Epic Systems

I've worked in QA for 5 years, and I'm starting to consider other career options. That being said, working at Epic has been a very good experience overall.

• Incredible co-workers: highly intelligent, motivated, and helpful
• Interesting and purposeful work
• QA is a flexible role with tons of opportunities to grow different skills: public speaking, mentoring/coaching, coordination/project management, process improvement, etc.

I don't get a sense that QA is respected by upper management as a vital role in the software development process, and as such, we are underpaid. That being said, the difference in salary increase for someone who is performing average versus someone who is performing above average is significant. If you're performing "average" at Epic, you're an outstanding worker who could make a killing as the top employee somewhere else.

We're busy. Now, I'd much rather have too much to do than too little, but we're at the point where few people have time to further the company by working on medium-priority projects. Not being able to work on some of the cool ideas I have, simply because of time constraints, has led to dissatisfaction.

Stop committing development to customers before anyone has had a chance to research the scope. The quality of people's work goes down after a certain number of hours in a week. We've managed to get these projects done, but are they done well?

As others have said, make a concerted effort to retain experienced employees. We can't continue to have high-quality software if the most knowledgeable people leave to make more money elsewhere.