Good coworkers but upper management refuses to improve company
Pros
Meditech has a solid work/life balance. I rarely had to work more than 40 hours per week or any nights/weekends. I also found it to be low pressure, as my specific team rarely had pressing deadlines. All of my coworkers were friendly and eager to help each other out. Lower management (supervisors/managers) were helpful and good at their jobs, but unfortunately don't have much sway when it comes to advocating for their employees. The health insurance was solid and covered 85% by the company.
Cons
Pay - It is well documented that the pay is far below industry standards. Even with the recent changes to the salary structure, it will take a while for the salaries of current employees to reach those levels due to raises being given out on a very strict annual schedule. After these salary changes, developers will still max out at around $90k per year with starting salaries being closer to $70k. Not paying developers 6 figures while forcing them to live in the greater Boston area (high cost of living) is insulting. Benefits/Culture - They have been trying to force staff back into the office for months without any viable reason. Perhaps some groups were different, but throughout the entire pandemic, development as a whole was praised for becoming more productive at home. How upper management came to the conclusion that they should be forced back into the office is beyond me. The 401k they just recently started offering has no matching or employer contribution, making it barely even a benefit. The profit sharing trust that has been used in lieu of a retirement plan is a joke as well. After 3 years of employment, my total was just over $3k, and because it doesn't become fully vested until 5 years of employment, I only received about $1500 of that. The bonus has also been waning year over year, and the company no longer offers the opportunity for employees to buy stock that pays dividends. In fact, they forced a stock buyback from most shareholders with little explanation. And let's not forget that the company has sold 2 buildings since 2019 for a total of well over $100 mil and the employees saw none of that while their salaries were frozen (no raises) for 1.5 years during the pandemic. Development - The use of proprietary software is a major red flag for potential developer hires. It takes probably 6 months for a new hire to be competent enough to meaningfully contribute due to the extensive training needed. You would think that this would force the company to put an emphasis on employee retention, but they couldn't care less. The technical skills are non-transferable to other companies outside of the use of Agile development and JIRA/Confluence. The new web-based EHR platform called Expanse was the perfect opportunity to begin moving away from a proprietary stack, but they chose to double down. The development hardware is also subpar (I couldn't even get matching monitors and waited 2 years for a laptop to replace my desktop). Misc - Career growth is very limited. Promotions come with more work/expectations without a raise. Communication from upper management (the CEO in particular) is very poor. Important news is often distributed in small town hall meetings and then left to trickle out to the rest of the employees without further explanation. When the CEO does decide to grace the employees with an update, she often comes off as condescending and patronizing. Upper management is really the main issue at Meditech and they will bring the downfall of this over 50 year old company.
