Company: Deloitte
Date: 2017-11-01
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: former

A land of opportunity....if you started as an Analyst
Pros: Like any of the Big 4 firms, it is full of highly motivated, intelligent and capable people.  There is access to a wealth of information, learning and experiences as well as the opportunity to work with senior leadership in the clients you serve.

If you find the right people to align with, then you will do well.  It is all about the "Network".

Plenty of opportunity to travel if you want to.

The pension scheme is very good - take advantage of it.
Cons: There are 3 areas that I would advise people to consider before you join Deloitte.

1.  It is a highly political environment.  Everyone is very nice, polite and smiles on the surface but the waters run deep and there are plenty of different creatures that lurk beneath that will bite you if you do not navigate these waters carefully - all of the time.  If you are a straight forward, no-nonsense type - this is not the place for you.  Nuance is everything.
2.  HR is worse than terrible.  The firm's HR is beyond comprehension in how bad it is.  Deloitte claims to be a people oriented business, and it is to its clients, but the old adage of "the tailor is worst dressed man" rings true here.  Interviews for joining have been as much as 4 or even 5 months apart, support to colleagues when they needed it was not handled well by the firm when they worked there (some left as a result) and during exit they have many issues including getting final payments wrong, leaving dates incorrect - the list goes on.  Expect to help yourself, don't rely on the firm's HR team to help you.
3.  If you are joining as an experienced hire - know this.  Of the group that I joined with, it started in with 21.  Within 1 year, it was 14; 2 years, it was down to 6. Once it got beyond the 5 year point, there was just one.  Life is very hard for experienced hires, you will always be on catch up,  and there has always been a bias to those that joined from the start of the careers to do better.  The firm does not like challenge or people calling out where it is not as strong as it thinks it is.  Experience hires have a different perspective and value add experiences - they are sucked out of you and then if you cannot adapt to the "fabric of the firm", you will be discarded very quickly.  People are rarely managed out of the firm in the way that is the norm in industry - it is far more subtle as there an infinite ways to make you less successful or fail in the firm - that in turn creates a new and interesting set of ways of pressure to be put on you - enough for intelligent people to make a decision for themselves.

In summary - if you are a political animal, then you will be fine.  If you are not, I would suggest caution.

In terms of salary - it plays the least out of the Big 4, but that is changing as the others are starting wage compression.  If you are used to a bonus compensation scheme, forget it here - bonuses are low single digit of your base salary - if you get one.