High Demand, Moderate Reward, Poor Work/Life Balance
Pros
- Fast paced - Opportunities for diverse experience - Opportunities for title promotion - Annual bonus - Annual (Christmas / conference) get-togethers (wouldn't quite call them parties....maybe mixers?) AHA was a good opportunity to learn a lot about a lot. Because of the small staff, there is a great deal of room to inject yourself into a variety of elements of the business. Consequently, you have the opportunity to pick up a great deal of general business knowledge, specialized healthcare and IT knowledge, and work with some pretty smart people in the process. The work environment for my tenure was extremely casual, providing great flexibility in dress and work hours and an above average work atmosphere. The work flexibility also allows others to branch into other areas of the business and transition into that as their main responsibility. This had happened with a couple of people who moved from one position up and over into other "departments" doing a different set of work.
Cons
- High-stress work environment - Periodic off-hours demands/requirements - Below average pay - Year-to-year inconsistent benefits - Growing 'corporate' feeling - Unsustainable business model The small size of AHA does not pair well with their core business model. With a very small staff, they are supporting a nationwide initiative of hospitals' multi-million dollar a year business. This results in conditions where services or software is under developed, under tested, under supported, and mis-delivered. Subsequent effort has to go into supporting these errors, lowering client opinions of the company at large (despite them having great interactions with individual staff members). This results in a great deal of pressure on a variety of personnel. Benefit packages change each year, and appeared as if they were on track to change again (for the worse) the year I left. Management isn't interested in paying (or can't) for higher tiers of coverage. That being said, they did cover a higher-than-average amount of the monthly premiums, resulting in less out-of-pocket monthly premium expense. Some of the best elements about the company (its work environment and casual interoffice atmosphere) appeared to be on their way out as I left. This is almost certainly an inevitability, as a company grows to a certain size that requires that change in culture, but as it was one of the last great things about the company, its worth a special mention. One of the biggest things that drove me to leave was a great deal of uncertainty. AHA was doing 'fine' but for having been in the business for years, and having their name out there, the performance of the company didn't appear to match the internal hype that upper management was dishing out. Year after year was 'the year' that the company would "hit it big" but it never seemed to make it there. The business model makes some sense, but is hinged on reputation (a big part of hospitals picking one vendor over another). Unfortunately, AHA hasn't developed a pristine reputation, with a history of glitches in the software and a "not-quite-enterprise" experience by a number of (now gone) customers, several big pieces of the company feel like they're lingering in mediocrity.
