Epic reviews

99% of new hires are under the age of 30 and become managers very quickly, mostly based on popularity within their own application-role team. Most managers lack experience and compassion. It's really luck of the draw in terms of who you get as a TL/AM. No one gives constructive criticism - it's up to you to figure out how to please them, and no one will give you tangible ways to "improve." Even if you are getting positive feedback from your customer team, your TL can choose to ignore this and throw you under the bus. Employees often act completely unprofessionally. Conference calls with the customer are embarrassing. My colleagues (including my manager) would mute the phone, roll their eyes, and spout profanities directed at the customer. My manager used a profane term on mute during a conference call, setting a great example for two new Epic employees. IS travel so often that they quickly gain status on Delta (this means upgrades to first class and free booze), get drunk on flights, and publicly badmouth customers loudly. Judy sends Epic-wide emails commending employees on their "good behavior" when a member of the general public reports back that Epic employees sat quietly in their seats and they were so impressed :-| This shouldn't be a thing, but it is. Burnout is very real, and this stems from inappropriate expectations set for employees. Good luck fighting back to maintain a healthy work-life balance, unless you have worked for the company for more than a year, put in your time with insane hours and traveling for work trips on your own personal time. Unless you make specific requests for flights, travel will book you on a Monday afternoon/evening flight (after a full day in the office), you'll be on site Tuesday, Wednesday, and a half day Thursday. Depending on where your customer is, you'll be getting back to Madison around anywhere between 5-11pm, and then be back in the office Friday for 7am meetings. Since I left, I believe Epic became more flexible with their work away days, so maybe they'll be able to retain IS for 6 months longer than usual. If you read the NYTimes article about Amazon's workplace environment, you'll be able to draw more than a few parallels to life at Epic.

- Long hours. There is a sense of competition at Epic on who can get to work earliest and stay latest. There is no work-life balance. - No career advancement opportunities. You basically start in one role and can never advance from there. - Bad management. Your team is likely to be a 22-year old that knows nothing about managing people on a team but will force you to do useless team building and work plan related stuff. - Even if you are performing well, one negative review from a customer or co-worker can basically put you in a negative light with your team lead and it is extremely difficult to get out of that situation. - Ancient technology. You will work with VB6 (not even supported by Microsoft anymore) and Cache (obscure language useful only at Epic), which will extremely limit your job opportunities after you leave Epic. -Non-compete clause. After leaving Epic, you will have to wait out a one-year non-compete clause, meaning you can't work for any of Epic's customers or competitors for a full year. - You will be given so much work that you will work 60 hours a week but still feel like that is not enough. Then your TL will “ask” you to take on a project or lead a workgroup, at which point you have to say yes, or else s/he will ask you at the next meeting to take on a different, even more time-consuming, project. When you take on this project and don’t break, s/he will ask you to take on another project or customer, until eventually you can’t handle it and start getting negative reviews for being “slow” or “unresponsive”. - Unfair practices. I know someone who got fired over an incident, but when another person did almost the EXACT same thing, she was barely warned. - Too many unnecessary processes. You will have to deal with many unnecessary processes that you didn't even know existed, which can make you miss deadlines. - Frequently asked to work nights and weekends. This is especially true for weekends, because hospitals like to "go live" on Epic on the weekends since there is less user traffic. You will be asked to support these "go-lives" every month or so, so be prepared to work at least one weekend a month. - No recognition. The only way to know you're doing well at Epic is the amount of work your TL is assigning you. If you get a fifth customer, you're probably doing something right. If you get assigned as a "guru" to maintain documentation for multiple new functionalities, at least you know you're doing well enough to get assigned all these new tasks. That's the only recognition you'll get for doing good work--more work! - It's in Wisconsin. If you're from the West or East coast or from a big city (I am), then you may find Wisconsin less than exciting. - You can't keep your matching 401k until you work for Epic at least 3 years, but rarely does an employee reach 3 years. Even then, you only get to keep 25% of the match. - You can't cash in your sick days when you leave Epic unless you have accumulated over 60 something days (which means about 12 years at Epic if you don't ever get sick). - High turnover rate. Epic fires employees left and right, and people burn out very quickly, so expect to keep getting new people that barely know anything on your team. - "Technical Services" role is basically tech support--users will call in with questions and you will just troubleshoot either on the phone or through email all day, every day, all week, every week, all year, every year. If this is your type of thing, then I guess it could be a pro, but Epic sells the position as so much more that it is disappointing to find yourself on the phone all day with incompetent users day in and day out. - They will not pay for your education. Don't expect Epic to be company to pay for your MBA or Masters in software engineering. They just want to work you to death and don't care how your progress in your career or personal development.