athenahealth Employee Reviews about "work life balance"
Updated Nov 20, 2023
Found 409 of over 2K reviews
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Top Review Highlights by Sentiment
Excerpts from user reviews, not authored by Glassdoor
- "There ARE some nice perks and the corporate culture is great if you are single in your mid" (in 228 reviews)
- "Few managers are extremely bossy and micromanaging which could make your work life a nightmare." (in 81 reviews)
- "Company has a lot of great (and some not so great) ideas that come down from Senior leadership." (in 69 reviews)
- "wide layoffs last October to forcefully remove the entire senior leadership team in Austin." (in 25 reviews)
Ratings by Demographics
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Reviews about "work life balance"
Return to all Reviews- 5.0May 1, 2015Senior Software DeveloperCurrent Employee, more than 1 yearAustin, TX
Pros
- You won't work with anyone who is neither technically incompetent nor unable to communicate, because they don't get hired in the first place. - Best teamwork I've seen in my career. Engineers work directly with product management and together do great things. - Awesome benefits: a $300 yearly budget for personal items, nearly unlimited free snacks and drinks, regular outings and fun events - The company really values their employees and make you feel important. They spend a lot of money on us. - Meaningful work with the ability to really improve healthcare and people's lives on a daily basis. - Great flexibility on hours and good work/life balance. Some people work 100% remotely. - Lots of opportunity for growth, as the company itself is growing rapidly.
Cons
- Continues to use older technologies (Perl, Perforce) with no sign of incoming changes. - Monthly/bi-monthly release cycles means that you can feel frequently pressured with deadlines. - Development practices are too focused on solving short-term solutions. Good practices like refactoring, documentation, and unit testing are often not given any time. Software quality and development time suffers as a result. - Many managers seem like they struggle with work/life balance and regularly work many more hours than they should have to. - Not much in terms of a technical development track. If you want to move up in the company, you're pretty much not going to be writing code anymore.
25 - 3.0Feb 16, 2022User Experience DesignerFormer Employee, more than 1 yearAustin, TX
Pros
I got to lead projects and have a lot of input into a consumer-facing product. I worked with a great, diverse team and smart people. Work-life balance is great and you can feel done with work for the day at 5.
Cons
I left because I did not see a way of ever getting promoted to senior-level and it was never talked about. I was always told how great I was doing and I got a great performance review score. After I left, someone with less years of experience was promoted to senior-level, so I have zero clue what was going on there. I occasionally burned out because I didn’t have any UX help after two people on the team left and those spots were empty for months. Additionally, I wanted to work 100% remote after reevaluating my life. While I was granted that option for the time being, I was not looking forward to eventually having to be in an office 3 days a week. I left for a role where I might go into the office 3 times a month (or less). There was also memos about losing out on bonuses and raises if you chose to work 100% remote. With inflation, I’d be losing money by staying because I wasn’t sitting in an office doing the same thing I’d be doing at home. Compensation is low. I got a 60% (!!!) raise by leaving.
5 - 5.0Mar 10, 2016Software EngineerFormer Intern, less than 1 yearWatertown, MA
Pros
Athena tries very hard to offer the perks of other software companies. They have a cafeteria with good and highly subsidized food. They offer full time developers $300 a year ($100 for interns) as a dev budget that allows developers to buy things that improve the work environment. Many developers but headphones, keyboards, massage chairs, ect... They take care of their developers by having frequent events such as wine tasting, boat cruises, barbecues and more. The work life balance at athena is the best I've seen at any tech company. What you get done is more important than the hours you work.
Cons
The tech stack at athena is dated. They use perl and have a monolithic code base. There are a number of business reasons to use this technology but in general athena prefers to build everything from scratch rather than using open source software.
