Anyone have experience in IT for Healthcare?

rsxwithslicks

Thinking about applying to Kaiser but have heard that working in IT Healthcare can be the opposite of awesome. Any experiences you guys would be willing to share what working in Healthcare is like? More specifically this position would be related to a System Administrator role.

Feel free to PM me if you don't want it be publicly posted.

Thank you for your time and have a nice day.

TLeTourneau

I've worked in healthcare IT for several years, I can't speak for Kaiser but the company I work for utilizes some of the most current and cutting edge technologies. What are your specific concerns?

DZA_

Generally the IT Healthcare industry in Canada is the opposite of stellar. You're in constant face of budget constraints, the infrastructure is old and they're wrapped with politics that you will drive you insane and most, the salary is below average. This stretches beyond IT and business function as well. I can't say whether this mirrors the folks in the US however the IT Healthcare in industry in Canada isn't a first choice I would recommend. If you find that job satisfaction is very high working in a hospital, that's a different story.

MeanDrunkR2D2

I have worked for healthcare it company ies and they've been very good to me. Cutting edge stuff. Good work/life balance. Well documented steps for most issues with servers. Yes, learning the custom software can be a pain and will take a while, but it's like that at most tech companies. For my company many who leave because they think it sucks were usually early career folks and honestly were overwhelmed by what real world work was.

I'm in a higher level role, so my work is more involved and deeper thinking so I have learned how to slow down and think about the processes before I freak out and start doing crap without understanding why.

rsxwithslicks

TLeTourneau wrote: »

I've worked in healthcare IT for several years, I can't speak for Kaiser but the company I work for utilizes some of the most current and cutting edge technologies. What are your specific concerns?

Is IT specific to each site/location?
Is it very departmentalized?
Dress code?
How small/large is the IT department you worked with?
If you don't mind me asking, what was your position and what did your day to day operations look like?
In your experience, how was career advancement in the healthcare field?

DZA_ wrote: »

Generally the IT Healthcare industry in Canada is the opposite of stellar. You're in constant face of budget constraints, the infrastructure is old and they're wrapped with politics that you will drive you insane and most, the salary is below average. This stretches beyond IT and business function as well. I can't say whether this mirrors the folks in the US however the IT Healthcare in industry in Canada isn't a first choice I would recommend. If you find that job satisfaction is very high working in a hospital, that's a different story.

Well I hope that hospitals in the US are not the same as Canada.

MeanDrunkR2D2 wrote: »

I have worked for healthcare it company ies and they've been very good to me. Cutting edge stuff. Good work/life balance. Well documented steps for most issues with servers. Yes, learning the custom software can be a pain and will take a while, but it's like that at most tech companies. For my company many who leave because they think it sucks were usually early career folks and honestly were overwhelmed by what real world work was.

I'm in a higher level role, so my work is more involved and deeper thinking so I have learned how to slow down and think about the processes before I freak out and start doing crap without understanding why.

Is IT specific to each site/location?
Is it very departmentalized?
Dress code?
How small/large is the IT department you worked with?
If you don't mind me asking, what was your position and what did your day to day operations look like?
In your experience, how is career advancement in the healthcare field?

MeanDrunkR2D2

rsxwithslicks wrote: »

Is IT specific to each site/location?
Is it very departmentalized?
Dress code?
How small/large is the IT department you worked with?
If you don't mind me asking, what was your position and what did your day to day operations look like?
In your experience, how was career advancement in the healthcare field?


Well I hope that hospitals in the US are not the same as Canada.



Is IT specific to each site/location?
Is it very departmentalized?
Dress code?
How small/large is the IT department you worked with?
If you don't mind me asking, what was your position and what did your day to day operations look like?
In your experience, how is career advancement in the healthcare field?

I work for a large company with sites all over the world. I'm located in the city with the world headquarters and we have 4 very large buildings. One is dedicated to the software devs and a few sysadmins (I'm one of them) another is almost completely sys admin. And the other 2 big sites are other non it teams for the most part.

I work with teams on the dev side as well as other sys admins.

I can wear pretty much anything within reason. Since it's hot I tend to wear shorts, t-shirts, and flip-flops most days. When it's not so hot it's jeans and a t-shirt or maybe a polo if I feel like dressing up.

The sys admins in my division are probably around 4000 or more. And devs probably that amount as well. There are around 27k employees in total for the company.

I'm a system engineer and I break stuff in Linux and blame it on the devs. I don't work in prod but do work directly with other vendors to test their OS, DBs, or other performance related tools to see how well things work. So basically I beat my head into the desk when things break spectacularly which can be often.

