Rewarding sector to work in, but Epic could improve employee quality of life
Pros
1. Working with hospitals and other health care agencies is rewarding. I would get frustrated at some points but I always felt like I was working towards a good cause and that my customers genuinely cared about helping their patients, even if their decisions were misguided at times 2. Autonomy - I liked being able to tackle problems at my own angle, rather than having to follow a script of any sort. There is also a lot of autonomy/flexibility for finding internal projects you are passionate about, which is good as customer work alone can be stressful or sometimes less interesting. 3. Interesting and challenging problems - There were multiple times where I had customer issues/internal tasks that I would start, only to realize hours later that I had spent half a day on them. There are some really interesting technical issues to tackle, which makes the job intriguing (and sometimes a pain). Overall, this was definitely a positive for me. Also, the system has quirks (what system doesn't) but I think it is overall very well designed which is a big plus. The food - Campus has cafeterias on site and I actually still talk to people about them. They are absolutely amazing The campus - is stunning. I may not want to go in to work on some days (winter sucks) but the campus always looked gorgeous and I think it goes a long way to helping prevent mental fatigue
Cons
Employee benefits - The vacation at the company is sub-par. 10 days your first two years (15 after that) is pitiful, with 5 sick days that have to be used as sick days. Would be better if it was all paid time off. There is a lot of focus on the "sabbatical" where Epic pays for a 4 week international trip for you after 5 years. But this is basically a pay bonus stuck behind a service wall. Think about it like this: 4 weeks is 20 days vacation, which divided by 5 years is 4 days/year. add those two each of your first 5 years and youd get 14 days vacation your first two years (the low end of average in the US) and 19 days the next 3 years (the high end of the US average). They give you $3000 for the sabbatical, which can only be used on the travel, which is essentially a five year bonus (not uncommon at companies) that has stipulations. Oh, and you have to get your travel dates approved for the sabbatical as well. Lack of upward mobility - Opportunities for promotion only go so high because of how settled the upper management is. You can become a team lead for an application, but I would say thats about as high as you can get. And even those positions are dependent on how much you buy in to the Epic philosophy. Add in the fact that these Team leads technically have the same job title as you and it can make differentiating difficult, both within the company and if you ever choose to leave. Raises/bonus compensation is a black box - Raises are all tied to performance (good) but this is determined by team leads in what is essentially a "black box" meeting that no one else has any info about. They rank team members based on some criteria, and you will never really be told why. Obviously your team lead will offer you ways to be a better employee, but it turns the compensation process in to this game you play with your team lead to make sure they, or someone else in these meetings, likes you enough to advocate for you. It can be incredibly rewarding if your lucky or incredibly frustrating if you aren't, and I've experienced it both ways. Working hours - As someone else said, you will work hard. Epic tries to push every team member to the tipping point of what they can handle to optimize their efficiency. It can be frustrating, because it often means a customer can come to you with unrealistic expectations and the response is to "handle it" because Epic expects you to always come through for the customer (Judy calls this the "Yes, but" mentality). Don't get me wrong, this could be very rewarding - I had some instances where this lead to some big achievements for customers - but sometimes its in cases where the customer is making bad choices and rather than push back Epic would prefer to implement the lesser choice and lean on you to cover when it inevitably comes back to bite the customer. Also, not that the time commitments are even worse for IS, to the point that you will be working at nights when you get home or you get back to the hotel. Listening to people in IS it sounded terrible to me, but I think that position is built or a specific type of person (which I was not one of)
