"Due to our ever changing business needs..."
Pros
Remote work opportunities, but even they are becoming scarce.
Cons
This is my second review at Optum and I wanted to give a bit more detail of my experiences. I was an Optum employee for around 3 1/2 years, full time and permanent. I was the second person hired on to the team for which I worked. I was a UI developer working on a project whose title I needn't disclose. Towards the end of my time, all the UI work seemed to dry up and everything became heavy on the Java side of development. Concerned for my position I asked my manager and was told, "the UI work will come back in the form of a complete UI rebuild" and I had nothing to worry about. In the downtime, I continued to learn new technologies that would make me more useful to Optum, so when the UI work came back I could hit the ground running. About a month later I was laid off. The reasons I was given were "budget cuts" and "lack of UI work". When I inquired about the UI rebuild work that same manager told me "it's not happening" and "I just don't know". Fast forward a month or two later and I find out that the UI work DID in fact return and I also found out that Optum had onboarded a bunch of college grads and new TDP kids. Lack of work? Budget cuts? No. I was lied to and was let go for no justifiable reason. The bottom line is this. Despite how upper management touts about how Optums first priority is its people, they certainly are not. Optum would rather employ kids fresh out of school who lack real world experience than industry veterans who know what they're doing. I was told of one particular TDP kid who was caught regularly napping on company time about 2 - 3 hours a day. He still has a job with Optum. They brag about all the billions of dollars they make, while ex-employees like myself wonder how they're going to pay their mortgages until they find new work.