Great coworkers, terrible leadership - Clinical Applications Specialist UCSF Health Employee Review

1.0
Jun 17, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great coworkers who are passionate about supporting clinical staff and providing patients with the best care possible. Mid-level managers are good; they advocate for employees and keep high stakes projects on track. Pension is a nice benefit.

Cons

Terrible, regressive leadership who do not live by UCSF's PRIDE values. The CEO and his ilk love to talk the talk without walking the walk. They're continually mishandling negotiations with unions and coercing non-union employees to "volunteer" in empty roles during strikes (undermining labor relations). There's enormous pressure on non-union employees to be scabs at the expense of their union colleagues. Lip service towards Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is prominent -- featured in every meeting, it seems -- though no tangible benefit is felt by the rank-and-file. Huge inequities exist between management and the lowest level employees (in terms of not only salary and PTO but flexibility, level of respect, recognition, attention to ideas/concerns raised). DEI initiatives are purely performative here -- UCSF doesn't care at all about equity and diversity of experience or thought. Additionally, leadership is currently backtracking on remote work for local employees, clearly prioritizing political relations over workers' best interests. Some teams are mostly comprised of people who live elsewhere in the country (while making the same salary as locals), so this is a wildly imbalanced policy. If you want an employer who takes labor demands and employee welfare seriously, avoid UCSF. Edited to add: a couple of days after I wrote this review, 202 employees were laid off due to the CEO's inept leadership. UCSF has acquired multiple clinics and hospitals in the last few years, despite warning signs that the economy was due for a correction. The people at the top have essentially made the institution "house poor". The quality of patient care will suffer due to their mismanagement.

Explore other reviews about UCSF Health

5.0
Jun 8, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good work-life balance, feels like the work you are doing is meaningful

Cons

Earn less compared to industry, slow pay/job title raise

1.0
Apr 6, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The people that work at UCSF are some of the most intelligent analysts I've ever worked with in 15 years of Health IT. Most are ex-Epic employees with strong backgrounds in project managament and IT,

Cons

UCSF recently decided to reclassify all remote employees as "Felxible" without their input or permission. As a result, employees must now travel to the office WITHOUT expenses paid. This means that flights, hotels, etc. are NOT reimbursed and are paid by the employee. UCSF has not answered to what problem they are trying to solve with this, and refuses to answer how this action aligns with goals such as sustainability (carbon emissions), equity (women and disabled are more impacted by eliminating remote work), working accommodating (UCSF does not have the physical space for all of the Clinical Systems department to be on site. There is no locked storage or accessible workspaces.), safety (there is no shuttle for UCSF to all locations that have been mentioned for work). UCSF limits employee growth, by eliminating actual promotions with "role based work". In other words, you have to do more work without compensation for it. They have also completely reneged on remote management, meaning that most employees are now at a dead end.

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