Nepotistic, top-heavy - Anonymous employee Kaiser Permanente Employee Review

this is one of the most nepotistic companies I've ever worked for. both hiring and promotion are based not on merit but upon politics, and facetime. management is of the type that spouts geysers of the latest corp-speak buzzwords, largely empty of any meaning, and fail to follow through on any promises. managers show up to work as and when they feel like it, and why justify your comings and goings to the best buddy who hired you, anyway? much-touted employee incentives end up being chiefly for the benefit of middle- or upper- management - for example, performance goals set by management are achieved by rank-and-file employees, who then receive the signal reward of watching managers get large bonuses, while they *might* be graciously allowed to wear jeans for a week. donna lynne is deliberately isolated from the actual ground-level working of the division; she's about as relevant, and about as useful, as a princess in an ivory tower. if you're a union employee, you exchange any hope of expanding your skillset or job role for the relative assurance of a continuing paycheck - although if you misstep, upset the wrong member of management, et c., the union is largely useless to protect you, since they cannot go on strike. all hope of merit- or achievement-based advancement is right out the window, of course, as the management are actively hostile to union employees. and the nail that sticks out, of course, gets hammered down, with metronome-like regularity. let's not even talk about the technology level-- no, i changed my mind: it's one of the most important pieces of the trainwreck. you can expect to try to work on computers that were current when 14.4 Kbaud was a slamming fast internet connection. proprietary programs are either dos or rickety contraptions purchased at truly horrifying fees from outside contractors who in most cases never finished developing the software. IT workers are typical surly, unhelpful union employees, and IT policies are some of the most restrictive and actively counterproductive i have ever seen, and i AM an IT worker. work stoppage issues related to obsolescent equipment failures, obsolescent application crashes, network/firewall malfunctions, internet access/counterproductive firewall restrictions, are not frequent but constant, and are addressed very slowly if at all. and unless you're management, the telecommuting policy is frankly nonexistent. the environment, infrastructure, policies aren't even *close* to compliant with twenty-first century standards. it's a wonder anyone gets anything done at all. the only technology which functions well is the website, and that's because it's both designed and maintained out of california. do you wonder what's wrong with healthcare in this country? look no farther than Kaiser Permanente's administration. too many managers getting paid too much to push papers around their desks and finding new ways to look busy.