Epic Systems

Good health benefits.

Separate room for many employees.

You will never feel lonely or bored; there will be enough work to keep you busy.

High degree of micromanagement. You are expected to log every hour of your week in an Excel sheet, which will be reviewed by your Team Lead.

You have to work a minimum of 50 hours per week, including New Year and Thanksgiving weeks. If you go below that, you can expect taunting comments from your Team Lead.

Your hard work will never be appreciated. Even if you work 60+ hours, you will not be appreciated a bit. But if you make a single mistake, you will be held accountable in every possible way.

Most development is done in Mumps and VB6. You will be outdated in the job market if you work here for a couple of years. Coding in Mumps is a nightmare; things will break in places that you don't expect. Only if you are good at assembly-style programming will you like this language.

Work will creep into your weekends and holidays. It was not unusual for me to receive emails over the weekend or late hours to finish some work.

You have to commute to the office even if there is a blizzard (yes, it happens more than twice a year in Madison). Most companies will emphasize working from home in such situations.

The company doesn't really care about your personal life, and nobody will bother about your workload, stress, or problems. Your Team Lead is there to assign you work and more work, period.

The beautiful building/campus was built with only one thing in mind: to impress the clients.

It is even more difficult to get out of the company for three reasons:

• You cannot work in healthcare for a year.
• You can't find time to give telephonic interviews. Taking a half-hour break during a typical workday is difficult; you have to inform your Team Lead and a couple of others for that.
• Your Mumps/VB6 experience is worthless, and any company would think twice before even considering your resume.