Epic Systems

Disclaimer: This review is pre-COVID. I left Epic prior to the pandemic.

Awesome people - I really enjoyed my coworkers and found some of my closest friends at Epic. Definitely recommend starting in a summer month to get the full experience. Every coworker is ready and more than willing to help.

Great compensation / benefits - I think the pay for Implementation Services is above par for similar roles at other companies, and you can achieve some pretty awesome raises. My first raise was like 40% of my salary, but as you can imagine, I ground for it. The insurance coverage is second to none.

Exit Opportunities - The Epic brand is a good one to have on your resume, especially if you want to continue client-facing work in management consulting or IT consulting. For IS, I'd recommend spending 2-3 years at Epic. Get repetitions in different external / internal roles (e.g., workflow module success owner, lead, etc.), then leave. While at Epic, I found that 60% of my day was spent doing things that were valuable beyond Epic (leading times, massaging timelines, advising clients) and 40% was spent doing things that are not extensible outside of Epic (hands-to-keyboard building, SLGs, DLGs, etc.). Prior to your departure, I'd recommend positioning yourself into internal roles that give you more opportunity to focus on things that are valuable outside of Epic.

Overall - I'd recommend IS @ Epic as a first job out of undergrad for anyone. The amount of responsibility you carry will transform you from a student to a sharp, seasoned professional. Also, the food is outrageously good (like restaurant quality) and very cheap.

Institutional Knowledge - Almost all of the knowledge at Epic is from Epic. The vast majority of employees have only ever worked at Epic, especially in Implementation Services.

The blind lead the blind, and the lack of diverse knowledge and experience (in my opinion) hinders the company. One of the reasons I left was my desire to work under a diverse set of professionals (e.g., former clinical practitioners, finance people, IT people, etc.) because they have shareable, templatized knowledge from a variety of roles in the healthcare industry. Unfortunately, you won't find that at Epic.

Hours - I did a lot of 60+ hour weeks. I should have been better with delegating and managing expectations, but regardless, most of the Epic implementers are probably working ~50 hour weeks.

86 Taco Tuesday & stop whining about your employees using Jodel. Let the people have their memes!