One of the first things- I am disappointed with Epic is, they sell their Soft Developer position by mentioning C#, .Net exclusively- but 70-80% of the job profile is Cache and VB based. If even you are placed in a team which is working with .Net, mostly you would be coding in Cache (their back end language). For some reason I feel this as immoral and unethical to post jobs with generic profile. I was told before 2 and half year that they are moving to .NET with this release which was not true as it would take another 2-3 years from now to start the move from VB to .NET.
In terms of career advancement, you would have very limited scope as technology wise its a hard sell for languages like VB and cache whereas domain wise, Epic makes you sign a non-compete agreement through which you cannot work with anyone working against Epic and with anyone working with Epic. When I came to Epic, Judy (CEO) mentioned in one of the meetings that it takes 3 years to become Epic's employee. I understood quite late what it meant as you do not have any other choice.
Work culture: Epic puts lots of pressure on the employees to put around 55-60 hours a week and anything less than that and you are in bottom 10% danger zone that get kicked out every year. They do not give a compensatory off for working extra hours. They have lots of software developers working on H1B. To safe their working status, they will have to put these many hours which makes other people to put so many hours which is not a healthy competition. There are three major roles in Epic- Soft Developers, Technical Service(TS) and Implementers(IS). I am yet to meet a experience TS or IS guy who loved his job. For Software Developers it depends on your team lead. They have vested lots of power on your team lead. If he says you do not perform then any argument against it is useless. Any geek who has done one very good project would be made your team lead irrespective of his managerial skills. You fill very controlled and their happens lots of micro-management. They track how many comments did you get on your code- to- how many comments can you give -to- how many doubts do you ask your co-workers. The good thing is they pay you good but there is no personal satisfaction. Epic is like Walmart of HealthCare industry where company has a good name but employees are not happy.
I am not sure who decided on Madison as being one of the top cities to live in US. Its a small country side place and there is nothing there to do. Once on a Friday night, there were 3 people in a 30 lane bowling alley. Bottom line is you need to have a good social life or if you like secluded life then Madison would be a better place for you.
