Unfortunately, It Won't Be Different For You
Pros
You get to work alongside some incredibly bright individuals. This was a breath of fresh air after coming from my previous companies. The food is also phenomenal. The company prides itself on having a great culinary staff. All meals are also priced extremely low, so you will save some cash here. You will be given the most responsibility you've ever had in your life. You will lead meetings with the CIO and CMIO in the room. You will give presentations to some of the most prestigious physicians in the US. You will lead a team of 5-15 people. Are you ready? This is the best part about the company. Whatever happens, you will come out on the other side a different man/woman. You get to travel. There is nothing better than traveling when you are young and do not have a ton of obligations. I would call myself an extensive traveler and definitely got burned out after the first year though. Remember that these are not leisure trips- they're work trips. And trust me, you will WORK.
Cons
Unfortunately, your experience won't be much different than the other posts on here. I thought that it would be for me and that was a naïve assumption coming in. I was ready to work. I had background knowledge in healthcare and software - doesn't matter. Your initial hand will determine your fate. Do not feel special because they reached out to you. They do that to everyone. Luckily, they have some of the best vetting processes in place, so they can weed out any individuals who don't meet the mark. If you've been invited onsite, you've met the companies standards. Don't for one minute think you're special though. Epic seems to forever be adhering to lean methodologies. While this is typically very useful for young companies, there are orders of magnitude that must be considered as a company scales from 100->1000->10,000 employees. The IS Division consistently operates as though they are incredibly understaffed. This creates a tremendous burden on young project managers, as they're still looking to get their footing at month 6 and are forced to fight fires on multiple projects due to the continuous turnover in the division. I believe that if the high turnover issue is ever solved, young project managers would get burned out at a less frequent rate and have support when & where they need it. I found it very interesting before coming to work for Epic that they hired over 4,000 employees over the past 4 years, but have only grown in size by a few hundred. Once I was about 2 months into my role, the answer became very obvious. This is a decent first job that pays well and comes with loads of experience. Just don't forget that no one cares about you or your career aspirations. Projects are hit-or-miss. Same goes with Team Leads and AMs (Application Managers - the senior project managers you work alongside throughout your first project). You will be given one of each, at random. You will also be placed onto an application (billing, scheduling, clinicals, etc.), where your strengths, interests, or experiences have not been weighed into the placement. They claim to try and match people as best as they can, but I didn't know a single person at the company who had previous interest or experience in the application's general domain. So how high up do you want to go within the company? Well, to start, there are only 4 possible positions. So we're a little bit limited right out of the gate. The general timeline is: you will move from your first position(AC) to position 2 (AM) in 12-24 months. You can move up to the next level of Implementation Director (ID) around 4-5 yrs (3 if you're good). Implementation Executive is usually reserved for employees 10+ years. You'll notice most individuals stay in the AM role for the majority of their careers. The rest leave the company at year 2. Well, can't I do something else, such as an internal role? Yes, you can take on an infinite number of responsibilities within your application, but I've only seen that route lead to burnout. The employees who stay 5+ years and are still sane/don't look 45 y.o. are the ones who say "No" to nearly everything they're offered, lay low, meet the bare minimum expectations, and stay in the AM role. If you can do that you'll be fine. Just remember - if the offer sounds too good to be true, that's because it is.
