Epic Systems

Great benefits, great food, lots of valuable experience.

If your TL is bad, it is a total dead end. If you don't get along with your TL, it is near impossible to change, and you will not get opportunities.

The pay is OK, but new QAers recently started at 8-10,000 more than when I started. This means new QAers were earning more than me when I left, and Epic has been deliberately slow to address this issue. Essentially, they have suggested they will consider an adjustment in September, which essentially means experienced QAers would lose out on 6 months of higher wages (~4-5k in total) from the time new QAers started earning higher salaries to when Epic may or may not adjust others. This is an incredibly disingenuous policy, deliberately engineered to save Epic money at the cost of its employees.

Compared with IS, TS, and Developers, QA is clearly a significant step below. The other roles get paid SIGNIFICANTLY more (they start ~50% higher and their raises are often a higher percent), they often get better opportunities, and are generally the focus of many policies. QA is frequently an afterthought.

Value QA feedback more. We understand the software sometimes better than anyone else, so let us help guide development. We obviously can't develop stuff, but when we disagree with decisions regarding direction and which projects are worthwhile, that opinion should be valued. Developers are often too focused on specific projects to appreciate the broader issues of their application.