WebMD Health Reviews in Portland, OR Area

Pros

Positive, energetic, stimulating and motivating work environment. Dynamic, agile, challenging, fast-paced and rewarding work.

Cons

Can be challenging at times to achieve good work/life balance.

Pros

Line managers are flexible when it comes to work schedule. Departments have become less isolated in recent years allowing for better working relationships across departments. The people you get to work with are some of the brightest and friendliest around. The people are what make the work not seem like a job.

Cons

Little chance to get significant increases in compensation without leaving the company. The business and sales side of the organization continue to desire more output than can be accomplished with current resources and don't want to be concerned with how it is done, just that it is done.

Advice to Senior Management

Communicate with the ranks more often and follow through on commitments made. The slow decline in individual compensation relative to other positions in the area is disheartening and it would be great if a manager could correct that before it becomes an issue for an employee.

Pros

WebMD is a good brand, and it helps to have them on your resume. It is also cool to see how healthcare tools are used by companies and consumers.

Cons

There are way too many employees with titles like "Strategic Account Director" and "Implementation Consultant" who do nothing useful, have no competence at using the tools they are supposed to help sell but get all the kudos and publicity. Those of us who actually produce deliverables are relegated to the corner. Basically we have too many people who are PowerPoint monkeys but add zero value. As for managers, they are so busy that they never get involved until something really goes wrong.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop milking the brand name. The company's offering is stale and we need to be a lot more sophisticated in terms of the tools we put out unless we want to be left in the dot com dust.

Pros

Good pay and thats it

Cons

No clear direction. There are some sort of discrimination and favoritism. They put interim manager who have no background on particular field. Back stabbing always happen. If you happen to be a contractor then you will be treated as a second class citizen. They will never listen to your advice even if you are right!! Dont work for this company.

Advice to Senior Management

Dont put a manager whk doesnt know what she/he is doing. Put a manager who is pro-people and someone who understand the feelings of his/her people. Avoid putting manager who discriminate and play bias to other staff!!! Or else you will never succeed in yout project

Pros

Best part of WebMD was the smart & fun people to work with, great benefits, nice office space and amenities,

Cons

Company managed poorly, lack of clear communication, hard to initiate progress or change, lack of accountability

Advice to Senior Management

In order to produce the change you want you must hold people accountable to the goals

Pros

The #1 thing that keeps me at the company is the people. The caliber of talent I work with day in and day out is amazing. They are helpful and willing to put in extra effort during tough situations.

Cons

Your compensation will languish if you stay for a number of years. The yearly review process is much more of a formality it seems than anything else.

Advice to Senior Management

Continual (yearly) use of contract employees seems ridiculous when the outlays even for six months is far above the cost of one or more full time employees. While I understand they are categorized differently on financial statements, fiscally it just does not make sense and is a cause of reduced quality and reduced capacity.

Pros

Being in the business of helping people lead healthier lives, and playing a role in revamping part of the healthcare delivery system is pretty exciting all in all. Lots happening in the space.
Smart people, and vast majority are good to work with.
Hours are pretty reasonable compared with other high-tech companies.
New leadership looks promising.

Cons

Struggling to make the jump from operating like a start-up to a bigger company with processes, accountability, clear job descriptions, etc.
Have not had good strategic planning or leadership - tendency to chase the next big deal, wherever it happens to take the company.
Very little career advancement.

Advice to Senior Management

Continue developing a clear business strategy and roadmap to achieve it. Communicate that strategy clearly and often, and ensure everyone understands how their job fits into that strategy. Develop career paths and clear job descriptions.

Pros

The products you work on are designed to help people improve their wellness and make better decisions about their healthcare.
There are some hardworking people there
People work hard

Cons

Not at all a well run organization.
The relationship between the corporate operation in NY and the office in Portland is completely disfunctional
The opportunities to recognize people who are doing great work are very limited. People who have been there for long periods of time are grossly underpaid
Promotions and raises sometimes only when people threaten to quit
It would be really hard to claim they care about their people

Advice to Senior Management

It needs a total overhaul from the top down.
Fix the relationship between NY and Portland
Start showing that you care about the people

Pros

There are a variety of technical and business opportunities to pursue across the WebMD corporation, so it's hard for your career to stagnate. They have a dedication to their employees that is rare in the high-turnover world of IT which is shown in their appreciation events, bonuses, regular review process, the rarity of layoffs and the personal concern of management. At WebMD Health there are plenty of places to pitch in and make a difference, your work will show up in front of customers in a matter of weeks or months which is a nice change from my experience with other large IT organizations.

Cons

The training opportunities are a bit lacking compared to other large IT shops for which I've worked.

Advice to Senior Management

Invest in some solid, enterprise-wide development collaboration software (Jive Software, FogBugz, basecamp, etc) and drive it's usage across the entire organization in order to pull in the silos of Core, Integrations, Reporting/DW, QA, Product and Business Analysts into integrated project planning and execution teams. These cross-functional groups should research, estimate, design, develop and deploy as single project-focused teams which is difficult when each department has their own process.

Pros

coworkers are very cool and interested in what they work on. Truly want to make an impact.

Cons

CEO and people in nyc have very little interest in what we do. treat us like we are part of the problem. senior management only interested in public portal. very negative energy in few times i have had to deal with new york. everybody is intimidated and avoids dealing with corporate due to negative feedback and attitude. CEO was just here first time in almost a year and just spoke about public portal. Indicated we were part of the problem because we were 3000 miles away.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire more experienced managers. get rid of the old guard that was here before the IPO. they are all fat and happy. everybody hired after ipo stock is underwater and management could care less.