"Great Place to Work" if you fit in the Clique
Pros
Fast-paced and challenging Get exposure to different clients and industries Emphasis on continuing education Structured career ladder Many talented folks and mentors here Lots of vacation days Consulting looks good on a resume
Cons
Some client projects are uninteresting, trivial, or unengaging - these projects are necessary to keep the revenue flowing in Willing to sell work that maximizes profits over client satisfaction Not a true meritocracy - building the right friendships with the right people will get you staffed on good projects, get you the right mentors which in turn get you faster promotions and larger paychecks. Poor work life balance - although this is to be expected given the consulting industry Social life at work is very cliquish based on project team and solution line. Their advertise "work hard play hard" mantra means "we expect you to build friendships with your coworkers during social opportunities outside of work." While this may be great if you naturally build real friendships with your coworkers, not doing so will leave you out to dry in your career. People who are good at building fake friendships with the right people for opportunistic reasons thrive here and are plentiful. This leads to a culture of a lot of two faced interactions and passive aggressiveness. Coworkers are heavily encouraged to fill out survey's that rank many companies based on a good quality as opposed to the results of a servery being organically created from within the company culture. A fratty yuppie social environment that consists of a homogeneous personality type: type A business consultant who enjoys sports, likes going to the latest restaurant/bar, the occasional concert and enjoys a bitter IPA. This is great if you fit in, but having a more unique personality type does not help your career progression. Lots of paperwork for each project like "project goals" and "project self review" that is deemed as annoying and pointless by many of the employees. Raise and bonuses are determined based on a performance score given by your manager, and your manager serves as your spokesperson for those annual reviews. Your manager's perception of you may not reflect the quality of your work, but if your manager's perception of you is good and you are on his/her good side, you can feel confident about your next bonus/raise. Lack of transparency in career decisions and extremely political with who excels. For technical consultants, salary is below industry standard. Despite generous vacation days, you must use them for things such as doctors appointments during the day, all sick days, and you are required to take several days off during the Christmas holiday season.