The Grass IS Greener on the Other Side - Supervisor, Development Meditech Employee Review

*Salary* Salary is not commensurate with experience, contributions, or industry standards. As a Development Supervisor at Meditech, you are required to wear three hats, filling the roles of Supervisor, Project Manager/Product Owner, and Human Resources Officer. However, the role pays a salary that doesn't meet the industry standards for your experience level for any one of those roles individually. Contributions to the company are not rewarded. One example: One project that was completed, going into the project, it was stated that the work was the highest priority in the company at the time. After successful completion and good reception of the project, the raise given that year was a smaller raise than the year before. Similarly, other projects completed at the behest of executives that were outside the scope of the role resulted in the same or lower raises as the year before. This was extra work taken on while still required to complete the functions of a Supervisor, for which I basically received a pat on the back. The role I have left Meditech for is an individual contributor role with less responsibilities and a 45% pay increase. This is exacerbated by a terrible raise-giving scheme. Each year at Meditech, members of management are given a percentage that you are supposed to hit for raises based on your employee salaries. Instead of viewing this as a number that is a target across all raises, and allowing teams to really reward high performers, skip middling performers for a couple years, etc, this percentage is viewed more as a "max" that it is very hard to go over. This means that almost all employees every year end up with a raise that is ~$1-2K away from everyone else on the team. It's not uncommon for you worst performer to get a $1200 raise and your best performers to walk out with $3600. I've never seen a more screwy raise system in a workplace. Further, promotions are not re-evaluated immediately for raises when moving into more senior titles. It's not uncommon to move from Developer -> Lead Developer or Supervisor -> Senior Supervisor with no recognition of increased role and responsibilities via pay. *Benefits* Benefits have been systematically eroded over the past several years at Meditech. This has always come at some expense of the line-employee and nearly never come at the expense of anyone in executive level leadership. Further, every time it feels like Meditech takes a step forward in benefits (extended Mat/Pat leaves, working from home, etc) it feels as though the benefit is 2 steps forward, 10 steps back. Several examples to include: Stocks: Initially hard-marketed during the orientation process, it was highly emphasized how this is an employee-owned company and the majority of the stock was owned by employees through either profit sharing or individual purchases. In 2014, in a move that ought to sound familiar if you followed politics the last few years, the company stopped selling stock while their "audit was completed". It took a full seven years later ("still being audited") before the company announced they would never sell stock again. This announcement came as part of a shady reverse stock split where all share owners under ~1K shares (nearly everyone except C-Level executives) were bought out and told "Sorry!" This happened just before tax time and had implications on staff who were share owners that no one at the highest levels seemed to care about. Profit Sharing: Again, hard marketed during orientation as the way to have a great retirement thanks to the company putting money aside. A Roth IRA with a $10k investment earned as much money as the company set aside over 9 years of tenure. If they had simply given the money outright, or as a match to a 401K, it would have easily have outperformed the profit sharing plan. Early on, after mentioning the fact that this had been talked about in the orientation process with the orientation crew mentioning how many had become "Meditech Millionaires,” I was almost laughed out of the building by a coworker before they very seriously said "That is true for people who were here 30 years ago. That will not happen for you." Holidays: Paid holidays were reduced from 12 to 7. This happened during the year that the company was supposed to add Juneteenth to the holiday calendar. The days were rolled into the PTO time and "an additional day was added" for Juneteenth. This felt to many, like Michelle O'Connor (the CEO) forcing a change the benefits to avoid adding the holiday to the calendar. This is bolstered by the fact that she has routinely expressed staunchly conservative views in employee town halls (inappropriately, given the company's training on not expressing such opinions for avoiding conflict in the workplace.) Bonus: The bonus has significantly shrank, lowering every year from 2014 onward, initially 3.2% of your last 5 take-home pay to 0.86% of last 5 take-home pay this year. A letter went out around May 2023 that stated that raises will come at the expense of a significantly reduced bonus in January 2024. In 2015, the company reduced the bonus by half and "rolled it into the yearly compensation" due to wanting to "invest in employees." That came at a time when I was less than 5 years in the company, and as such, the raise I was given was very small when compared to those who had been at the company for 5+ years. Assurances were made that this would be made up to those under 5 years in future salary considerations. It never was, as I was consistently given raises in the same range as my peers. Work From Home: At the beginning of the Covid-19 Pandemic, we were able to work from home full-time. We were very productive from home, and this was born out in the employee productivity reports (I know, as I was one of many involved in creating them.) From about 1 year into the pandemic forward, the company consistently made pushes (which employees pushed back against) to bring everyone back to the office. This has come with little opportunity or desire to solicit employee feedback and has cost the company many knowledgeable and valuable employees who have realized they can make more money elsewhere while still retaining their WFH benefits (including me!) There is little effort to build a community culture in the online-space, and a large portion of the reasoning behind the push to come back (despite Meditech's statements to the contrary) is the fact that the company needs butts in seats to avoid devaluation of their properties (they have 5 buildings) where a large portion of the company's valuation resides. As of today (11/1/2023) I am informed that they have notified all staff that as of 3/1 they need to start coming in 40% of their pay period, despite 2+ years of saying “we will