Reality has sunk in - not the great company it claims to be - Anonymous employee Health Catalyst Employee Review

2.0
Mar 12, 2017
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

-Great benefits like generous health insurance, phone/Internet/gym reimbursement, good 401k. -Onsite gym with health classes, fully stocked kitchen, team events like movie showings -Entrepreneurial company with strong belief in the "cause"; good blend of clinical and technical experience -Great work-life balance - I'm normally the only one in my area there at 5pm, unlimited vacations, a senior leader even encouraged napping at work if we get tired -Allows working remotely, although that may be changing -Strong focus on transparency

Cons

-Strong nepotism/favoritism and promoting people into senior positions just because of relationships or tenure with the company. -Titles are inflated and not in line with skill level, experience, or # of direct reports. Some senior leaders are several rungs above where they would be anywhere else. It's frustrating to see that positions aren't all merit-based and that senior leaders can’t discern between qualified and unqualified. -Some of the hiring, promotion and lay-off decisions have been very questionable. In the past year, four PhD-level employees in research and analytics left (rumors abound over why), yet I see other cases where someone with no relevant experience or education in their area gets promoted to a SVP-level. -Work quality, processes, standards, and quantitative rigor are subpar compared to where I've worked before. -Some departments of questionable importance have too many personnel while other strategically important ones are stretched thin. Seems to be a poor job of strategic planning.

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Health Catalyst Response
9y
Thank you very much for your thoughtful review. While I don’t agree with every perspective that you put forward, I do appreciate your right to your viewpoint, and acknowledge that there are (and always will be), things to be done to improve the way we manage our business. As I have reflected on your review, and as we as a leadership team discussed your comments (as we do with all comments we receive), one emerging theme was your concern around the company’s ability to identify, hire, develop, and promote the right people into the right positions. This is a critical skill for any business, but particularly crucial for high growth, emerging market businesses such as Health Catalyst. We have added, on average, roughly 100 new team members each year for the past five years. During the past six years, our annual revenues increased, on average, by over 100% each year. This volume of growth tests our ability to manage scale and scope, and while growth like this is a good problem to have, it is not without challenge. Because of this, we have tried to develop principles to help guide us as we manage growth through recruitment, retention, and promotion. Our CEO, Dan Burton, recently published (within an internal communication) a framework of guiding principles that guides our decision-making as it relates broadly to hiring at Health Catalyst: 1. Make leadership team decisions based on companywide functional needs. 2. Choose & promote leaders who qualify based on market principles. 3. Recognize performance over potential. 4. Err in favor of promoting from within. 5. Recognize that we will never be finished. Each of these points require further explanation (as Dan described in his email to all team members), and will require further discussion, which we will do in our next upcoming All Team Member meeting. We can and will do better in each of these areas, as I think there is always room for improvement at any company. I would invite you, if you have not already done so, to read the full text of the email that Dan sent to all team members on March 17th, which provides further thoughts and context to each of these guiding principles. I would also invite you to participate in our upcoming All Team Member meeting, wherein we will discuss these principles in more detail, as well as discuss examples for each. My final comment would be to briefly elaborate on the fifth guiding principle above. We will never be finished. We will always have challenges that require change and improvement. This will likely prove to be the only “constant” that we experience here, and that’s ok. I appreciate your candid feedback and would invite you to reach out to me privately to discuss, if you wish. I would also hope that you will recognize effort and improvement in the areas that you describe, as our goal is to get better at what we do, at all levels. Thank you very much for taking the time to write a review.

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