Pros
I geninuely enjoyed working with my "in-market" colleagues and empowering them to deliver quality healthcare to our patients. In my short time at ChenMed I made numerous professional and personal contacts; ChenMed alumni make up nearly half my LinkedIn connections. Pay was above average for my market (New Orleans) but YMMV as I heard from peers in higher cost-of-living markets that theirs was below average.
Cons
I will split the cons into two sections, cultural, and my own personal experience. On the culture, everything negative you read on Glassdoor is true; it is not much of an exaggeration to say that I feel like I escaped a cult. The daily "huddles" are a thing, every morning you will be compelled to dissect a particular corporate value and explain its meaning, as though you are a prisoner of war held by a Communist power attempting to indoctrinate you. I've worked for other employers that place great emphasis on their corporate values/vision/etc. but none of them ever made it into a daily mandatory ritual where you are compelled to speak in front of all your peers. Non-Christians will have many awkward moments, as the Chen family proselytizes their religion, not in a formalized way, but it definitely seeps down through the ranks and if you don't speak that "language" you'll find yourself cut out of a lot. Regarding my personal experience, they pulled a complete bait and switch on me. Throughout my interview process (no less than three interviews, including with the CIO himself, who was 15+ minutes late and finally joined the video conference as I was about to abandon it) I was told that I would be the sole Field Tech in my market. On my third day at the job while in Miami for training I was pulled into a one-on-one with my new team lead where it was revealed that there was another Field Tech in my market, who was on a Performance Improvement Plan, and I was expected to report back to management in Miami on him and mentor him towards improvement. I was not hired in a management role of any sort, nor did I want to be, and I was not even classified as a Senior Field Tech, so I had no real or perceived authority over this person. It was essentially set up for us both to fail before I started. Other points: * Everything you read about the lack of work/life balance is true. Don't believe the 5 star reviews, the company provided "incentives" for current employees to write positive Glassdoor reviews, going so far as to hang posters around the centers offering a $100 gift card for the best positive review. I see management citing a Newsweek ranking in replies to recent negative reviews; I wonder if current employees were likewise "encouraged" to engage with that survey? * Career advancement in IT was impossible unless you were willing to relocate to Miami. This may have changed with COVID and the normalization of remote work, but it was definitely the case while I was there. * Management is all in Miami and you will find them to be completely inaccessible when you need assistance but all over you if you miss one of the aforementioned huddles. * Pay was above average (see pros) but PTO is well below average; I've never started with less vacation time (two weeks) nor seen a place with as few paid holidays as ChenMed. Expect to work Black Friday, Lundi Gras, New Years Eve, Christmas Eve, essentially all the days your non-ChenMed friends have off, and if you live in New Orleans you'll get to work Memorial Day too because the company gave us Mardi Gras off (less a benefit for us and more an acknowledgement that the city shuts down on Fat Tuesday) and had to make that up somehow, lest we have "better" benefits than our colleagues in other markets. * Didn't matter much for my IT role but the negative reviews about the non-compete clauses for healthcare providers are accurate. Be very weary about signing them if you're in a State where they're enforceable; one of my friends was compelled to move out of New Orleans after being laid off in a restructuring as that was the only way for her to maintain her livelihood absent an expensive and fraught legal battle with ChenMed. I left after three months on the job when I learned the competing offer I had passed on to come to ChenMed was still on the table, an offer I would have taken from the outset (saving both myself and ChenMed a lot of wasted time/energy) if ChenMed had been fully transparent with me regarding what I was walking into with the colleague on a PIP. Lastly, please don't take my word for any of this; greater than three quarters of the colleagues I worked with at ChenMed (on both the IT and Healthcare sides of the house) are no longer there, just three years after I departed. A quick search on LinkedIn will validate this insane turnover rate. If you're contemplating an offer from ChenMed I would highly recommend reaching out to as many former employees as you can on LinkedIn for their take. I have never seen a place with such high turnover and hope to never see it again in my career.
