Pros
Being new to Madison, I met a lot of great, fun, intelligent people when working at Epic. It made adjusting to a new town easier. They do give you a lot of responsibility to push your boundaries of knowledge and develop a solid skill set. If you can maneuver through all the non-competes, you can set yourself up for a great career. They do train you and there is a lot of opportunity to learn about the healthcare industry. Unless you go through a clinical route, getting into the healthcare industry is hard. Healthcare IT is a dynamic changing industry that is really picking up, and this can be an exciting career path--one that most people do not realize exists. They continue to grow, change, develop, and refine their processes. Because of this, there is opportunity to shine and get noticed if you would like. They now have more defined career tracks for implementation services--application gurus and project management gurus. This is good for employees because they can experience both tracks and decide which one fits them best.
Cons
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.
