Choose your own adventure. It's a huge firm with lots of different paths that lead to drastically different experiences
Pros
- Very well managed as a company - survived the worst downturns in the last decade and always emerged better and stronger - Often get to work with offshore teams in Delivery Centers (India, Phillippines, etc.) in systems integration projects. It's a good experience, but can result in weird hours for meetings with these teams - In general, people are easy to get along with (think really good state university background people) - Good structure to identify/advertise expertise, and these experts are often very willing to help you if you reach out to them. - Really solid waterfall-based methodology, especially for big/complex systems delivery
Cons
- It's a huge firm - quality of colleagues vary greatly. In all, in the last ten years, the general quality of resources have gone down as the firm focuses more on systems delivery than strategy consulting. - It's obvious that they treat you as a commodity. Pay is middle-of-the-road, probably a bit lower than average, thanks to the strong brand name. Very few true "people developers" who invest time and energy to help develop your career. Executives think taking people out to bars is the only tool they need to boost morale. - Firm's succes does not necessarily translate into individual success. In fact, the bigger the firm gets (mostly adding resources in offshore delivery centers to compete with Wipro, Tata, Cognizant), the more it begins to resemble EDS than a real consulting firm.