Kaiser IT - one of the best places to work!
Pros
I have been working for Kaiser IT for 18 years and counting. This is one of the most stable large IT organizations that you can find. Lots of IT FTEs in Kaiser have 10+ or even 20+ years. KPIT offers incredible benefits to their FT employees: - Paid medical insurance for associate and family - this alone can amount to multiple thousands every year - Pension - KPIT is one of the few remaining large entities that is offering an actual PENSION to their FTEs, which comes on top of the regular 403b retirement plans pre-tax and after-tax plans. The KPIT Pension is calculated using the following formula 1.5% x Number of years at KP x average salary of the last five years of employment. For those with many years at KPIT, the KP Pension can easily translate in anywhere from $30,000/yr to 50,000/yr. Again, this is on top of your own retirement accounts. Just think about 20 years of retirement - this could easily add up to 600K to 1 Million in retirement money that comes on top of the retirement savings. Which companies can still offer an actual PENSION to their employees? To me this is a golden benefit for which I don't have enough words of praise - Vacation - you start at 3 weeks, year 2 to year 4 you get four weeks of vacation, year 5 to year 9 you get five weeks of vacation, year 10 and longer you get SIX weeks of paid vacation. How many companies provide that much vacation, that you can actually take? Twice now I've maxed out my six weeks of vacation, one time for a six weeks trip to Europe - Flexible work arrangements (telecommuting is made available for all FTEs) - Outstanding learning opportunities both online and in classroom style - Stability of the work force - Kaiser is a non-profit organization, which is not subject to shareholders will and stock market ups and downs. While we are affected by any economic downturn, the impact comes in a much lesser degree at Kaiser, than it comes to many other large corporations of our size (over 200k employees).
Cons
While KPIT employing many advanced technologies, given that we deal with people's lives and health, the introduction of new technologies comes at a slower pace than many IT environments where the latest technologies are deployed almost immediately after the make it on then market. If you are seeking to work in a fast paced environment where the newest technologies are deployed immediately in your work space, this is not your place to be. Kaiser need a steady state of it's IT infrastructure and production environments, in order to ensure that patient safety and patient lives are not affected. We do test and explore new technologies, but we only implement them after a serious and in-depth review, instead of buying and deploying on the fly, as many smaller and startup companies are working today