Failed Management please change or move on - Engineer Seattle Children's Employee Review

The ever ongoing bungles of this upper management regime just keeps piling up but one can only take so much toxic, unprofessional, and short sighted behavior from one’s employer. I’ve lost count of the number of managers I’ve cycled through while on the same team and the times teams have been left floating on their own without any kind of leadership or direction, even when we have been asking for leadership to do their jobs. When Management does decide to show themselves - it rarely helps resolve any of the concerns we bring up (budgets, strategy, security concerns, etc). If anything - they just pop up occasionally to stir the pot and create more issues (in a “look what I can do” style) or to try to cover up some issue that finally did bubble into view which could have been avoided if they had *just* listened to their experts and empowered them to do their jobs. It is problematic how adamantly this CEO/CDIO is set on outsourcing IT no matter the cost to loyal employees, patients, and families. This will not end well for anyone involved, not even the C-Suite’s filled pockets. Management’s intentional choice to only look at individual specific vendors rather than a bake-off really doesn’t seem to fit the alleged “need” to save money. It definitely has an air of “back scratching” and individual kickbacks for those left after the flames consume there rest of us. The contracts will be poorly written (just as we have seen time and time again with current vendors), and SCH will be left broken and/or nickel and dimed to death. It makes even less sense when one of those vendors is projected to file for bankruptcy within a year and is outsourcing all of their acquired talent at a rapid pace. This “plan” doesn’t set up our Doctors, Families, and Patients for a good or successful experience. Many on the medical side are not happy about the possibility of their interactions with IT worsening more than they already experience today. Many refuse to contact the Service Desk for help since our outsourced service desk already took a bad experience and made it worse. Unqualified leadership was covered broadly in other reviews, but a specific one to be called out is the fact that a completely non-technical Director for IT Services and Infrastructure was hired, when the job description clearly states that the position should be held by someone capable of being a technical reference. This Director has self-admitted that they only have experience in contract and vendor management, no technical background. You can’t effectively lead a technical team or even make informed decisions to outsource a technical team’s work if you don’t understand what they do. This also applies to the CDIO. The technical experts aren’t even being allowed to help in vetting these vendors capabilities or correctly describe the work that we do properly, even though we’ve asked to be involved from an objective standpoint. There is no way in reality that this will be able to be deemed a success if it happens. How will a Director of Infrastructure with only vendor management qualifications lead if the outsourcing doesn’t end up happening? Will the faux IT Director be replaced? Or is upper management already decided to make it happen no matter the likely consequences? This is just one of many red flags that all of this “feasibility study” business has been a farce in bad faith from upper management the entire time. All the evidence points to outsourcing having had been decided upon a long time ago and that it is already deemed a success just as other failed outsourcing efforts have been handled (Service Desk and EPIC). Management also have already done several rounds of position eliminations that were done in an incredibly careless manner. It was terrible for those who were let go, but also for those left behind to pick up the pieces. In Management’s own words “positions have been eliminated to align the team size in preparation for expanded managed services” which has helped cement general consensus that outsourcing was already rubber stamped many many months ago. Speaking of saving money, IT keeps doing it every year above what’s asked but we never get real recognition for it - just the consistent threat of being outsourced and demand of quadrupling the money savings ask. Maybe they could stop resorting to travel nurses and bleeding money there. Maybe the C’s could do with a little less bonuses, flights, conferences, retreats etc. Might help you think for yourselves rather than following the current C-Level quick money grab trend of outsourcing that has been a failure for most places. It can’t be expected that a MSP would be able to provide a white-glove experience that is often a requirement of medical/research industries at any kind of cost savings. Remember, we are trying to save lives here. The contracts will be poorly written (just as we have seen time and time again with current vendors), and SCH will be left broken and/or nickel and dimed to death. We in the rest of IT already don’t get compensated as much as we could if we went to work at for-profit places but we stay because we believe in and care about the mission even after having been told we kill children with our salaries on multiple occasions.