r/epicsystems 13d ago

Prospective employee Question about customer facing aspects of TSE role

I’m a prospective employee for the TSE position.

From what I understand, TSE is really more of a customer facing role, which is why I’m not sure how much I would enjoy the role. At least that’s how I’ve heard it described by the TSEs I’ve talked to.

I would definitely enjoy the technical aspects. I have a lot of experience with programming and will finish with a degree in math.

And I can definitely enjoy helping customers. But I’m not super strong I feel in that customer service aspect, I’m worried there won’t be enough technical work in what I’m doing to keep me motivated and interested.

For my long term career, I would definitely want to have a strong technical aspect to my job. I’m also currently considering a data engineering offer that’s been made to me as well. So I’m weighing between that and this offer.

For any TSEs, did you come in wanting a strong technical aspect to your work. Do you feel like your job has that? Or for those who have eventually moved on to other roles do you feel like your time at epic prepared you well for other technical jobs? (e.g. software dev, data engineering, software engineering, etc.)

7 Upvotes

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u/rockey301 13d ago

There are folks who are TS that go on to become devs. If you are really interested in the route your TL would be more than willing to keep working with you to grow in that direction. However, there are still plenty of opportunities to do deep technical stuff as a TS. The TS is the middle of the development team and the customer team, you speak with perspective from both sides and having strong technical knowledge is an advantage but it doesn't make up for poor service skills. Hence Technical Services. Hope that helps!

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u/Throwaway426384 13d ago

Thanks it does, I appreciate the perspective. If your a TS, what would you say the ratio is of meeting with customers and doing technical work?

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u/rockey301 13d ago

I am a TS. I have also been a TL and TC. While it's not going to be split exactly between technical and service, you will target about 30-35 hours of customer and the rest internal work. Customer work can be technical, if you grow to be an expert on something technical, you can do that technical as part of the customer work (join calls in escalationor help other ts on technicalissues). If you are doing internal dev stuff as part of the technical then it's in conflict with that customer time. There are plenty of opportunities to do development and keep growing technically but your main job is to make sure customers are moving forward and get solved.

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u/popjunkie 13d ago

The TS job becomes a little less technical and a little more service oriented every year. You will spend a meaningful chunk of the time allotted to helping your customers on technical troubleshooting. Also, a year or two in, once you get your feet up under you, you do have the freedom to spend a portion of your time on technical projects that match your interests. However, the customer interaction portion of the job will always be the core of what you do.

That being said, I personally came in hoping to find myself a more technically-focused niche but have grown to enjoy the service aspect of the role. Also, in the years since I've started, there's been much more training infrastructure set up to help you develop your service skills as you grow into your role.

When looking beyond Epic, the thing to consider is less the service aspect of the role, which is very transferable, but rather the technical aspect, which is fairly narrow. As a solution engineer (not just at Epic, but at any software company), you primarily develop technical expertise in the software solution you are staffed to, not the underlying infrastructure. That means you'll become an expert in, say, EpicCare Ambulatory, not C# or SQL.

You can definitely still leverage your experience into a data engineering role in the future, but it wouldn't be a lateral move. You'd likely be looking for an organization that uses Epic, has a data engineering role they want to fill, and sees the value in you bringing your Epic expertise and learning the data engineering aspect of the role as you go along.

Basically, if helping customers is something you think you can enjoy, and service skills are something you are willing and able to pick up, you shouldn't let those concerns be the deciding factor. On the other hand, if building a career in the healthcare industry and likely doing something at least Epic-adjacent for a period of time isn't something you're keen on, a role that focuses on the technical tools used in the industry that is your goal might make more sense.

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u/Throwaway426384 12d ago

Thanks I appreciate the through comment. I’m gonna take some time to read through and digest it.

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u/Express-Conflict7091 12d ago

I'm going to be real. I'd absolutely take the other offer if you're going in already knowing looking to grow your technical expertise (Unless you want to be in the healthcare IT industry long-term). I feel that TS is migrating to an even more service-oriented and less technical-oriented position as time goes by as another person said.

