Cerner Reviews in Kansas City, MO Area

Pros

great environment, great opportunity for networking. Also have the great feeling of knowing you are contributing to a great and innovative industry

Cons

Often expected to work overtime....

Pros

Fast moving company that is trying to change how health care uses technology. There are plenty of opportunities to move up within the company and if you don't like what you're doing just wait 6 months and you could be doing something else.

Cons

Benefits are terrible. Competitive benefits is just marketing. The company is more focused on sales than software so if you're in consulting you'll be well supported but if you're in the dev groups be ready to churn out code as fast as someone can sell it.

Pros

They hire people straight out of college, so you don't need a lot of experience. If you manage to get on a good team, work can be a fun, enjoyable place. There are a lot of internal opportunities to move around if you're wanting to try something new.

Cons

Horrible work/life balance and your satisfaction lies purely in the hands of the team you're placed on. If you get a good manager things aren't so bad, but there are teams that work 60-80 hours a week once or twice a month.

Advice to Senior Management

Respect what your employees do for you everyday.

Pros

Despite being a large company, Cerner provides line managers & group executives a lot of flexibility and has very few strict policies. This applies both to how teams operate day-to-day and how your career grows long-term. HR may provide career maps, but it's really up to each person to drive their own growth, find the job they want, and just start doing it -- the pay and title will soon follow.

Pay is solid for the industry & location, and annual raises for anyone not in the bottom quartile range from good to great. Benefits are ok, the health insurance seems a bit expensive when they talk so much about how they can drive healthcare in such more efficient ways.

Cons

The experience is very different from one team to the next: the 48-hour workweek expectation is standard, but beyond that, some people have managers & executives who provide far less work-life balance and support.

Pros

Cerner does an excellent job of "walking the talk" of being a health company. Not only do the solutions strive to promote health, but the associates are able to take part in many aspects of a wellness program.

Cons

Not much to improve on but I think it would be great if the comany was more open to addressing individual associate issues and situations on a more indiviual basis. It seems that more often than not, an associate needs to fit into a predefined square hole, even if the associate is more of a round peg.

Advice to Senior Management

It would be great if there was a greater effort to recognize and meet individual associate needs.

Pros

Aggressive, bold leadership trying to change the healthcare industry for the better

Cons

No work life balance at all.

Advice to Senior Management

Chill out.

Pros

The gym across the street, the healthe clinic across the street, the cafeteria has great food. There is a lot of really smart people at Cerner, so you don't have to work next to morons... don't get me wrong there is a few out there I'm not sure about, but for the most part, everyone you talk to is pretty intelligent.

Cons

There are metrics used to gauge one's worth... nothing really matters except these metrics. With the current metric system, it's all about Quantity, not Quality. Focus on the closes, that's all they really care about. How quickly you close the SR, how often you close SRs, etc.

Advice to Senior Management

Re-advise the metric system, or do away with it all together. It causes serious stress for employees, it lowers client satisfaction (inadvertently), and it isn't completely accurate.
-Stress: if you miss your marks a few times you can expect to be on your way out the door.
-Client Satisfaction: If there is so much focus on getting closes, there is less focus on client satisfaction. Either you're working fast and providing poor resolutions, or your aiming for the easier SRs that get you quicker closes. Either way, spending a ton of time on the hard one doesn't make sense when you have to close X SRs a day, and you only have so much time to accomplish that goal.
-Accuracy: Creating Training Videos, Documentation, Solutions, Quality of Resolutions Sent, Client Satisfaction, etc.... none of this really matters. At the end of the day, it's "What was your average closes per day, is it above your goal or not?" If it's not, it better be next quarter or you'll be on a plan.

I honestly love Cerner! However, the productivity metric system makes me want to find a new employer.

Pros

Pay is decent out of college, a little low.
Easy to get a job. Really easy interview questions like "tell me about a time you had trouble making a decision"

Cons

It is pretty much Office Space: The Reality TV Show. Most people work at least 50 hours a week. Even more if you expect to move up in management. We're talking 70, 80 hour weeks for months on end. Weekends become required. Lives become non-existent. Most of the employees hate their jobs and hate the company. It makes for an extremely depressing atmosphere. You're very replaceable. Turnover is really high. Most of the employees view Cerner as a "temporary" job until they can find something better.

They're desperate for good employees right now. The bad reviews have made hiring good people very difficult. As far as I can tell nothing is being done to address this. At this point I'm pretty sure they're complacent with getting mediocre talent because it's cheaper that way.

However, if you're just looking for a job, they have extremely easy interviews. If you have a 3.0 or higher, a bachelor's degree in anything and can answer hard hitting questions like "Tell me about a time you had a conflict with a coworker", then you're almost guaranteed a job.

Take it as a last resort.

Advice to Senior Management

No advice, they know exactly what they're doing. Squeeze every last drop out of easily replaceable mediocre employees and drop them for new grads when it's all done.

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