Kaiser Permanente reviews

Where do I start? Almost everything's a joke. From the incompetence & cost overruns of our IT dept to all the political infighting and bureaucracy, this place is a complete mess. Apparently this is what happens in a monstrously large organization that's not-for-profit. Most of the senior managers have been with the company forever. They've become thoroughly accustomed to the "Kaiser way," i.e. low quality work getting done at a snails pace through a process of tedious negotiations. Too many cooks in the kitchen, and there usually isn't an executive chef. Just a bunch of sous chefs running around like idiots. It's probably the least empowering environment possible because at the end of the day, you realize that your work has no real impact on the 160,000-employee monster known as Kaiser Permanente. If you're a young person looking to move up quickly, then this is definitely not the place for you. Here you'll be surrounded by a bunch of mediocre 9-to-5ers, and management will ask you to wait your turn regardless of your performance. On top of that, they have all these idiotic rules such as: raises are capped at 10%, or promotions can only be given after a certain number of performance evaluation cycles. They do a poor job of addressing underperformance, and they're horrible at rewarding excellence. And company culture? What company culture? It's just a job. Everybody shows up, puts in their hours, and goes home. That Thrive campaign? It's just a marketing gimmick. There isn't a single company policy that actually encourages their employees to "Thrive." Of course all of this depends on the department and manager, but generally speaking, this is what I've seen so far at Kaiser. Thrive, baby!

The obstacles of bureaucracies are immense but so is the company.