Cerner Reviews in Kansas City, MO Area

Pros

Cerner's campus is absolutely gorgeous and when your early in your career like myself you feel like you finally got a "big boy" job. First off I don't have a degree but I am close to finishing and have roughly 3 years of experience which they do not pay for. I started out about 8k less then my previous job but took it thinking it would be a professional company with a lot of room to grow. When I got out of orientation which is amazing you feel great about your job but once I got in my department reality sunk in, the managers are crap I mean absolutely terrible people they all were probably assistant managers at mcdonalds or something because not only are they bad at their job but they are rude as hell. Because they refused hire more people on my team everyone was working 55 hours a week and when your only making 30K a year salary your pulling in just over minimum wage. If you have no experience and no other options then work here get the title on your resume and get out like I did this place is awful and I was so happy to leave.

Cons

Poorly trained managers, super long work weeks, if your not in IT you are basically trash.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay people for experience and hire managers that actually know how to manage and motivate people not just slobs that have been at the company a few years.

Pros

Noble effort to help people through health care applications
Many colleagues who are cordial and skilled

Cons

Health care plan is terrible
Middle management doesn't seem to be well-trained in managing people
Upper management doesn't appear to care about high turnover
Mysterious unwritten rule to work nearly 50 hours or more each week

Advice to Senior Management

Train middle management and begin to care about high turnover, which is hurting the company

Pros

stable employment
young, energetic workforce
depending on job role, ability to work remote

Cons

they will work you until you burn out
lower compensation compared to other companies
you are easily replaceable

Advice to Senior Management

For what it is, Cerner is a pro at what they do. They know that there are tons of collecge graduates looking for work and Cerner will work you until you fall over and then they will replace you without any second thoughts.

Pros

Gain Skills, Have a job, Meet lots of young people, Foot into IT industry, Extensive Training Program

Cons

Expected and necessary to work 50 -70 hour weeks, underappreciated, incompetence of management, Benefits are terrible and way too expensive (the gym and clinic are bull and don't mean crap for someone who actually was born with medical conditions), Job facts were grossly misrepresented and when questioned anything got smacked down hard by HR (Pay and Travel considerations), Good people work here but because everyone is getting screwed so badly most of them are not happy, If you are married or have a family then run from this place as fast as possible because they will all forget who you are after you start your tenure at Cerner ****My advice is to only work here if you have no other options. If you did start then put in your year in to learn about how to work in a corporate setting and get a year of experience in IT Consulting (lots of opportunities elsewhere). Now you can finally leave this nightmare. Go get a job that will pay and appreciate your commitment.****

Advice to Senior Management

Stop taking advantage of new college graduates, pay people for what the job requires because 70 hour work weeks for 42k is crazy, respect people and the fact that they may want to have a life out of the Cerner cult world, be plain and straightforward to employees rather than secretive and misleading about pay and what each position will require.

Pros

Health Care Benefits, Clinic, Free Gym

Cons

HR does not care about how management treats employees. Management can basically speak to you any type of way with no reprocussions. If you ask a question about something that you don't know often times you will here "go find out". There is no real training. Managers are allowed to provide feedback for employees, but employees are not allowed to give annual review feed back on management.

Advice to Senior Management

Really listen to complaints, don't just throw it under the rug. Allow employees to review managers during semi annual and annual review.

Pros

Onboarding for new employees is very comprehensive and informative

Cons

Work a lot of hours

Pros

Amazing Health Benefits
Average Pay
Amazing atmosphere

Cons

Not a big name company

Advice to Senior Management

Continue the Great work

Pros

Cerner is a great place to start right out of college since they invest a lot of effort in training each associate. They provide a very comprehensive benefits package that rewards healthy choices and encourages you to take control of your health. There are loads of teams doing all kinds of different things, so if you don't like what you're doing at first, you can bet some other team has something you'd be interested in.

