Epic Systems

• Epic's products are awesome and they are better than their competitors by a mile (though some are catching up).

• It dominates the competition in almost all respects, which is rare in a customer-centric market.

• Epic has an amazing work culture. Customers who buy Epic are getting value for their money. Folks who join fresh out of college have a great chance of understanding how success comes about through hard work and focus.

• The campus is nice and almost a tourist attraction in its own right, though full-time folks have nary an opportunity to enjoy it.

• Every employee gets a room (though again, growth means some folks share), and believe me, sometimes it makes a difference.

Let me preface this by saying that I work hard and am okay with giving 80 hours a week. In fact, my advice to folks who are applying to Epic is: it's not just a software company, it's a software and services company (almost akin to consulting) and expect to put in long hours. Stop whining about work/life balance – it gets made, not given. Realize that working at a company is about fitting with a culture (i.e., a give and take).

• Epic is made to an effect in its founder's image. There are things Judy believes, and hence Epic does. But as the company grows, it is not adapting. So, if you clash with "Epic's" ideals, it will be difficult for you.
• There is a weird dichotomy in that we try to be open and transparent to customers as much as possible, but management decided to not do the same for its employees. It almost smacks of a patronizing attitude towards employees. For example, the fact that we do stack ranking was news to most when it came out in the blogs. Feedback from the lead is always "tangential," and there is always a perception among employees about higher-than-average firings (and management seems to not do much about this perception).
• A lot of your career advancement is strongly linked to the types of projects you work on. Infrastructure projects are not visible and high-impact, and essentially you will end up wasting a whole release unless you take up projects on your own (this is more for software devs, though).
• While I was leaving, we were trying to hire more software devs to compensate for growth and were not doing a very good job of it. Essentially, we seemed to be throwing more money at the problem without trying to address the systemic issues.

Full disclosure: I left because I wanted to work on something other than Epic's stuff.

Okay, I am going to write, hoping that someone reads it (however unlikely).

• Be more transparent about advancement and performance. Employees are not kids, and you are not their guardians (I know Judy sometimes likes to say that – hopefully not seriously). Most people will take honest feedback well (just like how when we are honest with customers about bad things, they react well).
• I understand that you like to think of SDs as interchangeable blocks (yes, people who are reading this – almost all companies do this), but you are a small company trying to grow, and you need to hire SDs, so you need to do better (you are not MSFT, Amazon, Google, or Apple).
• I will try to draw a software analogy for this problem. When a software project is chronically delayed, you don't throw more devs at it; you re-evaluate the project and reduce scope. Think along the same lines for your SD problem: make conditions for current SDs better.
• Finally, this is something that nobody likes to hear, but your work, for the most part, is not challenging at all. It's about doing the processes right and hitting deadlines. So, you don't need "good" developers; you need reliable, stolid, and dependable devs who can work long hours. Aim to hire them. And yes, you need a couple of good devs, and you will get them from these folks.