunity for creativity. He realised that it is something that would still allow him to help others but with the potential to positively affect many more lives than before. He decided to take this same course and entered the world of software development, first helping the lives of many parents around the world through the development of a babysitting exchange application and recently transitioning to a role at CVS Health/Aetna.
Diverse Background
Reflecting on the multitude of areas he has explored thus far, he finds his experience as a musician, banker, and social carer has played into his daily life as a developer. His background in banking developed fierce attention to detail, “one digit off in banking and you’re giving someone way too much money. Attention to detail is really important.” He found this helps tremendously in software development, where this search for small mistakes can be so important. The patience that he garnered from working in social care was an additional asset when shifting to a very different environment, as well as his ability to reframe every task or problem as he would to those he was working with. He likes to frame things in silly ways in order to remember them and uses this skill to help others over on his blog.
With music it’s all about organising many different elements, one sees a lot of different patterns. Joe finds that it’s the same when working in tech. He’ll play whatever you put in front of him and “make some sort of pseudo-melodic sound”, noting the interesting association between this and moving between programming languages or frameworks.
“[Learning a new programming language] is kind’ve like switching instruments, it’s like, okay, this does the same thing as before but in a different way!”
Programmers are Regular People
“Don’t be scared of it!” he advises anyone with an interest in learning about computer science. He emphasises that he really knew nothing about the field going in and that it sounded much more intimidating than it actually was. He believes many think that programming is too abstract, but when you actually have it on your screen you realise that “it’s more like tinkering with a car engine, except you don’t get any grease on your fingers!”
He wants to let people know that programmers are just regular people, they’re not math geniuses. He feels that he’s a pretty regular guy, sitting somewhere “solidly in the middle of the bell curve, just like the majority of people in the world.” Programming is very much in the real world; when Joe types a command, he knows what should happen and gets a lot of enjoyment from it. He believes many others would too.