Good company to retire in, poor management - Data Scientist Optum Employee Review

2.0
12 Dec 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Flexible working City centre location Lunch provided Competitive salary, best pension benefits Friendly colleagues Good tools and technologies Better than a lot of companies in Ireland

Cons

Company mission and actions don’t go hand in hand. Leaders always optimise for profit metrics even though externally they say better healthcare outcomes is more important. Leadership needs to be better, level inflation is real in this company. Almost everyone is a director (as Irish government gives tax back) even though they do technical lead work. Micromanagement is a real problem in some teams. Leaders have less strategy and timelines are set randomly at times without checking with developers. Direction can also change depending on what a higher leader thinks is important. Lots of red tape so some processes can be slow. No good perks apart from food. Bonus can be cut drastically even if your part of business performed well and there is no reasoning from local leadership on it. Leadership avoids tough topics like bonus, layoffs, employee survey feedbacks are never discussed; not even in townhall. Feedback is not part of the day to day culture. Some teams have it good on this, some don’t. As a result, a lot of people are here for a while even with poor performance. Most just end up moving teams every few years and the performance issues get handed to new managers and the cycle repeats.

Explore other reviews about Optum

5.0
24 Mar 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Very good culture and managers are very helpful, good work benefits

Cons

not much movement or increment

3.0
4 Jun 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Some very talented people give so much of themselves to the company, the clients and their co-workers. I work with (and have worked with) some excellent, smart, supportive people.

Cons

Too many layoffs. Upper management is clueless about how the day to day work gets done, what it takes to make certain changes to processes, and how to treat employees. Some are great. Mostly, they just look at numbers. So many of us have been doing our jobs long enough to know what is needed for certain requests. But we don't get a voice. We just have to do it and suck it up. They are firing ('reduction in force') all of the seasoned staff and let the rest deal with the fall-out. So many teams are losing good people but those people are training their off-shore replacements before they are told about being cut. So how is that a reduction in force? It's just a reduction in payroll numbers. Everyone is on edge just waiting for the next axe to fall. And we have to try and learn or teach another role with less experienced people and more work. It's crazy. On milestone anniversaries, they send an email recognition but once the milestone gets to over 15 years, you are a target. Pay and benefits are fine by me. Raises are practically non-existent, even after layoffs and asking employees to take on more responsibility. that's messed up. They talk about work/life balance but that doesn't trickle down to the actual workers who are so stressed they fear for their jobs if they don't do the extra mile. Many of us are just hanging on instead of quitting so we can at least get some severance. Others are actively looking.

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