A couple of things. This is still the best place I’ve ever worked, but no place is perfect.
One thing I’ve noticed is that it feels like career growth is limited for people who didn’t join early on. My team has had very static leadership despite team expansion. Health catalyst is quick to call minor pay increases a “promotion.” This is subjective, but to me, a promotion should be significant. Going up a half step in a leveling chart isn’t a promotion, it’s just a natural pay progression. On my more frustrating days, it feels like this is a means of telling lower level employees that they should be happy with the promotion situation, but I’ve been unsatisfied with it. I really like the product I work on and would like to stay with Health Catalyst for a long time, but it is disappointing to feel like my career growth has been artificially slowed based on leveling charts and various factors, some of which are beyond the company’s control.
Another weakness I see is that poorly performing team members get pulled along even when they don’t contribute. As the most experienced engineer on my team, I’ve had to pick up the slack when coworkers can’t do their work or don’t do their work. It’s not that I work with many people like this, but my own responsibilities are significant and I’ve had multiple occasions this year where my own work has gotten put on hold while I spend days finding shoddy and or incomplete work from some weaker teammates. Their performance issues are known, but they get off rather light.
Some managers do a poor job protecting the time of technical employees. A technical employee shouldn’t be on 8 calls a day, they should be focusing on the work. Meetings are not efficient or productive. I spend most of the calls I’m on sitting and listening to people talk. Meeting bloat is real and needs to be reined in.
