Poor leadership leads to disorganized and slow development - Software Engineer Optum Employee Review

1.0
May 7, 2026
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

The pay started off well for my experience level.

Cons

Terrible leadership decisions. They aim for quickness, not long term scalability and robustness in testing. Often disorganized, missing feature requirements, and cutting QA. They are trying to lead heavy into automation. They have developers wear too many hats - acting as QA, doing Mobile dev, Web dev, and automation for both (playwright) and [appium]. All of this causes a slowness, as the repos are constantly changing and we have to deal with setup issues constantly as we switch between web and mobile and automation - and on top of that, Login always has issues so we are often blocked. This is the slowest development process I have been a part of, despite their insistence on forcing us to adopt AI. They are cutting QA, cutting devs, cutting as much as possible and are very much a top-down, do not listen to the engineers sort of organization. Highly disprove, run away. Oh, also, despite being promised a promotion for last 3 years, I haven't been given one, and the raises have been bare minimum - with last year having no raise at all. Could not disapprove more.

Explore other reviews about Optum

5.0
May 17, 2026
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

Great company to work with Good work life balance Good pay package

Cons

Neee to focus on new growth

3.0
Jun 4, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
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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