- 4.0Jan 24, 2016Anonymous EmployeeCurrent Employee, more than 5 years
Pros
Great culture... Great management team... Work not as complicated as they make it. Relaxed work environment (sometimes) access to the beltline :-)
Cons
Work life balance is tough.My husband gets upset when I have to respond to emails after dinner. We seem to have to fight Sr management to change process. 'We've always done it like that' rings bells
4 - 2.0Feb 28, 2014Senior Product Innovation AssociateCurrent Employee, less than 1 yearWaltham, MA
Pros
It's challenging if you are looking for that type of work. The building and culture is very cool - Google wannabes without the free food, cars, cool conference rooms, etc.
Cons
You get hired into the 'culture' and they have the right to fire you within 90 days. Even if you are a hard worker and work long hours - it doesn't really matter unless you fit in the culture. The culture is quite the geeky type so it's not really for the 'cool' kids. They throw you in the deep end and expect you to figure out how to swim, if you don't swim within the first few seconds, they will push you down the pool on purpose. They basically set you up to failure so they have an excuse to oust you. The management team is not that experienced because they are so young. Most of the people there worked there from the beginning so they don't know how to appreciate a true work/life balance. They think this is the best company to work for but they have not had much experience out there. They hire college graduates right off the bat and work them until they are exhausted. There are all these cool culture perks there but no one utilizes it because you work so hard. The compensation is not that great compared to how long you work - it's comparable to auditing hours. They expect you to stay at the company and 'mingle' even after you have finished all your work for the day. If you leave 'early' (which is around 6:00 - 6:30PM), they assume that you're not interested in the 'culture' and that you 'don't fit', so they'll have the right to fire you.
12 - 3.0Jun 29, 2016Anonymous EmployeeFormer Employee
Pros
Good culture but it has been changing over the years. The pay is alright. CEO is Awesome.
Cons
Pay is not based on cost of living but prevailing wages. Even though Atlanta has a lower cost of living than Belfast, Maine, Atlanta gets paid 10% more. They have no loyalty to their employees. If a client complains then your job is on the line. Work life balance can be hard even though they say that they want you to have one. High turnover in client facing positions due to people being fired and leaving. It seems like the company pushes clients into what they believe is right rather than concentrating on what the clients want.
2 - 3.0Aug 9, 2016Staff Software EngineerCurrent Employee, more than 1 yearWatertown, MA
Pros
The mission to improve healthcare is a great one as any person can attest to the problems in the US healthcare system. The Watertown office is not located near public transit; however, athena does supply employees with a shuttle to Harvard Sq, Back Bay Station, and South Boston. Culture is very important and there is a constant dialog on improving it.
Cons
Many upper management changes over the past 6 months as well as large changes in project management. There's a 9-5 life style on some teams and a 7-7 lifestyle on others so work life balance is heavily dependent on the team you're on. The code base is all in Perl and in need of a major update
4 - 3.0Nov 14, 2020Customer Success ManagerCurrent EmployeeWatertown, MA
Pros
Work life balance is good and flexible
Cons
health insurance can be better
- 4.0Jan 23, 2017Anonymous EmployeeFormer Employee, more than 8 yearsWatertown, MA
Pros
- The people! The hiring process is lengthy, but ensures quality hires who are dedicated to their roles - The company is incredibly clear on its mission and vision and requires that every employee understand them and feel tied to them in their daily work - Offices are spectacular, relaxed dress code - Leadership actively attempts to engage with all employees. All employees are treated as "Insiders" as there is a culture of information sharing
Cons
- Cultural growing pains of a company that just hit $1 billion in revenue - Annual re-orgs, which can be very helpful when certain areas of the company are not working well, but at times they don't always fix what's broken and instead they place undue stress on the organization and the individual - Work life balance can be difficult to achieve without setting boundaries (but possible!) - Consistent lack of female leadership, every seeming step forward never sticks
13 - 5.0Nov 25, 2022Associate Member of Technical StaffCurrent Employee, more than 1 yearBengaluru
Pros
Good experience of working with smart people. The culture is oriented towards the learning and development of the employees. Techstack is good in most of the teams as well as work life balance is great.
Cons
Pay is lesser as compared to other companies