Epic Systems

Surface-level things:

• Nice and interesting campus.
• Healthy, cheap, good quality food with variety.
• Work can be intellectually stimulating; you learn about the world of the American medical industry.
• Step into the door of the medical IT world if you're really interested in that sort of thing. Not really true to QA, though.

Really toxic work culture. You're surrounded by A-type personalities in a competitive environment where you are measured against your colleagues. Lots of backstabbing, attempts to look the best. Everyone is constantly on the defensive in order to protect themselves from dreaded bad feedback or performance dings. The feedback system is secretive and incoming feedback is curated by TLs to create a narrative to manipulate you; it is easily abused to beat people down.

Epic plays this charade of being an open-minded place, but in reality it is a pretty authoritarian environment where loyalty to the company line and policy is valued above all else. Inadvertently going against that line or not displaying enough enthusiasm for your job as if it's the meaning of your life can get you into some trouble with your TL if they are a "true believer." It's a little like living in a Communist state where everyone tries to pretend to believe the party line.

Mental health issues are a real issue here due to the low levels of trust, fear-based management, impossible expectations, and chronic overwork.

Inexperienced management - your TLs will most likely be 20-something year olds who were promoted based on their unrelated work performance and blind loyalty to the company. Many don't know what they're doing or how to manage people. Many can easily be toxic.

Senior management doesn't care about you - senior leadership fought very hard to prevent work from home. TLs who spoke up for work from home for their colleagues were purged and demoted. This shows everyone how little they care or value your personal safety, health, or sanity, or that of their customers during a pandemic when they sent their employees on go-lives to assist face to face with hospital workers. This is a huge red flag. You are only there to be exploited before being churned out. They are happy to burn through new hires in 1-2 years, either resulting in them quitting due to burnout or for saving their sanity.

Impossible work expectations - Your expected workload will steadily increase every 6 months/year you are at Epic. Many of your assignments will be things you'll have never seen before and you are magically expected to be a "subject matter expert" afterwards. You'll eventually fall behind and be purged from the company as a low performer or devote your entire life to working to meet the expectations. Choice is yours.

Most of your colleagues are not planning to stay, partly due to the reasons listed above once they figure out what Epic is really like. Also, most are very young and will leave shortly. This also deprecates the culture as there is a constant churn of new faces which can make many people pretty cold, distant, and cynical. If you are smart enough to work at Epic, you can do better at other places. Once you figure that out, you won't stay for very long.

QA specifically is pretty low on the totem pole. You're utterly expendable, respected less than technical roles, your bonus is peanuts compared to other roles. You'll be underappreciated despite the work you do in keeping Epic's software working correctly. Recently, QA TLs were placed under IS supervision and the independent department was eliminated - just to give you an idea how you are valued. Don't waste your professional life trying to be a QA'er; you'll get more respect going into the field you actually studied for in school.

One day, your corporate culture and practices will catch up to you.