Terrible place to work - UX Designer Optum Employee Review

1.0
Apr 1, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Flexible hours if you need to go to appointments. PTO is great too.

Cons

Toxic management that makes day to day life miserable. Micromanaging and meaningless work that only serves to make your manager and leadership look like they are doing something. All your work goes to visibility and promotion of your manager, while your “raise every year is less than inflation (so you make less every year while they expect more from you). You’ll never get promoted (always a “hiring freeze” or only 2/500 employees got a promotion— excuses you’ll hear for over 10 years while they ask you to do double the work to “try for next year”). You’ll be surrounded by ego-hungry managers and incompetent coworkers who only stay because they can’t get hired anywhere else. You’ll notice all the coworkers you admire for their character and quality of work leave right away— or they get booted by the fragile ego leadership when they try to suggest our team do something of business value, not just bolster the manager’s ego. They will pay you extremely below your grade level. No raises. No promotions. I’ve seen people there for 15 years waiting for a promotion. The culture is fake and this company has no values at all. The only thing is a Ponzi scheme. The lack of care for the incompetency, lack of value and cost of managers is a clear indicator of that.

Explore other reviews about Optum

5.0
Jun 20, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Work from home - no travel

Cons

Pay is not competitive- compared to many

3.0
Jun 4, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Some very talented people give so much of themselves to the company, the clients and their co-workers. I work with (and have worked with) some excellent, smart, supportive people.

Cons

Too many layoffs. Upper management is clueless about how the day to day work gets done, what it takes to make certain changes to processes, and how to treat employees. Some are great. Mostly, they just look at numbers. So many of us have been doing our jobs long enough to know what is needed for certain requests. But we don't get a voice. We just have to do it and suck it up. They are firing ('reduction in force') all of the seasoned staff and let the rest deal with the fall-out. So many teams are losing good people but those people are training their off-shore replacements before they are told about being cut. So how is that a reduction in force? It's just a reduction in payroll numbers. Everyone is on edge just waiting for the next axe to fall. And we have to try and learn or teach another role with less experienced people and more work. It's crazy. On milestone anniversaries, they send an email recognition but once the milestone gets to over 15 years, you are a target. Pay and benefits are fine by me. Raises are practically non-existent, even after layoffs and asking employees to take on more responsibility. that's messed up. They talk about work/life balance but that doesn't trickle down to the actual workers who are so stressed they fear for their jobs if they don't do the extra mile. Many of us are just hanging on instead of quitting so we can at least get some severance. Others are actively looking.

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