athenahealth Reviews

Cons

Constant changes are tough on employees. Less support from HR with new structure.

Cons

Since the "bloodbath" in 2017 right before Thanksgiving where ~500 people were cut things just have not been remotely the same. The feeling you had when you walked around was that everyone was happy and jovial but now it's almost a "who's gone next?" game.

Extremely difficult to retain top talent as they are asked to work extremely way too much for way too long. Some departments I've seen work 12+ hr days because they simply cannot get the work done. I believe this is something upper management (Directors/Sr Managers) need to take seriously because employees will be burnt out sooner or later.

This has been made aware but these Directors are simply too green and not the right fit. I've overheard one Director say absurd things such as "I hate top performers, they always expect so much and it's extremely *expletive* annoying. I'm perfectly fine with a person that just meets expectations." And when challenged he had the audacity to say "Good, let them *expletive* go, I don't care. I'll hire someone else."

If that truly is the case then why would anyone want to strive to do more? Shortly after this was said more than half of the team disbanded months later and are now no longer with the company or moved on to a different department.

Benefits aren't the best.

Cons

Horrendous management, poor prioritization, lack of accountability and transparency.

Cons

Department got laid off

Cons

The only con I have is that I was not able to reach my full potential because the CSC was shut down.

Cons

Athena is a very emotional company with overwhelmingly emotional employees. It seems like everyone has to walk on eggshells at athena to make sure they don't offend someone. It's a very cliquey environment. It seems like everyone wants to belong to a group vs. being an individual, and if you don't belong to a group, you are looked at like an outsider or they just don't even notice you. Promotions are nearly impossible unless you are friends with or kiss up to leadership. I don't think athena really understands how to lead professionals. Their historical approach to hiring has been to hire right out of college. Which is probably exactly the reason for the overly emotional scene, as well as the promotion limitations. I do, however think that they are learning that they will not survive with the non-professional hiring approach. If there is one piece of advice I could give to the employees of athena, it would be "Shut up and work!" :) It seems like when a group of athenistas go into a meeting, they walk in with the mindset of "How can I show these people that I'm valuable?" vs. "How can I learn from the people in this meeting so that we, together, can accomplish or assist in accomplishing our overall mission?".

Cons

Frequent changes to "Strategic Plan"
Often felt under appreciated

Cons

Honestly, where to start? There's so many things wrong with this company. In no particular order:

- Constant restructuring. Organizations get changed multiple times a year. You move your desk multiple times a year. Products get started and canceled all the time. There have been some people working here for over 5 years that have yet to see a project get released due to cancellations and restructurings.

- Compensation may be competitive when first joining the company. As time goes on though and you get promoted 1 or 2 times, you will end up being severely underpaid. Ended up with a 33% salary boost after leaving. I was also paid 30k under other people of the same title that had been recently hired. This is definitely a stay 2 years to get a promotion and jump ship company.

- Watertown has a very toxic culture. No one there seems to know how to use Google to find solutions to previously solved problems nor does anyone there seems to care about continuing education. I've encountered so many instances of people implementing a horrible library to do something when there is a well used NodeJS/Java/etc library to do the same thing. Responses always were 'didn't know about it!'. Literally a simple Google search would have gotten you the results. Watertown also has a huge problem of just reinventing the wheel in general. Instead of using industry standards or software, they insist on rolling their own. Not only that, but Architects, Managers, etc expect the right now versus doing it right. I've had an Architect argue with my team that he wouldn't support us in getting what we needed because we could have implemented the work in an iFrame. An iFrame? in 2018? Get real man.

- Watertown also has a horrible communication problems. If you have to work remotely with them, good luck. I've had to CC managers on emails to developers in Watertown before due to them ignoring Slack messages.

- The holy CTO that is Prakash Khot. As previously mentioned, he's a textbook example of a sociopath. He manages to say a lot of stuff in a short amount of time without saying anything meaningful at all. He thinks he's an amazing architect but honestly, the only things he's done is take the company in the logical direction to play catch up with the technology trends while managing to completely rob the company of any morale and culture that we once had. He used last year's layoffs to fire everyone that opposed him and who he didn't like.

- Ever since Prakash came on board, the company has slowly lost all the culture and fun it once had. It's now more corporate than ever.

- Attrition is also very high. Everyone that's been here for more than 2 years is slowly leaving. The company is losing people faster than it's hiring. For anyone thinking about it, you WILL be replacing someone that left.

- The board and upper management don't know how to manage this company. They had a prime opportunity to sell the company at $160 a share which is way over market value. Instead they twiddled their thumbs and ended up selling anyways at $130 a share. Who knows what the restructuring will be like. Likely to be further layoffs.

Cons

Cafe food good but could use more variety.

Cons

Really poor, unplanned, ill-advised decisions made in 2017 greatly impacted the success & vision of the Marketing org, the people & professional pathways there, and the motivation & trust of its department. Starting with a new executive being brought in with no one interviewing them; who brought no vision, no real talent, and definitely no new, innovative thinking; who became described as 'a cancer' to the marketing organization within 6 months by their peers; and who lacked any emotional intelligence. From there, things began crumbling.