Former Epic employees told the Daily Cardinal they worked long, hard hours at the EHR vendor but gained good experience for their careers.
"Epic is definitely a company where they expect about 45ish hours of logged work from you a week, [but the workload is] also generally not treated as an unrealistic expectation," Rishi Satpathy, a former technical solutions engineer at Epic, told the University of Wisconsin at Madison student newspaper. "It still felt both intrinsically [and extrinsically] rewarding — working on something that you feel makes an impact. If you're able to demonstrate value [and] communicate effectively, that's reflected in your compensation."
Epic, located in nearby Verona, Wis., is a top employer of University of Wisconsin graduates, with about 1,200 on staff now, according to the March 30 story. An anonymous former employee told the news outlet the workload and insular nature of the company could be overwhelming at times. "I definitely had mental health struggles as a result of being overworked, not having time to see friends or family, or pursue hobbies," the former employee said. "The work really never ends."
An Epic spokesperson told the newspaper that employees work 45 hours a week on average, which is below the American average, according to Gallup, of 47 hours. "Of the staff that have chosen to leave Epic, 91 percent do not list workload concerns as the primary reason they were leaving," the spokesperson said. Even so, the former employee credited Epic with teaching a lot of valuable skills and having a "lot of really highly motivated, driven people who get work done."