Pros
Caring about members and working relationships wasn't just lip service; people have good intentions coming in. Healthcare coverage was excellent, but also cost an arm and a leg.
Cons
Teams are staffed far too lean and people were pressured to work long hours and weekends rather than expanding teams for healthier workflow with the ability to spend more effort on the quality of work. The data was interesting, but management's goals and guidelines were vague and unhelpful, as well as sometimes self-contradictory, and it seemed like mind-reading was expected. People who had no business managing other people and communicate poorly were shunted into management positions, and teams are heavily siloed. Managers in other departments that had been there for years also clearly lacked certain basic information about other departments. Information-sharing was abysmal; I was told resources I asked for that were necessary to do my job didn't exist (such as data dictionaries, data warehouse guidance, etc.), did exist, and simply were in file directories inaccessible to me and not offered until after almost a year and a half of employment. Project management techniques were not a pre-existing part of workflow, and had to be implemented by an incoming external hire with PM experience. Training specific to the job was virtually non-existent, and management became combative or unresponsive when training or guidance was requested. Different learning styles for work projects were not tolerated; employees are told to figure it out on their own, and received with shock and disparagement when it isn't as management expected. Turnover in my department was abnormally high, and talented, hardworking people with niche skills were pushed out or rushed to get out before the target fell on their back next. Internal promotions almost seemed like a punishment that came with an insurmountable degree of work. Teams seemed diverse on paper, but had little impact in the face of an uncooperative management and that high turnover. My mental health suffered in this role to the point of making me constantly physically ill. It seemed like I wasn't a person to management; just a body to churn out product until they decided they were done with me. Management made inappropriate comments about protected classes of people to my face in meetings as well as bullied me and denigrated me in the presence of colleagues during meetings and in group Teams chats, but the only recourse HR offered would have exposed me as a reporting party and opened me up to retaliation. HR openly asked me why I didn't disclose my personal medical disabilities to a manager who had made unsavory comments about a past colleague with the same disability and didn't seem to understand that that would have been a further threat to my employment. In-office requirements ended up being unevenly applied and isolating, as half of teams are true hybrid and being in-office actually didn't lend itself at all to collaboration or learning. I did not feel valued nor respected while working for Healthfirst and would not recommend them as a workplace.
