Epic Project Management reviews

LONG hours. The better of an employee you are, the more work you are awarded. The more you succeed, the more you are expected to do. It becomes difficult to have an appropriate work life balance. Being in implementation services, you had to schedule any time off around your work and clients. It was not easy and often you were just unable to use your vacation time. At my interview, they said the travel was 50%. At the end, I was traveling 100% and even gone on weekends. 80 hours was a normal week, up to a hundred was not uncommon. (I think things have simmered down recently though.) Business travel is not glamorous. You work 12 hour days on site, then work all night at the hotel. When I left, they were strictly hiring young people whereas my starting "class" had no one straight from undergrad. Now that is very rare. At times it feels like the blind leading the blind. You have a large team of young people who are in their first career and who know very little about healthcare or project management. Many are just there as a launching pad and the turn over is high. A lot of misinformation is passed along because the depth of knowledge regarding the system's history and the industry walk out the door to new jobs. They do offer perks for continuing eduction and professional development, and they encourage it. The irony is you work too many hours and your travel schedule is so full actually pursuing these options is unrealistic. Management does not work with you to make these happen either. This is not true for all job roles at Epic, but it is especially true for those in implementation services. Transferring from implementation services into other roles at Epic was not easy (this may have changed). For some reason, this position seems to be the end of the dock. When I worked there, after years of being a road warrior some people were looking to settle down own a plant, maybe have a family. They still enjoyed working at Epic and like what they were doing. If they were allowed to transfer into a new role, often times it was with a huge pay cut or not allow at all. It was demoralizing--as an employee you have a few years of real world experience under your belt that would benefit the company but they don't see it that way.

Employees are treated like children. The company practices ageism in hiring (if you're over 30, don't even bother). There's a severe lack of experienced employees due to their too-rapid growth and constant turnover issues (largely due to travel-related stress and disgust with all the rah-rah corporate brainwashing). The campus seems nifty at first, but the forced quirkiness quickly gets irritating and then downright obnoxious. Due to the lack of a dress code, the employees dress like children or homeless people. Middle management is incompetent (promotions are largely based on who puts in the most hours). All real decisions are made by the top 10 or so senior managers, so unless you can get one of their jobs (you won't) there's no real upside for your career. You only get paid once a month. You will be thoroughly trained on your application, but not on your actual job responsibilities, so that when you actually start work you'll be expected to BS your way along until you figure out what's what. You will be pressured to "get with the program" and become an "Epic person" like it was some kind of cult, and Heaven help you if you get on Judy's bad side. The company is still basically being run like a startup with 100 employees rather than a major enterprise with 3000, leading to bottlenecks and all-around cluelessness. The company is also managed based on KLAS industry surveys, so a single bad review from a single disgruntled user can dramatically effect the whole organization's strategy. It's unlikely you'll actually have your own office for the next year or two until the new buildings are up, though they may tell you otherwise. The employees, while admittedly smart (though not as much as many of them seem to think), are mostly inexperienced and directionless Midwestern kids who just wound up here because they thought the place looked neat, not because they ever intended to work for a medical software company, so don't expect much ambition or drive from your co-workers (except for the true believers, there's always a few of them), and don't be surprised if half of your fellow new hires quit in the first eighteen months. And as for Madison, make sure you own a good parka, and be prepared for the 40k drunk college students clogging up all the downtown bars, parks, concerts, sidewalks, bike paths, apartment buildings, etc.