A great place to work, as long as you like being the product of a cookie cutter. - Programmer / Analyst Magellan Health Employee Review

2.0
Jun 29, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great benefits - if you're allowed to use them. There is flex-time, for some people. There is work-at-home possibility, for some people. But it all depends on your manager. If your manager doesn't like you - you don't get the benefit. If your manger likes you, you basically get to do whatever you want. That said, 23+ days of PTO is nice - if you can use it. The EAP system is also very nice if you know how to use it, and I have and it was beneficial. If you currently work at Magellan look more into it - it can help.

Cons

It is a very religious environment, and that is never good - unless you work at a church. There is a lot of favoritism based on whether or not you're friends with certain management individuals. They would rather work their programmers to death than hire more of them - despite getting new companies, new products, and having a surplus of cash. They don't pay the programmers well either - most programmers leave Magellan for other places that pay much more. The demand increases and they keep the same couple dozen programmers, who seem to all have health issues due to being stressed and over worked. They'll get more people in other departments but they seem to forget that without the information delivery part of the equation they have nothing to offer their clients to show that they're actually doing anything for them. They also seem to want all of their programmers to have the same skills and be able to take up the slack for any other programmer - hence the cookie cutter reference. This doesn't work with programmers, they're a unique breed and have specialties for a reason. If you don't have a passion for something you may still be able to do the work but you won't be able to be stellar at it, but that doesn't seem to matter. Rather than have a few people who are specialists in a lot of areas they want everyone to be exactly the same. Yet they also want people to innovate and advance their skills, it's a catch-22. That said, there was a change in management in October 2008 that changed the programmer/analyst group from a very functional, vital, and moral filled area into a demoralized pit of sick workers. It's a real shame. At this point in time I can't recommend working here, hopefully that will change at some point.

Explore other reviews about Magellan Health

5.0
Apr 28, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I worked within a team the provided work/life balance. I felt needed and valued and contributed to the mission of my team.

Cons

The company is going being acquired by a small investment group. There has been layoffs which I feel the acquisition is reason to the reduction in work force. I feel more benefits could be offered under the insurance policy such as gym memberships. Or we can receive some form offset for gym memberships and annual physicals.

2.0
Jun 8, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great teammates who went the extra mile for each other on a regular basis.

Cons

Leadership in training left much to be desired. Instructional designers were never involved in the analysis phase. Every project was handled differently. No real project management styles, no instructional design models ever used. Everything felt very unstructured. Very difficult to get access to SME's and questions went around in circles. Some of the worst micromanagement I think I have ever endured. Poor communication, lack of transparency and clarity. Lots of pointless repetition and confusion in meetings. People were frequently asked to repeat even the simplest of questions, yet the questions were somehow never answered, just loads of meaningless jargon. Deadlines were never stated clearly. Abrupt changes to projects on a regular basis, and the changes often were not communicated to all stakeholders. More than once I was assigned to do a "very important" project that was suddenly abandoned and then never revisited, while I was instead given bizarre busywork. Many good people were treated badly and then left. The team WAS fairly diverse but almost every person of color on my team was laid off or else voluntarily left at the end of 2025. The actual trainings produced by my team were often quite a mess. Document control was nonexistent. The same training modules were created over and over, with slight differences each time - but these redundancies were rarely ever tracked, just more and more re-work of the exact same material. Meanwhile, I was yelled at for things I was not even involved in, accused of missing a deadline that I was not told about, and confronted in a "surprise" super-early-morning meeting, for allegedly messing up some project that I had literally never even heard of. To be honest, I don't think I was ever treated worse by any management at any other job I have ever had. I occasionally wondered if I was being deliberately gaslit just to see how I would react, like some sort of sadistic Stanley Milgram experiment. If that WAS the case, I hope they at least got some useful data out of me, because I did not enjoy it, to say the least. I think that was just par for the course, though, because I eventually learned that several of my co-workers had similar experiences - some even worse than mine. It was a relief to be laid off.

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