How many tech companies have been consistently crushing it in their fields for nearly 50 years? I didn't appreciate Epic enough while I worked there (left 12 years ago), but I did learn some of their ways:
- There were no PMs. No one was chasing vanity metrics. No endless barrage of a/b tests. No growth hacking. Instead, product was built the old-fashioned way - by talking to customers; quite often, customers would reach out to us! "Please build time-saving feature x", "support new medical procedure y", "help us publish more research by analyzing z". The heap of ideas was large, and teams were free to apply their own ranking functions. Some top-down strategic initiatives were threaded through all products. This led to every release being packed with things that customers wanted.
- They leveraged their advantages. Plentiful, cheap land → everyone had an office with a door, possibly shared with 1 other person. Productive people flourished. On the flip side, those who were languishing fell faster and deeper into their holes.
- They learned to live with their weaknesses. Not everyone wants to live in WI, and many who are willing to try end up looking for warmer pastures in a few years. Epic ended up being an early-career transit hub. Their attrition rates would cripple most tech cos, but they shored themselves through extensive training programs, and by rewarding the anchors that stayed.
- They took pride in the product. Every month, the CEO personally presented the latest qualitative assessment of each product (as assessed by an independent third-party). If your product slipped from green to yellow, the pressure would trickle down to you. Also, there were no outbound sales, because having the product speak for itself was the sales strategy.
Of course, not everything was rosy, but much has been said here about the shortcomings of Epic, and I wanted to point out what's contributed to the immense stamina that has kept them in the lead for decades.
My wife is a doctor and has a lot of negative things to say about Epic. I think they have succeeded due to vendor capture and lock-in in spite of their shoddy software that doesn't actually meet the needs of the users. Every doctor I've met through my wife would ditch it in a heartbeat if they could.
I’m not sure they’d like whatever alternative tool they used, but I’ve also never heard a peep of positivity from my MD friends/acquaintances about Epic. (It could be like asking someone whether they love their company expense reimbursement software or cable company IVR.)
>- Instead, product was built the old-fashioned way - by talking to customers; quite often, customers would reach out to us! "Please build time-saving feature x", "support new medical procedure y", "help us publish more research by analyzing z".
Think that might be a plus. PM/PO has ruined the industry. This way at least one has a direction to the customers, which is something I can't say about large companies.
There’s also a strong culture of ownership of quality for individual developers. Design documents are expected for even minor changes, and each change goes through at least 2 rounds of well-documented testing by 2 other developers on your team. Compared to other companies where automated testing is the norm, it’s startling how few bugs they manage to ship.
Another thing I thought was interesting given modern dev practices is that you don’t even touch production code until after about 6 months of training, including exams and testing on the actual functionality of the product, even bits you’ll never interact with personally. They’re serious about making sure you know what you’re doing before you get within a mile of something that could affect patients.
They also have a pretty strong accountability culture. I shipped two fairly embarrassing bugs my first year and had a very serious conversation with my manager about whether I should continue to be employed since I’d used up about 50% of our team’s allowed bugs for the year. But on the other side, once I got my feet under me, they were very good about recognizing improvement.
- There were no PMs. No one was chasing vanity metrics. No endless barrage of a/b tests. No growth hacking. Instead, product was built the old-fashioned way - by talking to customers; quite often, customers would reach out to us! "Please build time-saving feature x", "support new medical procedure y", "help us publish more research by analyzing z". The heap of ideas was large, and teams were free to apply their own ranking functions. Some top-down strategic initiatives were threaded through all products. This led to every release being packed with things that customers wanted.
- They leveraged their advantages. Plentiful, cheap land → everyone had an office with a door, possibly shared with 1 other person. Productive people flourished. On the flip side, those who were languishing fell faster and deeper into their holes.
- They learned to live with their weaknesses. Not everyone wants to live in WI, and many who are willing to try end up looking for warmer pastures in a few years. Epic ended up being an early-career transit hub. Their attrition rates would cripple most tech cos, but they shored themselves through extensive training programs, and by rewarding the anchors that stayed.
- They took pride in the product. Every month, the CEO personally presented the latest qualitative assessment of each product (as assessed by an independent third-party). If your product slipped from green to yellow, the pressure would trickle down to you. Also, there were no outbound sales, because having the product speak for itself was the sales strategy.
Of course, not everything was rosy, but much has been said here about the shortcomings of Epic, and I wanted to point out what's contributed to the immense stamina that has kept them in the lead for decades.