No chance to improve, especially with bad manager - Associate Software Engineer Optum Employee Review

1.0
21 Aug 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The pay was decent, and if you have a competent manager you won't have as much trouble

Cons

My first few months with this company were rocky because I was dealing with some medical and personal issues. My performance was okay but my attendance was quite bad. My manager told me that she wanted to give me a 3 on my performance review, but her manager told her she had to bump it back down to a 2. No problem, I was put on corrective action plan and given a chance to improve. Over the next year, my attendance and performance improved. However, I was also supposed to do a "special project" to boost my standings, because performance reviews are on a bell curve and they try to give bad reviews to people who have already had bad reviews in the past. I did the project my manager suggested, but it was quite small so towards the end of the year I jumped on a much larger project. This project was much more involved and I took on a leadership role and delivered a truly incredible product in a short amount of time, receiving praise from C-level executives at the company for my hard work. When I had my performance review in March, I was told that nothing past October (5 months prior) would count towards my current performance review. My manager said she was once again asked by upper management to give me a 2, even though she said I was better at the job than others in my role and quite frankly deserved to have my pay grade raised. She directly told me: "I am supposed to put you on a corrective action plan, but there really aren't any actions to correct so we'll have to figure out what that will be for." A month after this, I was let go with no actual explanation, but it is clear that it was because of my performance review.

Explore other reviews about Optum

5.0
24 Mar 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Very good culture and managers are very helpful, good work benefits

Cons

not much movement or increment

3.0
4 June 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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