Meditech Programmer/Analyst reviews

- Compensation As mentioned in every other review, the compensation at Meditech is pathetic in comparison to the industry average. I was hired as a programmer around 38k and after 3 years I'm making roughly 45k, still well below starting salary at most companies, especially in the Greater Boston area. The compensation model is geared toward longer tenured employees. Since the starting salary is so low, they expect employees to invest in company stock. The yearly bonus is tied to how much you've made in the last 5 years, so again geared towards longer tenured employees. I hear that the compensation does catch up eventually with dividend payments + the bonus. Lots of good employees tend to stick around for a year or two, then find a much higher paying job at another health care organization/hospital. Pay increases are only done on a yearly basis and can only be in $1200 increments. For what reason, I don't know. - Management You're Meditech experience can made/broken depending on your supervisor. Some allow autonomy and tend to leave you alone, some micromanage and will be constantly breathing down your neck. Some will hound you over internet usage, some won't. Some will go to bat for you, etc... Your mileage can vary wildly depending on your supervisor. -Transferable skills There basically are none as a programmer. Saying you can code in MAT/Magic to any other company other than Meditech is like saying you can speak Klingon. Meditech uses proprietary software at every level, so none of that experience is transferable to any other company except those hospitals that also use that software. - Promotions The way Meditech handles promotions is a little ridiculous. Promotions don't guarantee a pay bump, it just raises the 'pay ceiling' for whatever you make. So for instance an employee can have their yearly review in April, get promoted in May, then will work at their current salary for 11 months before their next yearly review in April. Even then, the promotion only raises your pay ceiling, so you might not get a bump then either, however you probably would.

- Like everyone else has said, salary way below industry and it never catches up. Raises are in $1200 increments determined at annual review. So after your review you might get a raise of $0/$1200/$2400/$3600 or rarely $4800. I honestly think MT expects everyone to buy stock. The long-termers who were doing well that I talked to, that's how they did it. It often outpaced their salary. Or they hit cap on the profit sharing plan. - The annual bonus does not make up for the low salary. Some people try to claim that. Leaving Meditech got me an immediate 33% raise even when I included the bonus into my MT pay. - Raises should be better tied to performance. Most people expect their raise to be based on their performance and group budget/company success. That's it. At Meditech the other salaries in your group are also taken into account. This was more of a problem for the long-termers like 10+ years when the rest of the group was newer. They said it didn't matter how hard they worked or well they did, they'd still get a $0 or at most $1200 because they already outpaced the group. There's a surefire way to kill senior employee motivation. - Getting a promotion doesn't necessarily get you a raise either. It merely raises your theoretical pay cap (they don't have hard caps last I checked). It can be raised but doesn't have to be. So oftentimes being promoted means taking on more responsibility now but not seeing any benefit until your next review comes around. - On that note, advancement potential for those of a technical mind but not interested in management is limited. You've got Programmer > Senior Programmer > Computer Scientist. That's it. Computer Scientist appointments are few and kind of a big deal so you see quite a few folk languishing at Senior Programmer. If management is your kind of thing, there's more options available to you. But for geeks who want to grow in skill rather than clout it's very narrow. - Because the company only hires entry level and promotes from within, leadership promotion seems more like Survivor or attrition warfare than who would make a good supervisor or manager. In areas of high turnover, the one who lasts the longest is usually the one tapped. Highly motivated people who want to be managers/leaders usually leave before they get to that point. - Pay/promotion aside, let's talk about other motivating factors. Appreciation/praise? Largely depends on your supervisor. Sometimes customers will appreciate what you do but not often. Freedom/Autonomy? Again, largely depends on your supervisor. Mine was fantastic but some micromanage hard. Learning opportunities/skill growth? The main reason why the reviews here recommend this only as a starter job. You will learn a great deal in your first years here but after a certain point it will stop. That's the point I would recommend trying to transfer to learn new/different skills. In the same position, once you've learned what you need to do the job proficiently there's almost no encouragement to go beyond. - As implied by the last point, your supervisor can make your Meditech experience awesome or awful. Given the tenure/outlast modality, I unfortunately saw a lot of the latter. This was a killer for group morale, hampered or outright discouraged employees' development, would cause more turnover and oftentimes it was difficult to transfer out from under such supervisors. Which brings me to my last point... - They must be in a state of denial over their internal mobility if they think it's great. Their transfer policies are already longer than my huge entry here but there's no oversight of those policies either. I've seen what look like vengeful sups block transfers of those under them. Those people wound up leaving. None of my cases were that bad but it did take me 2 years to get my first transfer. Trying for a 2nd transfer 7 years in, it was assigned almost a year out (well past a policy that says should be in 90 days) which is when I finally threw in the towel.