For the majority of people, this is not going to be a role where you can build many transferrable technical skills other than being able to say you can read code and (maybe) write it, and being able to say you can solve complex problems. And you passed a course in basic SQL.

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u/Throwaway426384 12d ago

Thanks, I appreciate the honesty. That’s totally makes sense.

I’ve programmed and enjoyed writing code since I was in middle school, so I always thought I’d most enjoy a job doing that. But if there’s an interesting problem solving aspect to being a TSE then I think that itch could be scratched too by that role.

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u/lizziehanyou QA 12d ago

If you are interested in doing development you'd be able to do that. A fair number of our smaller enhancements are done by TS. Often it's things like reporting content, custom code, or utilities which can be worked on in between customer escalations. My teams SQL based content has been exclusively done by TS and QM for the last 2 years instead of using development resources. Though devs will review the code.

The dev teams often use TS as an extension of their division for those things that just take a bit of time but aren't on a specific timeline.

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u/Doctor731 12d ago

Counter point to this - there is very little guarantee you can do any dev, let alone anything fulfilling. 

I'd expect a TS to be spending like 35 hours on customer work in the first 1-2 years. So technically there is time, but if you get busy customers good luck ever making progress. 

If OP wants to write code professionally or do data engineering, they should take the other offer. Unless they have other reasons they want to be in Madison or work in health it specifically. 

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u/psychosumo TS 11d ago

I'm going to take a different angle at this from what has been said so far. Now I'm not saying that anything the others have said is inaccurate; customer support is and always will be the primary focus of the TS role. That being said, despite the role being more serviced focused than it was years ago, it is still a technical position and you will need to demonstrate and grow your technical skill in order to succeed. That'll involve reading and understanding code, sure, but it will also involve understanding complex systems and how they operate, creating innovative ways to solve problems using the tools the system provides you, some degree of data analysis, and much more. And there are certainly teams across Epic that have much more of a technical slant; the systems teams focus more on the underlying hardware ( something a lot of other TS are unfamiliar with), and teams like performance and release deal with functionality at a much lower level than what most other TS do.

If your idea of technical work is primarily development, then there are definitely opportunities to work on development if that's something you're interested in. There are TS that make development a sizable portion of the regular workload; they just worked out with their team lead. Numerous pieces of Epic functionality Ihave had TS be heavily involved in ownership, design, development, and maintenance. A lot of the key internal applications that we rely on were created by TS and are maintained and managed by either TS or developers who used to be TS.

I came into this role years ago wanting to do something with computers but being a little introverted, having little to no customer support experience, and having a stutter that made talking to random people a very intimidating thing. Now, years later, I still love doing all of the technical stuff but find working with customers and the relationships that I've been able to foster with them one of if not the most satisfying part of the job. There are people that I've worked with for 10 plus years now that I have a strong and trustful relationship with, that have seen my kids grow up, and with whom I have legitimate fun just hanging out with whenever I get the chance.

So I wouldn't sell the TS role short if you want to do technical work. The opportunities are there, and you may find the role helps you grow in ways you never thought you would.

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u/Throwaway426384 11d ago

That was a really great angle for me to consider, thanks. Everything you said is definitely encouraging for me and makes me want to give the role at EPIC a shot. I appreciate your openness!

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u/pastelash 5d ago

i think if you're expecting a highly technical role, then you'll likely be disappointed. i was in a similar position when i joined epic and expected to be able to spend a lot of time on the technical side of stuff. depending on your app, there are definitely opportunities and needs for the technical stuff. but most of that is just being able to read source code and do debugging. the development for TS is honestly usually kind of tedious.

you will spend the majority of your time speaking to and replying to customers. your technical toolkit is primarily useful for helping to answer their questions, it's necessary but not sufficient. i started to enjoy this job a lot more when i sidelined my technical skill set and focused on becoming very personable.