not be returning to how things used to be.” “Used to be” was 60% in the office, 40% at home. If anyone is convinced Meditech Executive Leadership will not eventually force people in for that remaining 20%, they are delusional. PTO: PTO has gone from being a system where untracked time off could be earned after 15 years at the company to where untracked PTO is only a benefit for Directors and above. Likewise, untracked sick time (also previously earned at 15 years) has gone away for the same staff. While the PTO change has been billed as "being done because untracked PTO is a way to hide time off on the books and avoid paying out when the employee leaves," there has been no explanation for removing untracked sick time benefits at 15 years, given that the company does not pay out sick time upon departure. During the Pandemic, employees were allowed to take PTO in as low as 1-hour increments, and "Personal Days" (the hourly PTO non-sick equivalent) were rolled into PTO. This year, this was reversed, and flexibility again was taken away, as PTO is again allowed only in 4-hour blocks. Unlimited PTO has become almost universally the norm within the tech industry, and while some limits are usually placed around it (i.e. over a certain number of weeks, a skip-level sup must approve the time to ensure that you’re getting work done and not being unfair to other team members,) it is increasingly becoming seen as imprudent for a company to feel the need to hold them thumb on the scale of time that an employee needs to handle health issues, rest and recharge, handle family responsibilities, etc. Take Home Pay: Having been hired at the higher end of the pay scale for a new developer, I fared better than most in my pay scale due to Meditech's asinine remuneration & raise system. With that said, most raises received were eaten by inflation due to the fact that Meditech, in general, doesn't keep pace with inflation. $33,800 in raises since 2014 has netted me ~$18,300 in increased purchase-power take-home pay, accounting for inflation. Remember, this includes a promotion to and >5 years spent as a supervisor. This was particularly bad in the past 2 years with being forced to return to the office where 11.95% cumulative raises over that period (as Meditech was "catching up salaries" to still fat below market) has meant the little bit of extra above inflation that I received went entirely to increased expenses to come to the office (gas, vehicle maintenance, etc.) When leaving the company, as a development Supervisor, I still made <$90K per year. With a spouse also working for Meditech wages (which actually happens very frequently at Meditech), after all bills are paid, we were underwater since having a child. My bills (nothing extravagant) were more than two Meditech salaries can afford. We live relatively modestly. Several times in the 6 months prior to departure, the company messed up in my paycheck calculations. The only reason it was made right is that I provided detailed calculations showing where the money I was paid was significantly under what I was due. In total, I was shorted approximately nearly $1000 in six months' time this year. MPFML: The mat/pat leave addition through MPFML was great until you get into the fine details. The company has opted to run the system itself rather than participate in the state program. To do so they have employees Matrix Management which is a totally inept company at managing this process. Those at Matrix who handle your claims under MPFML are unresponsive, uncooperative, and clearly working to limit the amount that you are paid under your benefits claim. Complaints about the company fall on deaf ears. Further, because the company opts to run the program itself, it gets classified differently for tax purposes. Meditech’s internal plan administrators assured me when taking PFML that I had the option to have taxes withheld but the state hadn’t made a ruling on taxability. This isn’t the case. When the state administers the program, it is administered through Unemployment and is considered a non-taxable wage. However, when the company manages the process it gets taxed as ‘Other Income.’ It is subject to the same Federal and State payroll taxes as any other income. Due to this difference, instead of getting approximately $7000 in refunds at tax time after my 3 month child-leave (as I would have under the state program,) I ended up owing the state $1000 and getting $1200 back from the Federal government. *Lack of Faith in Leadership* Over the past four years, communication has eroded to the point of condescension. Messages from the CEO have turned into pandering statements and/or assurances that "the company is strong" while delivering news that says completely the opposite. Communication for Michelle O'Connor is not a strong suit, yet the company continues to put her front and center with employees, despite constant fumbles. Just a few examples: messages or meetings that included statements such as "you can't be a good employee and a good caregiver, you can only be one or the other," "Martin Luther King Jr. Day might be a holiday some employees want to skip," and the as-ever condescending "people get worried if we ever deliver news that is anything other than 100% positive" in a message that assured the company was strong but: a) raises were only going to top performers b) the bonus was going to be significantly reduced to fund it c) hiring was frozen d) a sizeable number of the management staff was being demoted, and e) expenses were too high compared to the revenue. With clouded messaging like that, how could anyone ever be worried, I wonder? This last statement was also included in a June email announcing a layoff of all new staff members hired since October 2022. A group was created to be a voice between staff and C level management, but seemingly operated under the directive to spin communications from the CEO. Instead of creating an HR department, Meditech leaves it to supervisors to handle all bridging communications between C-Level and lower level employees. A request related to medical accommodations for a staff member went unanswered for months, and was still unanswered when I left the company. During one review cycle, a comment came from ‘on high’ to be included in my review stating that I needed to learn my audience. The reasoning for this (as communicated to me third-hand) was because I had "Asked a question of at the supervisor management training summit that everyone in the room was thinking but no one wanted to ask." If I as a member of management could not ask questions of upper management in the company related to motivating my team, gaining leadership development to help us better serve employees, and establishing better communication across the company, what the hell was the point of my position?