athenahealth Employee Reviews about "layoff"

Cons

Recent reorganization caused some mistrust of management and fear of ongoing layoffs.

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

There are a lot of changes in both the physical layoff of the office and the operating procedures

Cons

The company has since gone private and had quite a few layoffs so apply with caution.

Cons

Cuts and layoffs without regard to seniority or knowledge

Cons

Minutes after being summoned to a meeting with HR was told we were being laid off. They told a group of us that we were getting our annual bonus at a level of 100%. Come to find out that the company performance has been so bad that we were getting 100% of a bonus that the company was funding at 55%. Which is not a '100%' bonus. There are probably going to be more layoffs since the company is struggling and needs to break it's lease in Watertown and Austin.

Cons

The buyout was a mess - it was about saving a dead company (GE Healthcare) and merging it with athena's industry leading technology. Problem is, the technologies are in two different worlds. Heart of the company is just walking out the door, no strategy to keep folks around, they just let the brain power and experience walk out of the building. The best folks are leaving the company and the ones that are left are the ones that don't have many options (e.g. remote workers). The strategy many of us believed was that by folks leaving they'd avoid a huge layoff - essentially a large portion of the company left after the buyout completed. Removing industry standard toolsets - to reduce costs (took slack away to save money) even though the use of it saved more money. Removed a portion of many worker's income - an offer was provided promising a % of equity paid out yearly, when the buyout occurred, that was taken away without a replacement of any sort, and they alway said 'a replacement is coming', but never did. They tweaked the bonus so they could pay less each year and promise equity which is just a blank sheet of paper - the value of the original offer is not there. Just words to try to retain folks, but any equity is meaningless as the company is 100% owned by a for profit holding company. Hiring standards are low - they are looking for bodies instead of folks who can do the job.

Cons

New investors demanding higher profits resulting in recent layoffs and ongoing expense reduction. Many of the special perks that helped you tolerate the extreme performance demands and high stress are dwindling.

Cons

1. Looming pressure from Elliott Management, an activist investor firm, has ruined the company over the past year. The truth is, although there are open positions at the company, I can't recommend working here solely due to the havoc caused by Elliott Management. They put a lot of pressure on athenahealth to cut costs to 'deliver shareholder value' which will be detailed below: a. This resulted in several talented colleagues of mine getting laid off, including software engineers at all levels and several other positions as well. Unfortunately, for software engineering, the company is now posting jobs and hiring people for positions which I believe could have been easily filled by shuffling (now former) employees into these positions and implementing a hiring freeze. The silver lining is that most of my laid off colleagues (specifically, software engineers) are in the Boston area with strong job opportunities for them, and most found jobs within a few months of the October 2017 layoffs, during which about 10% of the company was laid off. b. The October 2017 layoffs affecting software engineers and subsequent reorganization led to a lack of ownership for certain product features. A lot of extra time has been spent by other teams maintaining these features and fixing bugs in the absence of people who wrote the code and could more readily address these issues. c. There has been a lot more turnover in the past year than in prior years for the company at all levels (though, to be fair, turnover was previously very low, especially by tech company standards; it seems average now in comparison). d. Certain minor perks were reduced (eg, eliminating accessory desk budgets, fewer team outings and company-wide events). While these perks were small and wouldn't drive my decision to leave the company, it is sad to see them go. 2. Health benefits are subpar, but have marginally improved recently. The health insurance now has a lower deductible option while maintaining last year's premium. The dental and eye doctor plans are only accepted by a very small number of providers in the area. 3. Pay is not the most competitive. It's not bad by any means, but in a saturated market of software engineers, there are far better options for those whose top priority is making top dollar. 4. Commuting can be tricky. The addition of a second parking garage has made it so that one can now find a parking spot on-site after 8:45 AM, and parking is free. However, MBTA options are limited, and traffic in Watertown and the surrounding area is pretty dense. My 5 mile commute is 35-45 minutes one way on average, depending on the day. On the positive side, there are some MBTA bus routes which stop near the office, and there is a free company shuttle from Harvard Square for those who live close to those areas. I had been considering leaving the company since the October 2017 layoffs, but Elliott Management's takeover offer in May 2018 is what pushed me over the edge to decide to leave the company very soon. With the path Elliott Management is going down, it seems that athenahealth's days as we know it are numbered. Whether they will take over the company or another investor will, it might 'deliver shareholder value' at the expense of everyone else who has worked so hard to get the company to where it is today. I'm fairly certain that a takeover of athenahealth will result in even more layoffs and basically put the final nail in the coffin.

Cons

Everything about how the company is run now. There seems to be no direction. All-hands meetings are frequent and filled with corporate buzzwords that with absolutely no substance. Genuine questions from employees rarely get genuine and meaninful answers. The environment team no longer cares about providing a comfortable work environment and instead are focused on cost-cutting. Benefits and perks are being rolled back and not replaced. Attrition and layoffs are brutal. Jonathan Bush was what allowed a company so large to still feel like a small, tight community. Since he was forced out, I never felt like anyone above my immediate manager was at all interested in my experience at Athena.