CVS Health

The work/life balance is pretty good, although you will have to do deployments overnight.

Individual teams can be awesome, once the right people are moved in and you get in sync.

Executive management seems to have their heads in the clouds and can't see the forest for the trees. We've lost vendors and entire consultant teams because they didn't start negotiating in time.

They don't want to convert the good contractors into FTEs. There is very little camaraderie or celebration of achievement in the wider project.

The communication between teams is horrendous, with frequent environment outages which stop work for hours or days. Directors seem to nitpick over cosmetics and minor things from 1000 miles away, like when you sign into Teams or emailing them to tell them you're out sick, and not the quality of your work. They do not take criticism or input well.

The department has been reorganized twice in a year, and we're losing good people left and right for better opportunities or FTE positions. Support for diversity is mostly performative, but there are plenty of women in leadership and as developers at least. No real neurodiversity or LGBT+ support that I've seen. All of our products still only use male and female. I'm the only non-binary or autistic person I've encountered.

I don't see any opportunity to advance, either, as a developer. I'll probably have to leave the company for a new title or new responsibilities.

We learn a lot, but that's mostly because of individual people being willing to teach you stuff if you ask questions and having to wear multiple hats because they're not going to hire enough developers. There is no organized skill development.

Actually value your people. Pay them generously (CVS spends less than 4% on payroll) and don't use benefits as a Ponzi scheme to bleed your employees dry and wipe out their raises and bonuses.

"Fortune 4" is thrown around everywhere, but the salary, PTO, and benefits are way below standard, if not downright deceptive.

Otherwise, people with skills and experience will leave for companies that treat them better.