IS - Terrible Management, Impossible Work-Life Balance
Pros
Monetary compensation is nice. Most kids start here fresh out of college, aren't accustomed to having a huge disposable income, and are thrilled to pay off their student loans. 99% of new hires are under the age of 30 and are very social. Colleagues are generally friendly. You bond with friends on the same customer quickly - mostly because people love to complain together. People work incredibly hard here.
Cons
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.
