Pros
The other analysts are smart and great to work with.
Cons
Remember when reading all this that I and many other coworkers discovered in all our interviews were promised reasonable work-life balance, opportunity for mentorship, opportunity for industry and client experience. That of course, proved to be incredibly false. There is another review on Glassdoor by a candidate who interviewed and declined an offer because he spoke to so many past and current employers that all had nothing positive to say about the company. This candidate only held a Bachelor’s was offered the same initial salary package as someone with a Masters degree in a scientific/quantitative field. Not sure what partners were thinking there other than they don’t seem to value that kind of development. A former coworker with a PhD had expressed similar disparagement. There is incredibly low morale, and company satisfaction is abysmal. Turnover is very high—3 coworkers left for other companies in the spring, and another 4 quit this summer including myself. Mind you this is a company of ~15 when up and running. Upper management has little regards for work-life balance. Working late is to be expected with consulting around deliverable time but across the board with every team across all projects we were pulling in ridiculous hours I would say 3 out of every 4 weeks, and coming in weekends or working from home on weekends was far more frequently than ever expected. Further, despite all of us working late quite consistently, one partner balked during one of our non crazy late nights that people dared to leave at 8:30pm when some deadlines were on the horizon. Because staying until 1am the night before, and midnight the night before that wasn’t enough to show your dedication. Upper management, particularly partners are disconnected with how the way they are running the company is actually affecting the staff. Though they encouraged an Analyst/Senior Analyst lunch where “we” can discuss our grievances and how to improve the company, the partners actually provided a structured agenda that appeared to leave very little room for real discussion and seemed to imply that most of the change was to come from analysts & senior analysts as opposed to top down. It also gave a feeling that partners and upper management were not the source of so many problems. The lunch itself devolved into airing of more grievances with a wonderful gem that embodies how off partner mentality and perspective is: one partner in particular stated that it’s good to feel like you’re going to get fired at the end of each day, as if this was actually an effective and intelligent way to promote productivity and morale. There is very little training on anything at all. They are slowly formalizing some processes but for the most part people will refer you to past decks or research materials which 1. Get recycled and gets recognized as “amazing work” that you did, or 2. Get recycled and gets torn apart because it is inadequate work. Not to say that all work is recycled, but when there is no formal training, there’s little to rely on to help with new deck creation although you are also told “not to reinvent the wheel”. Partners tried to implement a new workflow to "help" with more "productive" and "efficient" deck creation but then another partner would just flip out that you were falling behind while applying the new workflow. That said, the projects are very niche and tend to be hyper-specialized in distribution models so quite frankly there isn’t much diversity in the work at all. There is little client interaction, and with the nicheness of the projects it’s just infertile grounds for developing any business or industry acumen.
