Pros: Important work. I feel like I make healthcare better every day. Madison is as good a place for people fresh from college as it is for those raising kids. It’s also super affordable. My coworkers are amazing, hard-working, and responsible. My direct and middle managers are wonderful and understanding. Food is super. Campus is beautiful.

Cons: Upper management continues to disappoint me. They promote a culture of feedback, which works incredibly well on the ground level. But when decisions are made at the top, there’s very little transparency and ability to change their minds. I worry, on a daily basis, that my peers in QA’s opinions and experiences are not heard or considered company-wide. It is unbelievably stressful to distrust upper management and wonder what spastic move they will make next.

Pros: - Management is recruited from within. - Meaningful work. - Talented, capable coworkers. - The food is amazing. - The campus is beautiful. - Madison is a great place to live and raise a family. - Stock, compensation, insurance, and sabbaticals cannot be beat.

Cons: The high stakes of healthcare can lead to occasional high-stress weeks.

Pros: The work you do is inherently good. The software does help patients and providers, and everyone can play a role in making the product better. The pay, though lower for QA than roles like IS, TS, and obviously SD, is fairly generous considering no experience is required.

Cons: Upper management is completely out of touch with reality. The highest positions are held by Type A zealots who can't fathom that everyone doesn't place work above everything else in their life. If you're good at your job, management will absolutely take advantage. They tell you to learn to say no, but say no too much and you get a reputation for being difficult or unhelpful. Never mind the fact that you've already been putting in 60-hour weeks yet feel like you can't give adequate attention to all the many responsibilities you've already said yes to. Rankings, which determine raises and whether certain opportunities are available to you, are incredibly subjective. Many team leads aren't great people managers (and aren't taught to be), and the metrics for evaluating performance can be all over the place. Their internal response to the COVID pandemic has been an absolute joke. They're willing to risk the health and safety of their employees and the community for the sake of preserving Epic's "culture," which loosely translates to "whatever Judy wants."