Cerner Reviews

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

Noble purpose, good pay, easy to get a job. The developer campus is a more relaxed, nicer place to work.

Cons

The individual employee is not highly regarded nor well-treated. Sure, the benefits are nice, but they'll work you to the bone all around the clock. It's well-known inside the company that the best way to get a raise is to quit and reapply.

Advice to Senior Management

Look at the current practices of software development, things like "commenting code" (instead of the current policy of "no comments allowed in code"). Might learn a few tips.

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

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

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

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

Benefits are ok, 401k matching is good, certain organizations are better than others.

Cons

HR tactics prevent promotions yearly, raises are capped by HR tactics

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

i dont find too many best reasons to work. May be it is healthcare. and moreover its in midwest. Not much growth opportunities

Cons

Not much opportunity for growth. No goood managers. no [roper criteria to select managers. hughly non technical manager and dont understand a bit about technical stuff