Pros: I worked as an intern at Epic. The food is absolutely delicious, the campus is absolutely gorgeous (with cool themes!), and the pay is (probably) higher than what you will find at any other company in the Midwest. Teams seem to be well-sized. In my limited experience, management worked hard to make the place lighthearted. The work environment is incredibly relaxed. No hours are counted; even interns are salaried. There is no dress code whatsoever, and everyone either shares an actual office (with real walls) with one coworker, or has a private office. We got together quite often for awesome team-building events. Also, the sound of Nerf guns never seemed to be far away... Intern development projects are usually R&D type stuff, but are always actual programming projects. This may sound like a silly comment, but I assure you that it isn't. Epic didn't seem to be heavy on strict design process, unless it actually helps. Interns (we worked in small groups) were given free rein of all design (structural and visual) and implementation details, with the exception of any necessary requirements gathering, which was done for us. That means pride of true ownership, which is rare for an undergraduate. Everyone around you is very competent, bright, and full of criticism (the good kind). There's a certain peace of mind that comes with never having to look over others' shoulders. The employees have such diverse talents and interests that it starts to feel like a university campus, with a plethora of clubs and "extracurricular" groups to join. Over 100 interns lived together in the Regent Apartments, on the edge of the UW campus, making it easy to form great relationships. Great (and free) intern events were constantly planned, including: * Hikes * Baseball games * Trips to the Dells The intern team actually implements suggestions, so you know that they are working to make the experience even more attractive. Interns come from all over the country (and out of it), and from differing levels of higher education. Diversity always makes for interesting conversations and relationships.

Cons: Some decisions don't seem to be made very quickly. The company is VERY cautious. There is a constant, visible focus on avoiding bad PR, and some strange rules are born of that. This cautiousness extends to software as well. They tend to ignore widely used, powerful external software in favor of in-house copies. Because of the pressure to reinvent the wheel in-house and the large amount of code sitting around, it isn't uncommon for different teams to redevelop the same thing multiple times. Then you have 4 in-house copies of something someone else has been doing better for years.

Pros: The food is amazing, the campus is nice (although traffic and parking is a nightmare). The pay is decent and apparently it is increasing. The benefits are very good. Epic has a huge share of the market and honestly has the best product out there. They aren't going anywhere and your job should be safe for as long as you want it. They are desperate for developers.

Cons: HR does not tell the truth about what you will actually be doing. Depending on what team you get placed on, the code ranges from slightly broken to profoundly broken. You will almost certainly not work with .NET. You will work with Cache (also known as MUMPS) and VB6. These are old, unsexy languages that struggle to work with modern technologies. Epic works around these limitations by being "clever" (which should set off warning bells like a depressurizing submarine). Most of their tools are homegrown or obsolete because no one supports Cache and VB6 anymore. It's possible to work 40-hour weeks by not volunteering for anything. You will work on the most boring bug fixes that they have. If you volunteer for anything, your workload will increase to the 50-60 hr/week zone, trying to integrate new development into the incredibly finicky and interconnected codebase. Basically, it's a boring, frustrating job with questionable management and the potential for major overwork. They have a massive backlog of bugs that need to be addressed as they slowly begin to modernize their code.

Pros: Expectations for interns are relatively low. Laid-back work days.

Cons: The office is in Madison, Wisconsin.