Health Catalyst reviews

While Health Catalyst is, on average, very generous to its employees, they lack the ability to recognize and encourage exceptional work on the individual level. With no PTO bucket, those who choose or are required to work extra hours receive no added benefit from working longer hours or not taking as much time off. In addition to this, raises, equity, and bonuses (with bonuses being based on company performance, not individual performance) are given to any team member determined to be in good standing. Thus, many employees are incentivized to work the minimum hours necessary and perform just adequately enough to remain in good standing, but nothing more. The only mechanisms in place to recognize individuals' hard work is through extra equity and quicker promotions. Though these mechanisms are in place, they are ineffective incentives. Extra equity only occurs for truly extraordinary work, leaving many individual contributors feeling this would not be possible in their current role/situation. Though quicker promotions could occur on the individual level, many roles have promotion schedules that get emphasized leaving high performing individuals on a similar trajectory as those whose work is good enough. The only exception to this being those who were fortunate to come into Health Catalyst at a higher level, as experience coming into Health Catalyst is often weighted more heavily than experience within Health Catalyst. At times, I have wondered if my career would progress faster by leaving Health Catalyst, working elsewhere for 2-3 years and then coming back at a higher level than I would have been if I remained in my current role. With all of this being said, it should be noted that due to the current COVID-19 situation, promotions, raises, and our 401(k) match have all been put on hold. Though management is hopeful to get these reinstated, there is no clear timeline or promise of when or if these will come back. It was also demotivating, that in my own experience, the COVID-19 situation left me slammed with work and with more responsibility while benefits and hopes of raises and promotions were being cut.

The company is growing so very fast, which is fun to see. So it's impossible to keep up with this growth perfectly, so we have situations where employees with no managerial experience or training are put in managerial positions which makes it hard both on those folks and their subordinates, especially because the managers are also individual contributors so it's two jobs for many people in that position. We also have situations where people are put into a role where they don't have much experience in what that role requires. These are great career growth opportunities but sometimes we are in a place where everyone is doing things their own way and we lack consistent execution. There was a recent job leveling exercise that many feel was poorly managed and left a lot of people confused and demotivated about their career path. This leveling exercise informed many people that they were being compensated already above the 75th percentile for their job role and would therefore not be eligible for any raises until the market catches up with them (for me this is like 10 years). This was entirely demotivating especially to people who had the mindset "I'll do whatever it takes for this company to grow" because that meant taking on work that was "beneath" us and so when the leveling came around some were pegged into a lower paying job level. Now personally I find myself not wanting to jump in and raise my hand to do whatever it takes to help the company, because to get paid more I need to focus only on trying to do higher value work on paper so I can leave my current job level and hopefully get paid more. With this leveling it was also announced that all salaries will be pegged to the Utah market. This was a huge unintended blow! Management has received feedback on this and say they are trying to come up with a solution. But wow, talk about demotivating. On top of being pegged to a lower job level than you are qualified for combined with the fact that some of us live in areas that are 30% higher than Utah makes it hard to not look elsewhere since the future doesn't feel very bright financially. This isn't disclosed anywhere in the job postings ("Silicon Valley talent need not apply! Unless you want a pay cut and/or no financial growth once you join.") This is certainly NOT the intent of management and I am hopeful that an adjustment will be forthcoming so that not only can we retain team members in higher cost of living areas but also attract the very best and brightest, who often live in expensive places. Our workforce is around 50% remote I think, and there are a lot of places out there that are more expensive to live in than Utah.