[brickfaced]

Epic is known locally as an exploitative, abusive employer of software engineers. Work-life balance is poor, pay is mediocre for the industry, and skills with their in-house tools don't transfer outside Epic. They have an extensive non-compete clause with EXTREMELY aggressive enforcement:

https://isthmus.com/news/cover-story/opportunity-lost-epic-n...

They're also vehemently opposed to remote work, to the point that during COVID they tried to force employees back into the office in August, 2020 (!) in violation of a county public health order (!!!):

https://www.wpr.org/economy/workers-officials-urge-remote-wo...

Epic's Glassdoor reviews are terrible. Several personal friends each lasted less than a year at Epic out of college before finding new, better-paying employment elsewhere. Since Epic is privately owned and its founder and CEO has stated she'll never sell, its corporate culture will never change. It's better than no job at all but if you have other options, avoid.

[epicdev]

> Epic is known locally as an exploitative, abusive employer of software engineers

Not of software engineers, those are decently treated, but the reputation for other employees is questionable.

Epic has 4 major roles(and a bunch of support roles): software development, implementation services, technical services, and quality management.

Software developers are well paid for the area. While it can vary between teams and supervisors, a competent dev should be able to avoid being overworked.

Implementation services travels a ton to go setup new customers. It's definitely a quick burnout position if you don't thrive in that atmosphere. But the ones who do have some of the fastest compensation growth.

Technical services are by far the most overworked because they are assigned to support customers long term. The baseline expectation is 45 hours a week, and most are usually assigned to enough customers that it can exceed 50-55 easily. I would consider Epic to be doing a poor job keeping them from burning out.

Quality managers, who test and document the software, can be overworked depending on team. They are definitely underpaid. They have been the plaintiffs of previous lawsuits against Epic by employees.

The non-compete is only really effective at making employees wait a year before going to work directly for a customer. I've heard of people getting jobs at customers and just not working directly with Epic until after the year has passed. Developers can easily just go work for a different tech companies right away.

The Covid and remote work stuff was pretty bad. At least they backed down in 2020 after complaints to the county. Unfortunately it took a suicide in 2021 for them to ease up on the "must only work remote in the local area" policy before they started bringing us all back to office at the end of the year. At least they never gave us the impression it was long term like some companies did.

[weitendorf]

Epic is a lot of people's first "real" (full-time, after college graduation) job and first corporate job, and very few of their employees are from Madison proper. I think a lot of people dislike working at Epic once the hours get to them and they start getting tired of Madison, but I also think their employees might overestimate how much greener the grass is on the other side, because they haven't actually experienced any comparable job.

Personally I think Epic actually does a pretty good thing training up and employing so many new grads with skillsets that don't find it as easy to get solid corporate jobs as SWEs (a lot of their TSEs are STEM-but-not-CS grads, implementation people seem to be ~anything). They do expect something back from those employees in return, but they're paid quite well compared to their alternatives and given a lot of support/structure to ease into their first job.

IMO it's a place I appreciate a lot more in hindsight than I did while briefly working there, and I don't think that's an unpopular opinion

[odyssey7]

This defense of Epic really makes it sound like a great opportunity.

> I also think their employees might overestimate how much greener the grass is on the other side, because they haven't actually experienced any comparable job

Many people continue to regret their time at Epic even after having left and having seen the other grass first-hand.

> Personally I think Epic actually does a pretty good thing training up and employing so many new grads with skillsets that don't find it as easy to get solid corporate jobs as SWEs

Count the MUMPS training to essentially be a waste of time, unless you like the idea of writing MUMPS going forward.

Also, your endorsement reads as if Epic should be an option of last resort rather than a place where a software engineer should want to be.

[mf_tomb]

This is just totally untrue, Epic is fine as a Dev. I have many friends who work there, none of them work more than 40 hours a week and they all make ~200k with 5 yoe. Great for Madison WI. Tech stack does suck, however.

[brickfaced]

Glad your friends' experiences are exceptional. I know a woman working for Epic in the Madison area who miscarried due to work stress. Madison housing is also a lot less affordable these days, assuming you want to actually live in Madison and not a copy-paste Verona suburb w/ zero walkability:

https://captimes.com/news/madison-home-prices-increased-the-...

And living in Madison means commuting to Epic in Verona, which means contending with Beltline traffic just as bad as 280 during rush hour.

[shigawire]

I know locals like to complain about the beltline, but as someone who has driven in LA, SF, Chicago, NY, it is wild to compare it to any big city traffic.

[brickfaced]

It's not in the same league as LA, NY, or Chicago but definitely up there (albeit during shorter time windows) with Silicon Valley commuter traffic. Part of a common theme of living in Madison where you get downsides of city living- traffic, high taxes, high housing costs- without many upsides such as good public transport, a diversified job market, or a well-developed food scene.