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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Now we have Chipsoft, arguably one of the worst players in the entire IT space that has a near monopoly (around me, anyway) on IT for hospitals. They charge a fortune, produce crap software and the larger they get the less choice there is for the remainder. It is baffling to me that we should be enabling such hostile players.

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I worked for them in the early 2000's. There was nothing wrong with the people working there, except for the two founders, a father and son. They were absolutely ruthless. And as so often, that ruthless mentality was what enabled them to gain dominance over the market. I could tell some crazy stories about how they ran the company but better not because it might get me sued. But if you understand Dutch, you can read more about them e.g. here: https://www.quotenet.nl/zakelijk/a41239366/chipsoft-gerrit-h...

Around here we have Epic. If you want a good scare, look up their corporate Willy Wonka-esq jail/campus and their policy of zero remote work.

I thought "Willy Wonka-esque" was tongue in cheek, but they have a yellow brick road leading up to the front door... absolutely bizarre

Those who want to escape the office altogether, can hop on one of the company’s 600 cow-print bikes to take meetings from a treehouse, slide down a rabbit hole or grab lunch in a train car.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/01/inside-epic-systems-mythical...

They don’t seem to call themselves a family. That’s a plus.

> but they have a yellow brick road leading up to the front door...

> The Oz office building on Epic’s campus.

You undersell it.. That's the view of the Emerald City from Quadling Country in the books, red flowers included.

Their hiring is insane too. Years ago I applied for a Sys admin I position. After 3 rounds of interviews, they gave me a test to take. Except it was something you'd give a senior dev. They specced out a fake language, super esoteric too, it was like a combination of brainfuck and assembly, and asked me to solve problems with it, and debug code written in it. I could have toughed my way through it, but I was so dissatisfied with how much of my time they'd already wasted that I decided I didn't want to work there.

I remember my friend was looking at applying Epic. They asked him to send his SAT scores. We had a good chuckle about it.

He had finished undergrad 5+ years prior and had continuous industry experience.

That sounds like a filter selecting for people without any self esteem but mad programming chops. Good you passed.

You sure it was a fake language and not just ANSI MUMPS?

I've been to that campus. Never worked there but I got a tour when I was like 18 and it seemed like a cool place to work at the time. They clearly took a page from Google's handbook. Its like a giant adult daycare center.

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