Pros
Access to technology. Employees are hard working and knowledgeable. Workload is diverse, fast paced, and challenging.
Cons
I was let go the day before I was to start my paternity leave. After working in the Care Delivery accounting/finance team - I was devastated to hear that I was being let go for a "change in business requirements". No other explanation was given, despite pushing numerous times. In my 7-8 year career at Optum I only had 4s and 5s on all my performance reviews and escalated from a grade level 27-29. In NUMEROUS years of working there i had forfeited 20+ hours of PTO (not including the 40 that you can roll over) in EVERY year. I wanted to be successful and I wanted to work extremely hard to reach my career goals. I always told people "I wanted to spend my entire career with Optum"... I was an instrumental piece of my team working with Optum Quality to build an internally developed software solution for creating automation and reporting synergies for the accounting and finance teams. This was a tool that I built literally from the ground up from architecture to table structure and so forth. I am very confident that my being let go would cause the implementation of this tool to take longer, cost the company more, and be less effective as a tool. My wife (who also works for Optum) and I had been trying to have children for about 3-4 years and my managers were all aware of our infertility problems and how difficult it had been for us. We were thrilled and our company, peers, and leadership seemed so happy for us when we announced the birth of our daughter. Earlier in the 2021 year we had also just finished the new build of our home. Near the end of 2021 I had emphasized with my direct manager that I had been dealing with significant burn out and depression. Coming off of 2 years of the 'work from home' COVID dynamic was especially difficult for me to 'get back to normal'. Throw in the new home and new baby - life was extremely difficult. I find it ridiculous that the 'rhetoric' in all of Q3-Q4 2021 was "dont get burnt out" or "make sure to use your PTO" etc. Work life balance for my initial 5 years was non existant. 55 hours a week. Multiple weekends in the office. We were completely blindsided and simply could not believe they would or could do something like that to our family. I had seen numerous peers all have their new babies celebrated and take their time off work on maternity/paternity leaves without issue. We couldn’t believe a company of this size would be okay with completely crippling us financially with our brand new house and brand new baby girl. In addition to this - despite working for the entirety of 2021, i was no longer eligible for my year end bonus because I was being let go prior to RRP distributions. I was told numerous times that I am "still in good standing" with the company but their actions feel abundantly apparent that is not the case. Since being let go I have applied for over 150+ other accounting and finance positions of which I feel I am VASTLY overqualified for as far as requirements and work experiences, yet I get no traction what so ever on any job requisitions. I even HR Direct and Employee Relations and was simply told there was nothing they could see that was preventing me from working there again. Meanwhile... my wife and I find it absolutely disgusting that people can be let go for budgetary reasons - yet have Summits and TownHalls that costs MILLIONS in travel, catering, and other expenses. She is an Admin at optum and supports high level execs who fly private, get towncars to/from airports, and have meetings around the country that regularly cost 50-100k in travel expenses alone. Yet cant afford a $100k salary for a high performing employee with a brand new baby girl. Disgusting.