DELICIOUS INSIDE SCOOP:
I’ll tell you a story of how Cerner India(Bangalore) is in real:
This Cerner India was started in 2007 with a couple of employees and a bunch of interns. It doesn’t have anything to do with Cerner USA. This is purely an Indian corporate having the Cerner US brand, bragging that its HQ is in the US. The India organization wasn’t like how big organizations set up offices through proper business expansion. The interns in 2007 worked day and night and the strength expanded to some 300-400 in 2018/19. These first employees and college interns now became directors and board members(they don’t even have proper MBAs or other management qualifications, anyway). So today it is what it is.
They lure you with HUGE UNIMAGINABLE salaries. That’s an HR tactic of the organization because the attrition rate is highest. They will provide high-end laptops, Mac books, mobile devices – all to make you feel good because you will be joining a nightmarish place which you will realize late. Every Monday you have new joiners of about 5-10 since every week people are quitting(firing is the right word). Yes, you will be fired without any notice as I’ve witnessed it first-hand. They have an internal security team(full of gundas in the past) which will come and confiscate your laptop and ID card and revoke all the access one fine morning and will drag you out(in a decent corporate way) and throw you out of Manyata Tech park campus. Saw many such horror stories.?
Many people are talking about their world-class gym and health care facilities. That’s just on the surface. I’ll tell you the real deal. Every month your salary will be deducted with Rs 1500/-, whether you use the gym or not. When you newly join, they will FORCE you to fill the online application and submit it. The gym is not Cerner’s. It's a third party. They will keep pinging you until you fill the application. With your money, the gym is maintained at a world-class level. This includes the health center. You can’t just walk in and get a pill for headache or cold or fever in an emergency or just to get a diet plan from a nutritionist. You have to call the number / to write an email and book your appointment even if its an emergency. When you have an emergency, all the slots are booked already.
So the health center receptionist will ask you to come tomorrow for your today’s fever, cold, and cough. I have never seen a complicated health center like this. Sick it was! The doctors are available only at specific times. The gym is available on Mon-Fri from 6 AM to 7 PM. Yes, at 7 PM. Entry only till 630PM. Post that you are kicked out. Weekend it's fully closed and you can work out only when you have trainers around or else you will be banished! No joke. If you are in a non-Bangalore location, you will get some gym-reimbursement if you join a public gym, BUT only if you join a gym mentioned under Cerner’s list! So Terms and Conditions apply!
They will also brag about their fitness classes like Zumba, kickboxing, one-on-one training, resistance training, belly burn, etc. Before you get excited, wait! These classes are paid and happen between 7 AM-9 AM and then 5 PM-7 PM only. Only if you have a good MANAGER(tell you more later) then you can attend these or else forget it. The HR will seduce you by sending a PDF containing all these benefits but a lot of ‘terms and conditions’ apply!
There are two buildings in Manyata – C2 and H2. Forget cafeteria in C2. All you get is junk food that will kill you over time. It is a small shop and not a cafeteria. The H2 cafeteria is huge and all are fancy food stalls. Mind you all are so damn EXPENSIVE and doesn’t even fill you. The menu items are so sick and terrible. All are junk foods, way too salty, oily, and make you obese. The café guys are very polite(I’m glad for this at least). There is a Healthy counter and its damn fancy expensive!
They have just one privacy room on each floor and you need to book these rooms on Outlook to make use of it! Give me a break!
The interview process itself was sick. HR just wanted to fill the position and are in a hurry. In fact, my hiring manager forgot that he had an hour blocked for my interview and failed to call me on the day of the telephonic round. Later I was called in person and suddenly asked to produce my work portfolio which was never told in advance. Post joining, forget the HR department. All they keep doing is making PPTs and coloring excel sheets! They wouldn’t respond to you much.
Next. The HIRING here happens based not on your skills, talents, experience, and value that you bring. But rather all the HR and especially the hiring manager have a conscious bias. That is, they will hire only if you are a good ‘cultural’ fit. And that culture is you need to be a smoker, drunkard/alcoholic, play PUBG, worship cricket, and other sports, be a crazy superheroes fans, be a Kannadiga or Tamilian and look a bit hot. They do not have any diversity policy. They just wanna fill the vacancies. The men and women ratio will be 80:20. So if you are a woman, be warned. You may get a lot of proposals. Many employees there have fallen in love and gotten married post joining the company. What about LGBTQ diversity? Nobody even knows what it is in Cerner India. They have a lot of LGBTQ jokes easily shared during social events and get together. So forget any diversity. After hiring you will not be encouraged to bring your honest self to work and be who you are. You will be forced to participate in socializing, play games, go team outing even if you are not comfy. All in the name of socialization and promoting trust among employees and team building.
Those managers act like big shots as if they descended from heaven. Some managers don’t even have the qualification to be managers. In the name of diverse background hiring, even thugs and rowdies get hired for a managerial position and they are trained to blackmail if you don’t budge to their culture or desires. The manager will even blackmail or threaten you taking you to HR employee relations to discipline you. This has happened to employees. Employees are also taken from one team to another randomly based on their chaotic ‘requirements’ it seems. They will also keep changing your desks and moving a lot.
