Epic Systems

• Pay and benefits are some of the best you'll find in the state.

• A truly unique campus, with plenty of amazing dining choices. It almost has the feeling of being back in college again. Epic strives to make you feel comfortable at work, which is good as you'll likely spend more time at work than you expect.

• Working on something that can actually save lives... if you can look past just being a small cog in the 10,000+ employee machine.

• Visiting hospitals provides a unique and useful perspective. I wish more companies took such a hands-on approach with developers. Surprisingly, QA does not receive the same opportunities.

• Potential post-Epic consulting opportunities, if that's your sort of thing. Having Epic on your resume is generally considered a good thing.

• Awful work-life balance. The minimum expectation for a work week was 45 hours, enforced by a weekly work plan that required you to lay out 45-50 hours worth of estimated work, "so you'll never have nothing to do." Failing to produce 45-50 hours worth of work a week leads to questions about your capability and commitment.

• Incredibly high turnover across all roles, especially among recent college grads, evidenced by an obvious age gap between the old guard and constantly churning new team members. Do not expect to last more than 2 years at Epic unless you sacrifice a large chunk of your personal life. If you, like me, are looking for a job to put in your hours, get paid, and go home at the end of the day to live your own life, run away and don't look back. At the least, please have an exit plan ready.

Ask around Madison - the story of plucky starry-eyed grads pushed to their breaking point, "ground up into productivity paste" (as another ex-Epic employee so vividly put it), and discarded without concern is a common one. Some will say that they just couldn't make the cut, or were lazy and undisciplined. Some of you reading this probably agree. I encourage you to take a look at the numbers yourself, if you can find them.

• Inability to move between roles and teams if your current one is not a good fit. I was promised by HR during the hiring process that I could change roles if things didn't work out (as I was hired into a development role despite applying for a different position). Despite repeated conversations with my manager and my obvious struggling, I was let go without even the most basic attempt at addressing my concerns about my role. As I came to learn from speaking with more tenured employees, this is a common thing at Epic. Counter-intuitively, and despite what HR will tell you during the interview process, only those performing very well in their current role are eligible to change roles. Epic would rather write off their investment in an under-performing employee than give them a second chance in the role they ask for.

• The "startup culture" feel is a lie. Don't let the campus fool you; Epic is a 10,000+ person company now, and it is run like one. Weekly work plans, performance evaluations and improvement plans, and the cold, uncaring nature of a massive corporation are becoming the norm.

• "Team Leads" (AKA your direct manager) are often promoted out of a development role with little to no additional training. This means that the quality of your manager is a total crapshoot. The Peter Principle is in full force here.

• 6-month onboarding process for new developers, due to the outdated technologies in use. While recent attempts to migrate to modern platforms are ongoing, you will still spend up to 6 months in classes, being tested regularly with exams while you slowly spin up in your actual job. Don't expect to be able to Google your problems once you actually start development; Stack Overflow cannot save you. The development cycle is similarly long - a single change of minor to moderate complexity generally takes 1-2 weeks to complete, passing through 4 rounds of review before being approved.

Frankly, stop abusing your employees.

With a company the size of Epic, 45-50 hour work weeks should not be a necessary norm. We are not children nor machines. Treat us with respect and cultivate us; help us find the place where we can do the most good. Don't look to discard us once we can no longer meet your unhealthily-lofty expectations. Fix mismanagement and poor project planning so unhealthy workweeks are no longer needed to compensate.

Above all, if an employee says something is wrong – either about their own role or something larger within the company – actually listen and act on it.