Pros
Health Catalyst promotes a culture of working hard and taking care of the client needs, but also allowing employees the freedom to take care of family needs. I've never encountered a company that stands behind their values so firmly before. While the demands of getting work done for a client are high, senior leadership also insists that employees take time for PTO, put their families first, take care of their health. Health Catalyst offers a very generous benefits package to the employees which includes a wellness program and an HSA match. Each employee is given a Fitbit, which if used to reach healthy goals can help lower insurance premiums and also win prizes from the company. Obviously, there are benefits for the company to having a healthier staff, but they also seem to truly care about the well-being of each employee. The culture has helped me to achieve some improvements in my own health so I'll always be grateful to them for their encouragement. Health Catalyst also cares about making meaningful improvements for their clients. I've been very happy to find that we're not just building a data warehouse and moving on to the next client. Rather, we're working with the client to make discoveries in the data that they can use to reduce costs, improve patient care, and even save lives. That knowledge gives me a sense of job satisfaction that I haven't felt at other employers. Leadership is always available to discuss questions and concerns and the culture of transparency means that information about the company, its direction, and even its problems are always available. The CEO Dan Burton holds a special meeting every month to share information with the entire company. The Salt Lake office is in a beautiful location at the mouth of a mountain canyon. There are tons of walking trails and excellent restaurants nearby. Health Catalyst employees have formed hiking clubs and other outdoor activities that take advantage of the nearby trails.
Cons
Health Catalyst almost entirely uses their own technology stack. Most of these are front-end applications that use the Microsoft SQL Server stack. This makes a lot of sense for the client, but it adds some complexity for new employees that must learn new tools. It also makes it hard to learn skills that will transfer to other jobs. The ETL tools that Health Catalyst are very functional and use SSIS in the background, but most employees won't ever actually touch SSIS. This can be frustrating when you need to perform a task that is easily done in SSIS but not available in the Health Catalyst tools. The data warehouse design is also unique to Health Catalyst. You won't find Inmon or Kimball design methodologies here. Again, the Catalyst method works very well for the clients (and for healthcare especially) but it requires even experienced data architects to learn a new method and doesn't teach a modeling methodology that will transfer well to future employers. It is not uncommon to hear negativity regarding Inmon and Kimball's modeling methods which can upset clients that don't understand why we won't support them.
