Epic Systems

Lots of other young people at the company. Almost every other new hire you meet is fresh out of college and/or under 25 years old.

The campus is pretty nice, though I personally find some of the buildings in bad taste.

The food is pretty amazing, and the menus at the various food venues change daily and accommodate all kinds of diets.

The benefits cannot be beat. And if you're willing to work hard, your job security is essentially assured because Epic is dying to keep people staying for more than one or two years.

Epic has a veneer of being a fun, young, and cutting-edge company with a beautiful campus, great food, and opportunity for personal growth. However, there is such a repressive culture of uniformity and kool-aid drinking that if you do not fully immerse yourself into it and accept the corporate dogma from the CEO and company, then you will immediately feel alienated. That was my experience. I came with high hopes that I would be able to dive right in and apply the skills and knowledge I had to offer. But the whole corporate structure of the company is so stifling that I lost such hopes almost immediately. The training process is so jumbled and confusing that even after two months I had no clue what my job really was. No matter what role or app you're working in, you'll have to endure weeks of training before you have training with your actual team. It really makes no sense.

I think I should underscore the homogeneity and lack of independent thought present in the company. The company's operating principles are posted in every bathroom and repeatedly pounded into you. Within your first two months, you'll have a class called "Corporate Philosophy" taught by the CEO, Judy Faulkner. But this class is a farce. Judy stands before you like a prophet on a hill and rambles about how Epic is such a success because it resisted going public or taking on debt. The management just constantly talks down upon its employees and treats them like sheep.

Before assigning new employees to a division or role, get some input from them as to what their skills are and what they want to do. I applied for the Project Manager role but was then assigned as Quality Assurance without any rhyme or reason. I was assigned to an app I had no interest in.

A lot of smart people work at Epic, but their opportunities to contribute to the company are cut short because individuals are just thrown arbitrarily into their position and app.

Have new employees start out with on-the-job training or shadowing before they sit through classes for twenty hours per week. Encourage individualistic thinking as opposed to having everyone hug a culture of uniformity.