Pros
Interesting work, good benefits overall. I love the mission statement and contributing to the health in the communities Sentara serves.
Cons
Ineffective communication -- no instant messaging among IT to share and collaborate. Everything is over email and meetings, if you come from a much more collaborative organization this is a big change. Everyone is siloed and not communicating well with what other teams are doing, resulting in some overlapping work or responsibilities. They recently began switching to using Teams since they had the Microsoft Cloud licenses for their use, but it's 2023 and many younger employees are used to IM and chat type tools to cut down on email. Not an agile organization. I understand healthcare is highly regulated and things have to be checked and audited, but they basically have the waterfall method of doing IT type work. Where ideas and demands get written down and then approved or considered, it takes another week or several months to figure out what to do, and then things get worked but by the time it gets back to the business things have changed. Even if things have to be audited, it could be faster. Little room for growth --- there is a continuing education program at Sentara, but the programs are mainly for completing a Masters instead of technical certifications in IT. I wish there were more opportunities for training on various systems or some of the tools we have at Sentara.