Cons

One of Cerner's mantras (and they have MANY) is "Word Hard, Play Hard". They certainly have the work portion down. Sadly, the playing doesn't happen very often. Don't plan to work a standard 8-5 workweek and advance very quickly. Cerner mainly rewards those that pour their entire life into working. On that same note, each team has a wide range of career velocities, some promote very quickly (usually the ones with high turnover) and others very slowly.

Advice to Senior Management

Provide more rewards for meeting deadlines. Find ways to prevent burnout. Consider letting people work from home or allow non-standard hours (e.g. 4-10s)

Pros

Flexability with job role, and time off.
Great Atmosphere
Good Learning Opportunities
Everyoneone is wililng to help each other learn.
Amazing training programs.
Paid Hollidays and vacations.
Corporate Phone Paid (Some Roles)
Great Benefits (on site gym, health clinic)
Work from home
The atmosphere here at wold headquarters (and Oaks Campus) is fast and young!
Cerner hosts many annual events to keep both the community and employees involved and aware! From the First hand 15k to the Monthly socials at each of the campuses. Cerner provides a work hard play hard atmosphere.
The training program at Cernerworks is world rated (22nd best in the WORLD!) I definately learned a lot and enjoyed my time in velocity and my rotations!

Cons

Some Roles require overtime
Heath benefits change frequently

Pros

You will be given good work experience early in your career
Fast paced and sometimes fun environment/ people to work with
It's a job and it's a recession

Cons

Here's my honest advice and I speak more to those who are young in their careers: If you're just coming out of school there's not a lot of opportunity right now so it's not bad to take it if you can get it. Just expect to be replaceable, overlooked, overworked, underpaid. This sounds ok now, but after a year or two it becomes painful. It's a good place to learn consulting skills that will one day help you further along in your career. Just be warned that there will be a moment when you look around, realize how screwed you are, and then accept that they've already got you cornered and there's no way out. You WILL make bad money and you WILL have to do your job or get fired. This time comes for almost everyone and for the few who stick it out, great, but i still made 30k more the day i walked out the door so way to stick it out. What becomes most demoralizing is Cerner isn't a consulting company that works with their clients . . . they typically work against their clients. The client will request something easy, I can do it, but Cerner will block unless they fork over tens if not hundreds of thousands for the "work" that is already built and I could do in 2 hours. It's hard to keep up this attitude when I'd still view consulting as the client comes first so make them happy with the small stuff.

Cerner is essentially a bankrupt system, the turnover is so high and often that unfortunately you are replaceable. The implications of this are much more disconcerting. You are staffed indifferently and no consideration is given to previous work or accomplishments until you get a few years in. Until that point your manager's manager's manager will place you on assignments and not really know the workload involved because he only got the job because he was the oldest (seriously if you started at Cerner within the past 3 years you're now a manager although no notice of personality/experience/etc. are involved.) If you say, my 50k a year salary doesn't allow me to work 70+ hour weeks every week and i want a life, their response is essentially to go somewhere else. The healthe clinic is nice until you need any medications that aren't 10 years old and have come out as generic, then enjoy the $120 a month to pay for the meds you need, also goodluck in the winter because they're too cheap to hire more doctors, i've had to wait 3 days to get an apt when I knew i had bronchitis and just needed the meds . . . but hey there's a basketball court on campus right? (basically everyone gets caught up in the bells and whistles and completely forgets they're getting screwed if asthmatic, hypertension, diabetic, etc.) I assume based on the descriptions in the positive reviews they are from newbies who are still drunk off the company cool aid and haven't made it out of training yet. And that's ok, I wish I could say I felt as strongly about Cerner as I once did. But it's a system designed to ship you in, burn you out, then throw you away.

Advice to Senior Management

You have a billion dollars of excess capital but still underpay your associates significantly . . . lets take .2% of that and distribute it to your consulting org. Has anyone considered that happy employees up productivity significantly? Which might just help client satisfaction and referrals? Which might help Cerner get a slight leg up at competing with EPIC who is winning about 75% of the contracts on the market but has just as low of client satisfaction as Cerner? Maybe? A market niche? No seriously no one ever considered this did they? Crickets . . . yep sounds like Cerner.