In a July 1, 2020 email to all employees of Epic Systems, a health records software company based in Verona, Wisconsin, billionaire CEO Judy Faulkner discussed the company’s plans to phase out working from home (WFH), emphasizing the firm’s workplace culture as a key reason to reopen the offices. “Even if work gets done [remotely] — we are losing, big time, the culture that made the company successful,” writes Faulkner.

But what is Epic’s culture, and why is it important enough to risk the health of not only the company’s roughly 10,000 employees, but their families and the rest of the Dane County population? With other tech giants like Google announcing that they will extend their WFH policies through July of 2021, why is Epic pushing for workers to return to the office even as the country experiences an ongoing spike in coronavirus cases?

I spoke with more than twenty current and former Epic employees, and the picture they paint dramatically diverges from the one presented by company leadership. In contrast to the emphasis in Faulkner’s email on serendipitous run-ins with coworkers in office hallways and impromptu brainstorming sessions over lunch, workers spoke of a grinding culture of overwork, depicting a company running young employees ragged and then encouraging them to quit when they can no longer sustain the pace.