Neue Health Reviews

-Growth is all wrong. Huge focus on growing the networks through acquisition but no thought to making sure internal systems can scale to meet capacity. -If you are not ex-UHG/Optum/athenahealth, you are a second-class citizen. Your ideas and contributions will not be taken seriously and you will have very limited advancement. -Real lack of ownership on some of the network operations teams...there's been complete failures to pay correctly on contracts or members not receiving benefits for weeks on end because those teams refused to take responsibility for their mistakes, planted their heels, and wouldn't take any action, even when it costs Bright millions of dollars. -The product organization is a mess. They are severely understaffed, don't have any structure or discipline, and have basically been turned into glorified go-fers for the network teams. As such, there aren't any product roadmaps, and most software engineering work is done as reaction/firefighting. -Huge imbalance on workloads in engineering. Some teams work 70+ hours and others redo how deployments are done 4 times a year to keep themselves busy. -Lots of skill gaps across all orgs. There was a huge tech stack shift about a year ago and no one was re-trained. So the same people who are the most productive in the current environment are over-committed and also expected to train everyone else. -There's no operational excellence. Software engineering is focused on digital products while critical business operations are run using Excel and Dropbox. This is not sustainable and there is no plan to modernize. -HR has a nasty habit of rolling back benefits right after huge recruitment surges. There was a huge hiring surge late last year where one of the big selling points was open PTO, which was rolled back in 2021. Recently I heard they did the same thing with stock options. So lots of bait-and-switch recruiting. -PTO, as mentioned, was open but now uses an outdated accrual model, so no one can take vacation until the end of the year (which is when OEP is most busy, so good luck with that). -Horrible insurance premiums and coverage. Probably the most expensive I've ever seen. -Some teams are super toxic and do a lot of backstabbing/gossip. Worst one I heard was someone insinuating that an employee who was on medical leave for a very serious illness was just being lazy. -There's a burgeoning "live to work" culture with some teams...you aren't technically expected to work nights and weekends but if you don't you'll be blacklisted from high priority/high visibility projects. -A lot of critical decisions are made in after-hours meetings or on Slack and are not documented. Yet you are expected to snap to those decisions immediately. If you get snowed under on a project and miss the virtual water cooler talks you will quickly fall out of the loop.

I think part of the reason the people are so nice is because they realize what a crappy situation everyone is in here. While this does create a certain sense of "we're all in this together," that's a kind-of sad club to be in, isn't it? There is no training program for new hires, no onboarding, just invites to dozens upon dozens of meetings to attend, recordings to watch, and throwing you into a job you are not yet equipped to do because there is no one else to do it. While the company describes itself as "fast-paced," what this really provides them is an excuse to exist in a constant state of chaos. Moving at a fast pace when team members have sufficient training and know what they're doing is one thing. Moving at a frantic pace because leaders are completely focused on growth at the expense of employees and customers, including the refusal to pause and put appropriate processes and technology in place to support even current employees or membership, is another. For most people I've interacted with, work-life balance doesn't exist here, and both turnover and understaffing are severe. It's hard to staff up to a level needed to maintain double-digit growth when leadership apparently refuses to acknowledge (or doesn't care about) the reason so many people leave in the first place, isn't it? It's a total vicious cycle at this point, and they've created a real pickle for themselves by not focusing on employees first like good businesses do. Not enough staff--> overwork current and new staff --> turnover--> not enough staff--> repeat. And this doesn't mean providing access to LinkedIn training courses. (While a nice perk, this has absolutely nothing to do with how to equip employees with the day-to-day knowledge or tools they need to do their specific jobs. And also reinforces the company's pseudo-training method of "learn this on your own time.") With the amount of growth in 2021 membership, I don't know how at this point they can possibly turn things around and create an environment in which employees want to stay. Probably requires a leadership change and willingness to listen to and observe what's actually going on in the company... Or things becoming such a mess internally that would-be customers are no longer willing to take a chance on buying their insurance. Your inspirational Saturday e-mails are well-written, Mike Mikan, but meaningless to the hundreds of employees whom you've already burned out, are at their wit's end, and would NEVER recommend that any of their friends or other job-seekers seek employment here. Overall, my evaluation of this company is that I despise the way they do business. It's ALL about new membership & growth (i.e., $$$). No balance, no focus on employees, not worth it. Oh, and the best irony is that the employee health insurance plans offered are the worse I've seen of anywhere I've worked.