Pros
The food and some people
Kontras
It's hard to decide where to begin. I will start by saying that I am not some disgruntled employee who was a terrible worker. Everyone hired at Epic is smart and competent. I know many others who share these sentiments. Epic hires primarily fresh college graduates, which is honestly red flag #1. I was not fresh out of college and had prior work experience. I was not tolerant of the toxicity and BS here because I know it's not normal. But fresh college grads have no prior full time work experience, so they think the cult(ure) here is normal when it is incredibly awful. If Epic was honest about the job, no one would work here. You are NOT a project manager. I repeat - YOU ARE NOT A PROJECT MANAGER! You are an implementation specialist. You are literally configuring software for customers. They advertise this role as a "project manager" and then do the old bait and switch, telling you that you are actually an implementation specialists or "IS". You don't learn true project management methodologies - everything you learn is Epic specific, so none of the stuff you learn carries over to a different job except for a few soft skills. Ok let's talk more about the role. When you start you are an "AC" which stands for application coordinator. You are paired with an "AM" or application manager. Epic has such a shortage of AMs right now (because of the terrible culture in implementation leading ACs to keep quitting) but will NEVER change anything about this job despite constant feedback. If you submit feedback, they will gaslight you to make you think YOU are the problem! Textbook gaslighting. Ok back to the AM shortage. So as a new AC you have a high chance of being paired with a new AM who has been there for 9-12 months longer than you and is likely a 23 year old who has taken the 4 "classes" they require new AMs to take. They will have NO formal management training or experience, but now they completely decide your fate at this company. Someone I knew who became an AM said "They tell you in AM camp that if you don't know something just ask your AC to do it". And that right there gave me so much validation in my decision to leave. So toxic. So you have a new AM who you may jive well with or you may totally hate. Then you get assigned a customer. Again, you may bond well with your customer or they may be a nightmare. The best part? You have no say in your customer, your AM, or your application you are assigned! Some applications are WAY more technical/difficult than others and Epic just throws bodies wherever they are needed. So if you get on a terrible app, god help you. When you start working with your customer, you will be immediately pushed to do things that will leave you like a deer in the headlights. You will have minimal knowledge of your app and be expected to lead meetings with the CIO in the room. You will be expected to lead technical troubleshooting sessions despite barely even knowing what your app entails. It sounds ridiculous to even type this out, but that is the standard. You are simultaneously expected to manage every aspect of the implementation while knowing an insane amount of technical information. I remember sitting there thinking... how is this real? It feels like a fever dream. When you inevitably fail to do well, you will get poor feedback. Your AM will do monthly feedback sessions with you where they will pull out an expectations grid for an AC and assess you in like 20 different areas. The standards on this grid are so high that you will inevitably "need improvement" in a bunch of areas. Oh and guess what - the difficulty of your project is not taken into account here. So people with tiny/easy projects are judged in the same exact way as those with huge/complex/difficult projects. I got stuck with a project that had a huge and complex scope and never got any additional consideration for my feedback. Then got told I needed "significant improvement" in several areas while my peers with easy projects were told they were meeting and exceeding all expectations. Oh and don't forget that these expectations increase literally every 1-2 months, so when you finally improve in one of the areas... congratulations! You're now still not meeting expectations. Let's talk about the gaslighting. Epic could give a masterclass in gaslighting. Honestly surprised it's not a class they offer lol. If you are fresh out of college, I can see how easy it would be for them to gaslight you and make you think YOU are the crazy one, that you are wrong, etc. Any time you bring up a concern about the difficulty of your project, any sort of process, the way things are run, etc, leadership will immediately turn it around on you and say that you "aren't working hard enough" or "at your tenure we expect you to be able to do this independently". I struggled a lot on my project and talked to several leadership figures in my application and they all tried to gaslight me. Epic loves to talk about how cool the campus is. Honestly it becomes background noise after about a month. Everything is so spread out too, so good luck if you have a meeting with someone who is way across campus. IMO they try to trap people here. They will give you relocation $$$ but you have to pay it back if you leave before 2 years. Then there is the non-compete, which was 18 months for me. So you have to pay back that money and you can't work for a customer for 18 months after leaving. How amazing. I was fortunate to have my exit opportunity lined up, but it can be incredibly difficult to get out. They will try to make you feel special for getting hired here. Literally anyone with a high gpa who can pass a test gets hired. It's not as hard as they make it sound. They will try to sell you on the Madison propaganda (i.e. Madison is so great). It's not. There is the college, the capitol, and Epic. That's it. If you come from a larger city, you will be so underwhelmed and bored. But if you like drinking with college kids then this is the city for you. That was a lot. But I needed to type it all out as a way of processing. My time at Epic was truly the worst time of my life. I remember walking out those doors on my final day and the wave of relief that washed over me was electrifying. Never again. Do not do it.