Got to agree with Skyrunner here; after a bit of research into Epic Systems, I'm not finding the bad press I'd expect from a scandal or spam ring or something. Was this just your personal experience, Max, or have you heard the same thing happened to others as well?
Found some employee testimonials on
the talk page of the Epic Systems wikipedia article. The biggest concerns seem to be that the systems and programming languages they use are outdated, so job skills learned haven't had many applications to former employees' future work:
I worked there for 3.5 years starting back in 2002. Some of the item in the WTF article are true, but back then most technical employees were trained on VB and could write dev projects periodically. The culture was ueber-hippie there, the pay was terrible, and the hours were pretty tough. BUT - most people back then had pretty steep careers and lots of customer contact, enabling them to leave for more prestigious customer facing jobs in the tech consulting industry. Now.. why people like me didn't get ANY equity in this fast growing company is beyond me. Many foreign nationals were tied in due to visa and green card processes. However, that looks like an awesome thing today where many companys don't sponsor foreign talent at all anymore.
A Forbes article from 2004 mentions Epic Systems in a pretty neutral-to-positive light as well:
Judith Faulkner had just completed a doctorate at UW in computer sciences when she launched Epic Systems in 1979. It started off computerizing records for physicians, and today Epic allows networks of hospitals, doctors and providers to share information and images. Growing at 40% a year since 2000, privately held Epic (2003 revenues: $107 million, according to Healthcare Informatics) is in the process of building a $130 million corporate campus in nearby Verona. WARF had nothing to do with this venture, except in creating a thriving environment of entrepreneurialism and science. On a small scale the university and WARF are doing for the local economy what Stanford did over the past half-century to create Silicon Valley.
That said, you might want to look for work that doesn't require you to be completely uprooted. Unless part of the allure is traveling and seeing the land of the cheeseheads (though the Dells, Great Lakes, and Dunes are nice too), slightly more local work might be good to shoot for, especially if you want to keep in touch with folks from campus.
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Topic: Things that made you sad today thread. (Read 9475880 times)