I joined Optum through an acquisition, which was scary because I constantly questioned my job security. I was so thankful when I found out they were keeping me on.
But what I thought would be a great opportunity, turned sour quickly. Being fully remote, I had to figure out a lot of things for myself. When I asked for help on downloading software, I was told to "Google it."
One time, after writing and editing five versions of a blog that felt balanced at the C-suite level, while still resonating with non-executive team members, I was publicly humiliated on a video call by another colleague, who told me, in front of everyone else on my team, that my content wasn't "tight enough." Even the coworker I has worked with on the blog, who had agreed with my edits, never came to my defense. It was one of the worst experiences, if not the worst, in my career. I felt the situation was handled completely unprofessionally.
The culture worsened from there. Since that incident, I was barely given writing assignments, and instead told to do boring administrative tasks, like scheduling meetings for my boss that she would show up more than 15 minutes late to, or put me on hold so she could take other calls.
I felt ignored, undervalued, and grossly overpaid for filling out spreadsheets all day. As someone who came from an independent pharmacy, I felt my coworkers thought less of me because I didn't think PBMs were the savior of the healthcare system. It's sad because Optum says they value differing perspectives, but I didn't ever want to give my ideas to anyone, for fear of being called dumb.
It got to the point where even working remotely wasn't a good enough perk to get me to stay. I dreaded dragging myself out of bed, just to walk down the hall and stare at a computer screen, hoping I would get work that was challenging and exciting, rather than a tedious copy and paste task.