Epic Systems

There's a strong culture of competence. People are pushed to be effective and do well.

Depending on the team, you can have a high level of independence and are often able to affect change that goes beyond the immediate work assigned to you by your manager.

There are bad managers, but lower-level management overall, I'd say, is above average. Managers are held to standards of employee happiness and are often held accountable if that slips.

Great salary and benefits.

Epic's coronavirus policy has been pretty terrible. Upper management has, at every turn, been trying to reopen as early as they can, despite the rapidly surging cases in Madison. Up until now, they've always relented, but only at the very last second, giving people next to no warning or ability to plan. As of this writing, we are slated to come back within the next month.

Folks who have compromised immune systems or other health conditions that put them at risk are able to get an "exemption". However, this "exemption" just means:

• You get to come back in the last phase (a couple of weeks later than the first phase).
• You need to prove to the company that you have such a condition by emailing a group and having them audit you.

This stance is virtually guaranteed to kill people. There has been strong employee backlash, but instead of even having a dialogue about it, management has actively shut down any conversation. Internal forums that were being used to discuss this were shut down.

Management's response is that we're supposed to email an internal list of folks to give feedback, questions, or concerns. However, this group has been steadfastly unwilling to discuss or even offer answers to questions. The people I talk to who have sent emails to this group describe it as a black hole.

So, as of right now, Epic is planning to adopt a policy that is very likely to kill people, and they are steadfastly refusing to even discuss it or do anything other than tell people not to talk about it.

Non-COVID cons: The culture tends to push people to work too much, even if individual managers do not specifically push people to do so (though those exist, too).

Managers are often not deeply involved with the functional area that they oversee, which makes them often unqualified to do their jobs. Because developer managers often will not work in the area of code that you work in, they have no way of actually knowing how effective you are at development. Because of that, the process of rankings (which determine raises and internal opportunities) is deeply flawed.

Transparency is pretty bad. The rankings process mentioned above is deeply shadowy, and the rank-and-file get little insight into it. Decisions are often made by upper management without explanation.

Reverse course. Hard.

Give a public apology for the handling thus far, wildly increase transparency, and begin following the guidelines of public health agencies. If you choose not to, at least be willing to engage employees in a dialogue about it.