Top down paternalistic culture, driven by P&Ls and not values - Director of Design Optum Employee Review

3.0
Aug 26, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

I love my immediate team. Folks are talented, compassionate, and driven. There is a lot of upward mobility for high performers. There is also potential to have a large impact in a market that Optum by all rights should own. VP of product knows what she's doing and is making changes that will enable growth and success

Cons

Executive Leadership is too strongly biased in Finance backgrounds. This makes them lead with financial decisions rather than product focused decisions. The culture is top down and teams are siloed. An example of how out of touch the ETL team is: They are pushing an AI focused message around enabling teams to move faster and be more efficient. However, the security policies are draconian, insulting, and are insanely wasteful. Teams loose access to critical tools, blocking them from completing their job functions. Meanwhile the ETL struggles to understand very basic ways to empower their employees to build product. They will continue to run the business into the ground if they don't break silos and empower people to make smarter decisions.

Explore other reviews about Optum

5.0
Jun 15, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

great management, work life balance, atmosphere

Cons

no cons, very satisfied with my employment.

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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