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Culture of Overwork

Software Developer
Current Employee
Has worked at Epic Systems for 2 years
August 16, 2024
Madison, Wisconsin
2.0
Doesn't RecommendPositive OutlookDoesn't Approve of CEO
Pros
  • Excellent pay for new college grads (at least for the software developer position), a great option if you have debt you want to pay off quickly.
  • Coworkers are very intelligent and generally helpful.
  • On-campus food outlets are very affordable and high-quality.
  • Excellent health insurance.
Cons

As a "software developer", you will also be responsible for high-level project investigation, design, and planning. You will be given a one-sentence summary of a feature and be responsible for everything from that point up to a finished, released product. They hire a small number of designers and end-users for devs to consult/collaborate with, but UX/project scope/etc is always still your responsibility in the end.

The company has a strong culture of overwork. The CEO advocates for "work-life mixture" instead of work-life balance. They would rather pay an undersized staff generously to work them in perpetual overtime than hire enough people to do the work at a healthy pace. Some team leads will shield you from this to an extent, but if you get one that doesn't, the company will not step in to save you.

Little vacation time. Very few WFH days (~5 days in a year).

The tech stack is arcane, and your experience will be largely inapplicable to the rest of the industry.

Micromanagement of inconsequential deadlines is common. All employees have to log their work in 15-minute increments.

Advice to Management

Epic's culture of late nights and blatant disdain for work-life balance seems to have roots in the company's origins, when it was Judy and a few dozen others giving their all to launch a startup. That dynamic can be excusable when everyone has a significant stake and the company is small. But applying that expectation to a company with over 14,000 employees is insanely unhealthy and will drive away some of the greatest talent in the industry. It's shameful that upper management valorizes this crunch culture as "heroes helping heroes," especially since we work in the healthcare industry. Chronic overwork has serious mental and physical health ramifications. To quote the CEO, "What you put up with is what you stand for."

Additional Ratings

Work/Life Balance
2.0
Culture and Values
2.0
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
3.0
Career Opportunities
3.0
Compensation and Benefits
3.0
Senior Management
1.0

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