Forget WFH. 99% of the time you are expected to be in office. WFH is absolutely hated by managers. They do not trust employees much. You have to fill timesheets, excel sheets on a daily basis to show what you did every day and every hour! JIRAS! Micromanagement at its best!
Forget FLEXIBLE working hours. It’s like a school. Do not believe the JD that HR gives you or all the promises during the interview. Post joining you will know the harsh reality and it will be too late if you do not have any other offers. Think twice! Commute to Manyata Tech Park is a nightmare if you stay far away. Almost 75% of the employees who stay in the company for a long time are only those who stay close by to it. But the organization brags about employees who have stayed for several years in the organization. But we need to ask who they are, where they stay, and why they are stuck here? Most of these managers have stayed there long ago and gotten huge salaries and bought big flats near manyatta itself and stay there. So they DO NOT understand the commute and traffic problems of employees.
BTW, if you try to leave the organization after a couple of years, they will try to buy you by giving you a lot of money! It’s a TRAP. Peace of mind is more important than money. They do not provide transportation. Only for evening shift employees and ladies, there is. Or else you need to avail those expensive Volvo bus passes. Costs around more than Rs 3-4K if I’m not wrong. Maybe they have increased the prices now.
One more ‘great’ news is that they are vacating their Manyata premises soon in 2020 or 2021! Whole Cerner India is planning to move to their new building located near Yelahanka – on the way to Airport. The nightmare for people. HR will not tell you about this during the interview. After joining your manager will give you a shock that they will be moving soon. If you go for an interview, PLEASE ASK THE HR ABOUT THIS IN A POLITE WAY! And you will know the truth
Most leaders and managers here are addicted to smoking, beer, and drugs; they will keep watching you - when you come to work, how much time you take for coffee, when you go to the cafeteria, when you return, when you leave, with whom you hang out, what you speak, etc., etc., everything is monitored directly or INDIRECTLY in many ways. They need the work to be done and do not care about your personal issues! Period.
Managers will only go and take you to expensive bars and order expensive food, drive expensive cars and bikes and act like they are from NY and LA when in reality they graduated from our government colleges and stay at Kathriguppe and Kalasipalaya! They will brag about buying the latest iPhones they have, the countries they vacationed, what they drive, the luxurious shoes they wear, watches, wallets, credit cards, and everything is absolutely materialistic. It is only called a healthcare company but all their eating habits and other activities are unhealthy. They don’t care about your health. They will order all junk pure junk foods for team lunch and during events, just to create a ‘cool’ young image. You will be forced to eat this junk and you will lose your gym goals.
Outside of work, you have to mandatorily take part in their Rings. There are several Rings – these are nothing but groups like IT, culture, tech, etc., you are forced to join at least one and if you do not it will have a negative impact on your appraisals. Already you are caught up with so much work and on top of this, you need to join multiple rings and be EXTREMELY active. The interesting thing is all the data of employees are extracted and monitored. Who takes part in which Ring, what event, what they contributed, what they did not do, etc., it is that sick! NEVER SEEN MICROMANAGEMENT AT THIS HEIGHT.
Most employees are either husbands, wives, and relatives who work within the org and there is a lot of political heights! Because they only believe in hiring friends and family members for greater productivity and company betterment, it seems. So real talent in the market gets lost. They will also tell you where to eat and with whom and at what time! Yes, I’m serious. They will ‘suggest’ it through the manager! Here you can have multiple managers. Even your manager’s manager can do anything to you and even the manager’s manager’s manager too! You are answerable like a sheep. Non-sense!
How are colleagues? Two out of ten have brains. The rest are bootlicking and oiling their leaders and managers. Shame! The rest of the colleagues act like ‘supercool’ guys and gals. You need to be ‘cool’ to survive here. All they will talk about is politics, religion, and sex! Shockingly it's not prohibited here. You can do forward to the organization’s WhatsApp group for employees with all the politics and opinions and they don’t care. Colleagues talk about what you like in bed, BF, GF, affairs, what pleasures you had on weekends, and most visit brothels during the weekend. Anyway, it's their choice! But this is what it is!
Not much training in soft skills. You need a ton of permission and honestly, you do not have time for it because it's hectic. But you will get a lot of technical training only. Trainers are employees only! Not sure how good that is.
Also, most employees have the technical skills here but do not even have the ability to write a proper or professional email. They need help really even for basic spellings and grammar!
When Leaders from Cerner US visit Bangalore location once or twice a year, you need to be in the office at 9 AM at your desk and pretend like you are working. Just fake it. Because the leaders believe in coming to office at 8 AM in the US. So these Indian folks try to impress them and enforce their ideologies on us. A school, really!
The choice is yours now. My opinion is please join a proper ‘organization’, a proper MNC company for better work and peaceful life. I never wanna hear this company’s name again and forget everything as a bad dream. Starting fresh as there are no regrets in life BUT only lessons. All the best!
