Post #5 - Computers in the Workplace

 I will be choosing the mortgage industry considering I have been a part of it for a couple years now. Within this industry, there are a multitude of departments that utilize computers in differing ways. My team works closely with Underwriters, who utilize Excel, encompass, and DNA, among other applications that allow them to determine and calculate a borrower's income. This determination helps the credit union to decide whether to approve an individual for the loan amount they have requested. There are other calculations that can be done regarding a borrower's debt versus their income. This is called a Debt to Income ratio, or DTI, and it is the ultimate deciding factor. If a DTI is over 50%, there are choices that can be made and changes a borrower can provide that will lower their ratio, like signing a car loan over to another party or paying off a credit card with outstanding debt.

Within my team specifically, I have mentioned before how we are utilizing computer-built BOTs that are meant to mirror daily tasks that were previously performed by humans. We outsourced to a third-party company who, over the course of several more years than we agreed, built us four separate robots to achieve these tasks. There are still many issues with the coding/programming of these machines which require extensive testing retesting and approval to production. We utilize different systems for this testing including a DEV environment, TEST environment, and then the final PROD environment. This is meant to ensure that there are minimal bugs when it comes to letting these BOTs go live. Despite our efforts, we are still working tirelessly to fix existing issues and coding flaws.

A lack of computer literacy within this environment would be detrimental. Every single task and job practice within my field is required within the environment of a computer. My industry is already being impacted by the progression of computers and their evolution. It has only been four years since this department chose to implement robots to do human tasks, in an attempt to eliminate human labor for tedious work. I can see this happening on a larger scale as these BOTs begin to prove successful. Although, I cannot say whether or not the time and effort, as well as the price, have been worth the product so far.