Pros
Multidisciplinary staff are professional, well motivated, knowledgeable and highly skilled. This includes clerical staff, managers, cleaning crew, psychiatrists, social workers, MFTs and psychologists. Salary is better than most of the competition other than private practice. The benefits are good. If you do your job (and certainly most people do), you'll pretty much be left alone to work relatively independently. Psychologists may perform similar and/or identical functions as MFTs and social workers (intakes, group therapy, intakes, individual therapy, intakes, family therapy, and more intakes), or do a small amount of psychological testing, or even have their jobs defined as 100% psychological testing, something to investigate before signing up.
Cons
Kaiser Permanente Psychologists are highly valued in the San Diego area, even more so in Northern California, but not very much in the greater Los Angeles area. Psychologists earn a bit more salary than the other psychotherapists, the reason for the reluctance to hire more of them. The work load continues to increase for everyone. Just when we think it couldn't get any tougher, somehow it does. With union contracts, the negotiations can drag on for months or even years. The tug of war during negotiations can be very stressful. There have been strikes. The clinical team has been understaffed for many years. Staff often feel like they're on an assembly line. Staffing has never kept up with the increase in patient load. The quality of mental health treatment diminishes as the demands grow. Morale is poor. Psychiatrists, just like the other Kaiser physicians, become partners in the business after a few years. They too are terribly stressed, but as partners their motivation to fight for better care vs. keeping their eyes on the finances weakens. As partners, their jobs are protected to a ridiculous degree. Then again, union members have been known to keep their jobs, thanks to the union, when they should have been fired.