Career advancement is great to be honest. And if you get to be a specialist with a software you could find a bigger Payday working for them, but chances are you may not get higher level work above that.

jwdk19

I worked in Healthcare IT for a short time. I was in a tier 2.5 type position Part sys admin part desktop (70% desktop, 30% sys admin) .

Long story short I was only there for around 7 months. I didn't like IT in a healthcare environment. Was a different world to me. This also could have been because of the particular hospital that I worked for, not sure.

rsxwithslicks

MeanDrunkR2D2 wrote: »

I work for a large company with sites all over the world. I'm located in the city with the world headquarters and we have 4 very large buildings. One is dedicated to the software devs and a few sysadmins (I'm one of them) another is almost completely sys admin. And the other 2 big sites are other non it teams for the most part.


I work with teams on the dev side as well as other sys admins.


I can wear pretty much anything within reason. Since it's hot I tend to wear shorts, t-shirts, and flip-flops most days. When it's not so hot it's jeans and a t-shirt or maybe a polo if I feel like dressing up.


The sys admins in my division are probably around 4000 or more. And devs probably that amount as well. There are around 27k employees in total for the company.


I'm a system engineer and I break stuff in Linux and blame it on the devs. I don't work in prod but do work directly with other vendors to test their OS, DBs, or other performance related tools to see how well things work. So basically I beat my head into the desk when things break spectacularly which can be often.


Career advancement is great to be honest. And if you get to be a specialist with a software you could find a bigger Payday working for them, but chances are you may not get higher level work above that.

Wow! 4000 system admins? How many systems are you guys running to require so many people?

Test/Dev environments..? Not doing changes in Prod..? That's the dream.. Lol.


Thanks for taking the time to respond!

jwdk19 wrote: »

I worked in Healthcare IT for a short time. I was in a tier 2.5 type position Part sys admin part desktop (70% desktop, 30% sys admin) .


Long story short I was only there for around 7 months. I didn't like IT in a healthcare environment. Was a different world to me. This also could have been because of the particular hospital that I worked for, not sure.

What about it didn't you like?


If you don't mind me asking, what is/was your background in IT that made it such a "different world"?


I ask as all my IT experience has been with much smaller companies where I've had to wear multiple hats and Google was my mentor. Working for such a large organization is something that seems exciting but also very scary. Lol.

TLeTourneau

Is IT specific to each site/location?
Not in our organization, IT is an enterprise function normalized across all sites.

Is it very departmentalized?
Yes, there are silos in our organization.

Dress code?
For the majority of the organization the dress code is business formal with some exceptions based on role.

How small/large is the IT department you worked with?
7,000+ people in IT and more than 80k total employees.

If you don't mind me asking, what was your position and what did your day to day operations look like?
I am a team lead in IT security, our group coordinates and facilitates activities between IS and IT.

In your experience, how was career advancement in the healthcare field?
I think that is very employer specific, advancement for my employer can be good but beyond line level promotions is very competitive.

yoba222

I didn't care for it. Lousy pay. Many untalented, mediocre managers that were in charge simply because they'd been there 15+ years. Siloed departments. Tons of office politics.

Tons of crappy, proprietary middleware software. Picture a desktop app that only works by opening Internet Explorer 10 and requires Java 5. I could have spent the rest of my career learning medical coding jargon that I fear could have locked me into heath IT permanently.

All in all, it was probably better than being at Microsoft during the days of Ballmer's idiotic employee-ranking system, at least from what I've read. So there are definitely browner pastures out there. The air conditioning was pretty solid.

MeanDrunkR2D2

yoba222 wrote: »

I didn't care for it. Lousy pay. Many untalented, mediocre managers that were in charge simply because they'd been there 15+ years. Siloed departments. Tons of office politics.

Tons of crappy, proprietary middleware software. Picture a desktop app that only works by opening Internet Explorer 10 and requires Java 5. I could have spent the rest of my career learning medical coding jargon that I fear could have locked me into heath IT permanently.

All in all, it was probably better than being at Microsoft during the days of Ballmer's idiotic employee-ranking system, at least from what I've read. So there are definitely browner pastures out there. The air conditioning was pretty solid.

Just to add on. This WILL more than likely be the case when working for a healthcare company (a hospital for example). A Healthcare IT company will likely be very different. I've worked for both and Healthcare IT companies are much better to work for.

TLeTourneau

MeanDrunkR2D2 wrote: »

Just to add on. This WILL more than likely be the case when working for a healthcare company (a hospital for example). A Healthcare IT company will likely be very different. I've worked for both and Healthcare IT companies are much better to work for.

That hasn't been my experience, maybe I've been lucky...