athenahealth Reviews

Current Employee – been working at athenahealth

Pros – Working at athena provides a rare opportunity to learn, and to contribute to an organization that is growing like mad.
The company is populated with very smart, very energetic people.
The culture in Watertown supports a creative, solutions focused mind-set.
People are generally more than willing to help each other solve problems.
Great statisfaction from being able to contribute to improvements in application and process.
Sr. Leadership tries to communicate and reinforce the corporate mission.

Cons – The Cons of working at athena are for the most part outcrops of the hyper rate of growth. Creating a work - life balance is very challenging. The demands created by managing the pace of growth and change, simply don't allow for a 9 - 5 work schedule. I wouldn't recommend athena for someone who wants or needs an 8 hour work day.

Sr. Leadership has distanced itself too far from the reality of the day-to-day experience and challenges of the majority of staff. They rely too heavily on a cadre of Vice-Presidents to provide them with their understanding and insights. The company is not large enough to justify this hierarchical distance. It has created a significant disconnect between staff's day-to-day experience and Sr. Leadership's understanding of it.

Advice to Senior Management – Find a way to reconnect directly with Directors, Managers, Supervisors, and staff. Small group informal meetings on a monthly rotation would provide you with a much clearer picture of the challenges folks are encountering.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at athenahealth

Pros – Great work-life balance, highly intelligent employees, fun work environment, and an unlimited number of opportunities to learn more about the healthcare industry.

Cons – Recognition at times, knowledge sharing (because people get so enveloped in their positions), and a slight corporate latter that doesn't always place knowledge and experience over tenure.

Advice to Senior Management – Encourage and reward knowledge-sharing on teams. It's great to have a lot of highly intelligent people working independently, but adding more collaboration will help us become an even more saught-after software/employer.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at athenahealth

Pros – Athena is full of dedicated professionals and provides a positive working envirnment. Athena promotes cross-employee training sessions. There is a free shuttle bus from Harvard Sq to the Watertown, MA.

Cons – The Watertown, MA office has a limited selection of lunch options around the office. Parking lot can get filled up quickly.

Advice to Senior Management – Keep doing what you are doing. The work environment here at Athena is very positive and moral is high. I look forward to the future success of this company.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at athenahealth

Pros – Opportunities for promotion given growth for top performers
Great mission - opportunity to become part of something larger
Caring people that understand the need for work/life balance
Seeing Jonathan Bush speak off the cuff

Cons – Poor mentorship/non-existent development programs
Growing pains - lack of physical space, developing silos; the "entrepreneurial spirit" and flexibility has decreased substantially as "turf" has been built
Do not reimburse for additional education

Advice to Senior Management – Please be aware of the issues that are generated as athena has grown, listed. athena has wonderful, talented people but may lose them (and in fact has already started to lose them in certain departments) due to lack of development programs and clear career paths.

Former Employee – worked at athenahealth

Pros – Strong mission driven culture, great learning environment with lots of smart people. The strongest business model in healthcare IT. Opportunities abound, good investment in developing people and being a learning organization. Metric driven business with great support from the company to deliver results. The company fails gracefully and is very strong at iterative improvements.

Cons – Somewhat unique organizational structure and decision making. Power and control focused on people who've been there since the beginning (can have a family owned business feel). CEO swoops in and disrupts things, sometimes positively and somtimes not. Org structure wastes talent (requires people to work harder than they should because of ambiguity). Does not value experience from the outside - tends to be a self-learning approach, discounting folks who've done it before. Jobs/promotions can be defined around people rather than needs of company or organization - sort of like "making partner" in a prof services firm. CAn be a rat race - competitive, people without good work-life balance win. Upper management is strong and engaging, but the layer just under that is focused on power and control for themselves, not always the best thing for the overall company.

Advice to Senior Management – Be better listeners down to the director level - focus on valuing diverse points of view and personality types. Continue to improve the organizational structure to act as a lever of the talent the organization. Improve clarity. Reconcile espoused values to actual behaviors esp in middle management.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at athenahealth full-time for less than a year

Pros – Good place to work.
Working culture is good.

Cons – Low hikes. Less opportunities to learn new technologies

Advice to Senior Management – No

Current Employee – been working at athenahealth full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – If you need a no stress, flexible work timing environment athena is the best place to be in. Salary is quite good and competitive with the market ratings.

Cons – Web technology that athena expertises in is Perl making it kind of hard for you to switch between companies.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at athenahealth full-time for more than a year

Pros – They have an open-door policy which gives you the chance to talk to anyone in the company even if he/she is the manager of a different team to talk about your opportunities.
It's a great working environment and they have moved to a bigger office.
As long as you finish your work, they are not too concerned about your work timings.

Cons – A small company here in Chennai, hence less reputation.
Harder to get jobs in other companies with the experience you gain here.
Best company if you are looking to settle down with good work-life balance.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at athenahealth

Pros – You have a lot of autonomy which allows for more ownership of your work. The management is very cognizant of work/life balance. The work is interesting and exciting, because you're really helping out physician practices. Also, the people are great, and the culture is very good. People are friendly and helpful for the most part.

Cons – It's sometimes difficult to understand exactly what upper management is looking for when you try to reach the next level. Even if your performance is accepted as above average, it does not automatically mean a promotion or raise, which can be frustrating. Sometimes it feels like advancement and opportunities come in bursts, but when it's a dead period, it doesn't feel like there's anything you can do to show you are ready to keep rising. Sometimes the processes are a little disjointed.

Advice to Senior Management – I think there is sometimes a disconnect with leadership, especially around compensation. There have been a lot of water cooler talk about dissatisfaction with raises and compensation after reviews. I know there are people who have begun looking at other options due to feeling undervalued. They like working at athenaHealth, but they do not enjoy feeling shortchanged.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at athenahealth

Pros – Good place to learn for freshers
Senior people were helpful during training

Cons – Perks/benefits are less when compared to other companies

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend