Epic Systems

Culinary is amazing.

A lot of people praise the compensation structure, but it still falls pretty short of FAANG jobs for developers.

TL;DR I would encourage anyone looking at Epic to spend some time researching their COVID response; it's an absolute embarrassment. It's also, quite literally, illegal because it puts the whole community at unnecessary risk. Again, that's not my opinion; that's fact as stated by PHMDC.

Epic has obstinately started forcing employees back to work in direct opposition to the current orders for Madison and Dane County. They have also been lying to both employees and local government officials about what their plans are and whether those same plans obey the local work-from-home order. That's not my opinion; that's fact as stated by PHMDC and multiple news sites, both local and national.

At this point, it's clear that Epic is going to do what it wants regardless of how it impacts local communities and employees. The only thing staying their hand are legal threats from PHMDC, spurred on by local community leaders and news. In no uncertain terms, it should be clear that this company does not care about you or its local community.

Even after having legal action threatened by PHMDC, Epic has intentionally made working from home as difficult as possible. This includes, but is not limited to, intimidation, implied threats of retaliation, pressure from managers, gaslighting employees, and adding so many unreasonable barriers to requesting work from home that it's extremely impractical for everyone to actually do it. As an example, we have an internal system for automatically requesting work from home. It's the same system we've had in place for years. It's the same system we've all been using as a company now for months to work from home during COVID. Magically, now that Epic wants employees back at the office, that system isn't good enough anymore. Employees who are supposed to be back at the office have exactly three days to call a phone number (that hasn't been supplied yet) to call HR and request work from home. Over 5000 people are supposed to call a line manned by an HR team with less than 10 people. Make no mistake, this is intentional to make it as hard as possible for employees to actually work from home. It's also very intentionally designed to pressure employees into not working from home due to fear of reprisal. This is the absolute bare minimum they thought they could do to avoid legal repercussions.

Retaliation isn't an irrational fear. They have forcefully demoted multiple managers who were pushing back against returning. Epic has also lied about this to both employees and news. The whole way this could be construed as anything other than a lie is to classify internal managers (some of whom manage other managers) as not being a manager. This is, at best, a very loose interpretation of 'manager' in a way that wouldn't match the legal definition (as it applied to creating a union).

The cherry to top off this crappy sundae is Epic wasting multiple millions of dollars on splitting offices into tiny closets so they can force employees back to work 'safely'. This isn't my opinion; the construction had to be registered with Verona. The multi-million dollar amount is from Epic. This is after they slashed allocated funds for salaries. What a joke.

Follow local laws. Stop intentionally putting the community at risk. You've destroyed your reputation with employees and the local community. You're starting to destroy it nationally and with customers. Your only hope to salvage this situation is to admit you were wrong and immediately do a 180 on remote work.

Follow the example set by other FAANG companies, and let there be full work from home until at least the end of the year. This isn't complicated. You are the only ones making this hard.