Cerner Reviews

Pros

Great culture.
Relatively young co-workers.
Diverse group of people.
Great volunteer opportunities through the First Hand Foundation.
Awesome mission and vision.
Inspiring leadership.

Cons

Don't expect to have a personal life.
Depending on your role, you could work anywhere from 50-70 or more hours a week.
The documentation developer role is extremely tedious, boring and highly stressful.
Favoritism from some leadership.
It's who you know type of advancement.

Advice to Senior Management

Give longer vacations because the amount of work required is overwhelming and wears your employees out. Offer more rewards to motivate workers and increase worker morale.

Pros

There are lots of opportunities for advancement. There is a lot of responsibility shifter onto you very quickly. Good benefits.

Cons

Third party pay is higher in most cases.

Pros

Cerner is a great company for anyone early in their IT career, I started working for them mid-career at a senior level. The learning and growth opportunities are very good compared to other companies I've worked for and if you're fresh out of school and can handle a heavy workload you can move up the ranks pretty quickly. For mid-career people such as myself, you get to work with some very bright people and make some valuable connections. Compensation is decent for the locale.

Cons

There has always been Work / Life balance issues for anyone working for Cerner and the company does try to address them. It was easier for someone with experience such as myself to come in and set a level of expectation on the amount of workload I could take on vs. the entry level people where burn-out is more common. Advice: Cerner will work you beyond the brink if you "let them", set positive but reasonable expectations on what you can handle early.

In the past couple of years Cerner has been growing beyond the scale in which their current Senior Management can handle, in my opinion. With the rapid successful growth of their Remote Hosting Services CernerWorks, the company is starting to have an identity crisis on becoming a Medical IT service provider vs a Medical software solutions provider. There's still is an internal divide over traditional Cerner the software company and the new reality they have created for themselves in IT services which currently leadership hasn't been able to resolve.

Cerner's benefits package seems to get worse every year; while they do have a decent health and wellness program to motivate their people to keep a healthy lifestyle, they cover less and less of everything else, and the cost and deductibles keep increasing. There are a lot of associates that end up getting health coverage from either their spouses employers or straight 3rd party providers which you wouldn't expect from a company in the Medical services industry that even runs it's own clinic.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep getting feedback from associates in all divisions, they are the ones that make Cerner a success. Improve benefits package, find ways to keep people long term by balancing workloads better and allowing more virtual work.

Pros

The healthcare software industry is doing very well and Cerner is reaping the benefits. Cerner's board of directors has excellent vision and continue to find new ways to produce revenue in a growing market. Cerner will grow for years. to come. Benefits are okay. They have an onsite clinic that is free to associates that buy their health plan. Health insurance is good but very expensive to the associate via premiums and deductible. Since the company stock does so well the associate stock purchase program is valuable. This also helps your 401k as Cerner does a small match to your contributions. WHQ and the innovations campus are nice. I never visited the other campuses. They have a health Center at each that are free to associates. To those with kids they have onsite day care...but is no where near free or even subsidized. The benefit is purely the location.

Cons

Health insurance is expensive. I only worked in the development organization, but based on that your career progression can escalate or be degraded based on the organization in which you land. In certain organizations the senior managers are very complacent and are not looking to go anywhere. However in other organizations there are executives that continue to grow their business and strive to move further up leading you to other opportunities.

Advice to Senior Management

Rather than solely recognize associates based on tenure promote those who do well. I am a manager of associates who financially do better than I do but do less and produce less but since they have longer tenure they are considered for level promotions and further salary increases. As well equally distribute the "Distinguished engineer" role. I'm not recommending giving this to a an undeserving associate, but put the distinguished engineers in multiple organizations rather than feed all of them into one org. This would display that despite the organization, associates have opportunity to progress their careers in more ways than waiting on the boss to move.

Pros

Can advance quickly if you are in the right place at the right time. Flexiable work schedule if you have a good manager.

Cons

Some manager don't promote because they don't want to train other people. Some managers don't realize the talent of some of the employees and put them on simple projects.

Pros

Cost of Living is Low in KC.
LOTS of Travel
There used to be many International Opportunities.

Cons

Pay is Low compared to the industry.
Kansas City isn't the coolest place to work.
80 hour work weeks are normal.
Employee Reviews are not structred well.

Advice to Senior Management

Less is more. Stop over customizing the solutions.

Pros

Diversity - Many diverse cultures are present in this world wide conglomerate.
Social - This is a very social environment to work, much like a college campus
Organized - You will know what your position is, this can be a con also, almost like a cast system.

Cons

Cast system - as mentioned above, once cast, it is very difficult to break out.
Work load - 50+ hours a week is the norm
Respect - see cast system, lip service at best

Advice to Senior Management

Pretend you are a small growing company again
Really listen, pretending to listen is really annoying.

Pros

Decent raises
Good management in my experience

Cons

Must live in Kansas City for most roles

Advice to Senior Management

Do not require traveling consultants to move to Kansas City

Pros

nice, intelligent and friendly colleagues who are supportive and helpful. Quite generous benefits package in comparison with other companies. Good training opportunities for most employees but you will have to find time in your schedule.

Cons

Really terrible work-life balance management. They tell you that will be working for 40 hours a week but you end up with over 60 (UNPAID) hours to cope with given workload.

Advice to Senior Management

If you expect people to stay in this place for longer than a year, you need to employ more people to reduce workload for others. Be more proactive to tackle problems!

Pros

If you show that you are motivated to grow opportunities will be offered to you

Cons

If you are virtual you run the risk of being eliminated.

Advice to Senior Management

Provide equal training for the virtual Solution Delivery Consultants as would be offered for those living in the Kansas City, MO area.