Pros: Madison is a great area. It has good food on campus and nice people.

Cons: Micro-managing, huge workloads, public shaming, highly competitive coworkers.

Pros: Typical gimmicky perks like a “quirky” campus and cheap in-house eateries. Decent 401k matching (6% when I was there) and a sabbatical every 5 years. The cost is at least mostly covered, as long as it’s international and, if I recall correctly, somewhere you haven’t been. They comp travel/airfare and give a per diem. I’ve heard this can make income taxes a hassle and higher.

Cons: First and foremost, there’s a general lack of respect toward employees. This ranges from small things like all but telling them they can’t share their salary, to expecting a large amount of overtime (60-80 hour work weeks are not uncommon), to trying to make employees come into the office during COVID restrictions on multiple occasions. They only backed down when county health officials called them out (there are news articles about them if you want to fact-check). The blatant disregard for employee safety and health alone is enough to not work here, but here are more reasons from my experience and observations. * There’s a cult-like atmosphere. If you don’t subscribe to it, you have to watch what you say and to whom. The biggest suck-ups will report you. * You can receive feedback from other employees that you’ll never see unless your manager shows it to you (or the person who submits it tells you). There are some petty people there that can leave petty feedback that you’ll never know about. I’m all for feedback, but this is not that. * Compounding with the previous point, there’s a secret ranking system that ranks all the employees. This dictates your yearly raise and bonus. It sounds like a conspiracy, but managers are open about its existence from the start. So better hope you get a good manager that you jive with. * I have yet to see a mental health provider in the area that hasn’t said something along the lines of, “Oh, you used to work at Epic? I’ve seen so many people that work there.” So kiss your mental health goodbye. Number 7 of Epic’s 10 Commandments: Have standards. Be fair to all. For such a smart company, they don’t know what fair means.

Pros: Fair pay for new grads, a good benefits package. Wisconsin is a great place to live if you're an outdoors person. Madison is a college town, so it has its fair share of theater, arts, and museums.

Cons: No clearly defined professional development. The most you can realistically expect is being a team lead, which simply adds some spreadsheet tracking responsibilities. As a software developer, surprisingly few customer feedback is channeled back, and most development work is determined/prioritized by your team lead.