Epic Systems

Epic could decline and it would still be head and shoulders above competitors.

Interesting and challenging problems to solve.

The coworkers you work most closely with usually don't suck and are interested and helpful. It's management (and people who want to be in management) who are the problem and usually the more difficult to work with.

Work-life balance for QA is actually pretty good, all things considered. Way better than IS. I'd rather put my entire salary into BTC and hope for the best than be in IS hoping to make more money.

Healthcare coverage is really good and can be free after 5 years.

Working with developers can be fun.

I want to give senior management a 1, but at least they're making decent business decisions.

Workplace culture has collapsed during COVID.

QA jobs are not what they used to be.

Epic is grifting off the healthcare industry and hides it in do-gooderism. The doing good was good if you got in at the ground floor and stuck around. Those opportunities are few and far between now that every hospital has a computer system.

Rampant age discrimination in hiring. If you are over 25, you will not get a job at Epic, unless you are a token hire.

Epic was willing to go to the Supreme Court and combine the QA role into a few other roles to avoid worker rights and union organizing.

Internal software programs to manage development generally suck.

The buildings get old after a while. Not every office is as nice as the ones they show you.

The handling of the pandemic was one folly after another.

Belligerent inflexibility on work from home or remote, except 10 half-days a year.

Epic has the resources to improve the end-user experience, but they don't want to. The only people they care about at the end of the day are the ones writing the checks and loud people on Twitter with mean tweets that get 8 likes. Meanwhile, plenty of usability testing is ignored or half-addressed.

If you want career growth, you have to drive it or get lucky. It helps if you went to UW-Madison or grew up in WI. Those people are better liked.

They started hiring more people who got turned down from IS into QA, so people are now doing a job they don't really want to do or that they think they are better than. Those people can be pretty toxic.

Concede when you are wrong.

Have more integrity.

QA management: Actually do testing and documentation instead of simply reviewing it or cherry-picking what you work on to flex.

Allow more flexibility in work from home or remote. You know the position you're supporting makes little sense.

Hire a PR firm if you want to be more successful in getting your way.

It's sad to no longer approve of Judy. She's a real genius but is tarnishing her legacy. It's really unfortunate and one of the biggest disappointments I've experienced. The worst part is that it was completely avoidable.