Epic Systems

• You will be paid well.

• Most of the coworkers I've interacted with are smart people, and people are generally willing to teach you things when you ask (which is necessary because there is so much turnover).

• Everyone is generally invested in making the best software for the customers.

• The food is good and cheap. The cafeterias only charge enough to cover the cost of the food, not paying the culinary staff, so the food is cheap.

• The company is basically indestructible. They survived COVID without a sweat because healthcare companies will always need their software. Customers generally agree that Epic provides them with the best functionality, even though Epic is very expensive. The only things I can think of that would financially hurt Epic are big government regulations or antitrust issues (the company is close to a monopoly on the US healthcare software market).

Your experience here is entirely dependent on your manager, and Epic doesn't do a great job of training managers. I've had good ones and bad ones, and it has a substantial impact on your work life.

The software practices at Epic are very old. It's basically all waterfall development. Frontend stuff uses React and TypeScript, which I enjoy, but server side is all C# .NET Framework, not even .NET Core. Database wise, everything is in a language called M, so you won't have any marketable database skills. And to top it all off, we still use SVN (to Epic's credit, they are actively trying to switch to Git).

Epic likes to brag about how they aren't subject to the "tyranny of the quarter" because it's a private company and they don't have to care about quarterly earnings and what not. But as a software developer, all the managers care about is getting features into quarterly releases (they release a new version every quarter). This usually results in long hours and late nights, and managers don't care.

There is a high turnover rate. Epic brings in a lot of employees from across the country because they pay well and provided a good moving stipend (mine might have been around $10k). Then a lot of those new hires eventually realize the company isn't as great as it looked on paper, and they leave.

Do not let the fun-looking builds fool you into thinking you're working at Disneyland. Yes, it's nice to look at, but it's just a product of the company having more money than they know what to do with, and an out-of-touch CEO. Think of all the fun buildings in the same way that pretty people are obsessed about their looks – it's all about looking good on Instagram, even if they are miserable on the inside. And since they have spent so much money on their campus, remote work or hybrid work is never going to happen. They currently let us work 5 days remote per year.

The non-compete means you basically won't be able to work at any other healthcare-related company because Epic has software for basically every corner of the healthcare market. The non-compete also applies to Epic's customers, and most healthcare networks in the US use Epic. This especially sucks for employees at Epic in support roles because they could make a lot more money if they worked directly for a customer or as a contractor.

Epic has an all-staff meeting every month in a giant 11k-seat auditorium. I used to think they were cool, but the more I went to them, the more I felt like it wasn't worth the time. It's nice to hear about things that are happening in other parts of the company, but when I'm already working late to meet quarterly deadlines, spending 3 hours in a meeting that probably won't have any impact on your daily job starts to get old. And then we have to listen to the founder and CEO ramble about whatever she wants to talk about, and if you've been around long enough, you get to hear the same stories over and over. The stories are nice, if you have nothing better to do, but eventually, you will just want to get your work done. It's also common for these staff meetings to highlight how great the company is, typically from the people who are the biggest company cheerleaders.

Stock options are nice, but they buy the stock back as soon as you leave. So unless you think you can work there for a long time, you won't get a ton of benefits from the stock options.