Performative engineering culture - Anonymous employee Heidi Health Employee Review

2.0
Jul 3, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Genuinely interesting use case, and a rare Melbourne-based young tech start-up.

Cons

Absolute amateur hour engineering culture, caused directly by absolutely amateur leadership from the CEO, CTO, Head of Engineering, and Chief Architect. You succeed in Engineering at Heidi by having these people like you (yes, the CEO too). These people don't like you if you dare to venture an opinion they disagree with. I personally watched multiple good people get let go because they copped the blame for issues in a project that leadership pushed them to complete under a ridiculous timeline, without paying heed to their concerns along the way. "Hire fast, fire fast" and "The most important thing is to win" are just some manifestations of a top-down culture that is desperate to showcase victories to investors and avoid any responsibility for failures they've caused. That this is the case in a health tech start-up is, frankly, horrifying. Users of their service have every right to be concerned about how they handle your medical data. That said, there are lots of genuinely lovely and intelligent people on the ground in Engineering, and at all levels in other departments. Heidi has the potential to be great, if only it can grow up.

Explore other reviews about Heidi Health

5.0
Jun 1, 2025
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

very flat hierarchy, access to C-level is easy incredible autonomy lots of growth opportunities physician-led organization passionate people who care about improving healthcare clear vision communicated often

Cons

lack of clear onboarding process work-life balance is not great, but its a startup so whatever

2
2.0
Feb 9, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The product solves a real problem in healthcare and there are genuinely talented, hardworking people across all departments, all regions. The biggest pro here is really the colleagues. UK team seems to be one of the strongest.

Cons

The issues are due to Heidi being a fast paced startup- that’s exactly what I signed up for. It’s the way that Heidi is scaling. People flag issues early, but middle management in most departments is recent grads who haven’t worked anywhere else. They don’t catch things that would be obvious at any other tech company. Projects move forward with massive problems baked in and then everyone is left scrambling. Unfortunately this means the impactful, interesting work that Heidi should be known for takes a back seat. Strategy changes constantly from the top. Sales is completely unlike any sales department I’ve worked with at other startups… Leadership repeatedly emphasizes that this isn’t a 9-to-5. were expected to be available around the clock, deadlines can’t slip no matter what. With all the inexperienced employees, you’re left constantly picking up more just to keep things moving. Good people are burning out and leaving. Hiring young talent isn’t the problem at ALL. There are really hardworking junior employees here. But they’re being put into roles they’re not ready for and have nobody to guide them. They end up spending twice as long figuring out things someone more experienced could’ve walked them through in an hour. That’s not fair to them either. If would definitely avoid if I were a recent grad, you won’t have the opportunity to develop high value skills. Nobody has time to mentor. (Engineering seems to be different story! I don’t have viz but they really invested in talent there early, see lots of engineers with good growth trajectory.) There’s a clear inner circle of employees who’ve all moved into leadership quickly. Some get 3 promotions in a single year while the people picking up their slack go unappreciated. Culture is a boys club for many departments.

7
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